Andrea Mulder-Slater

by Andrea Mulder-Slater The hour-long drive home from the hospital where my daughter was born was fraught with danger. First, there was my perineum (if you have to ask, you just don’t get it). Then, there was the night sky, which meant that for the first time since her birth, I was unable to keep constant watch over my infant. The bumpy road and unfamiliar sounds and smells led to the overwhelming realization that I was in need of another painkiller and had exactly zero experience keeping a miniature human being alive.

by Andrea Mulder-Slater Dear feet, I’m sorry. I mean, here we are in Florida and there you are, completely and totally naked. But here’s the thing. I forgot your warm-weather shoes at home. In the closet. As you know, our exodus from the snow-ravaged north was rushed (what with the back-to-back storms heading our way) and as a result, so many things were left behind. My favourite black Capris, that cute sunhat I ordered online, the poolside read I had picked out specifically for this trip… All of it, forgotten. In the cold. So here we stand, on this gorgeous salty beach, next to my happily barefoot daughter. Exposed. 

by Andrea Mulder-Slater I first saw the word babymoon printed in a guilty-pleasure - trashy magazine - along with photographs of a bikini-clad celebrity gallivanting in the sand during a pre-labor getaway with her pelvic affiliate and her diminutive ankles. It's kind of hard to ignore the concept, what with circulars like this shoved in every other newspaper.    But here's the thing. The babymoon trend has me feeling completely unconvinced. I’ll be honest here. When I was pregnant, the furthest thing from my mind was cherishing together time while experiencing a romantic fling on the beach - or anywhere for that matter. Reason being,  I was far too busy working out the logistics of ejecting a small-but-mighty organism through a part of my body I hadn’t been able to get a clear visual on for months. Between my ever-expanding feet, my wildly indiscreet chest and my puffy reality-television-star pout, I was more concerned with just trying to appear human while...