Cheryl Klein

3 weeks ago | muthamagazine.com | Cheryl Klein

Someone asked me what I would like to do with my mom if she were suddenly returned to me, and I said, with a self-conscious laugh, “Go to Target?”My mom would laugh too, probably. My mom, who sewed matching dresses for my sister and me, who devised her own curriculum for our two-student summer school, who read books to us, who diligently cared for all the pets we abandoned. She wasn’t some shallow shopaholic, is what I’m saying, though she did love a bargain.

1 month ago | publishersweekly.com | Cheryl Klein

The New York Times culture writer’s Second Life explores how the internet looms over contemporary pregnancy. This seed of this memoir comes from your experiences with Flo, a period tracking app. When did you realize you had a book on your hands? Late at night in bed, you’re mind-melding with a screen and it feels very intimate. This was at the beginning of Covid, when Instagram figured out how to drill into my isolated brain and discern which sweatpants I would buy. I started taking notes.

2 months ago | muthamagazine.com | Cheryl Klein

The week my toddler spent in the hospital battling a bacterial infection, I completely ignored the news. The first few days, as his left eye swelled like a tomato following a bout of flu that swept through our household, I curled my body around his small, feverish one in the remote control bed and used my phone primarily as a phone and a notepad. No need to doomscroll when I already felt encased in doom.

2 months ago | muthamagazine.com | Cheryl Klein

It’s a crisp, cold, cloudless August day. I wrestle my squirming, worming three-month-old into the pram. Neither of us slept the night before. Her ravenous little mouth would not unlatch from my stinging, red-raw, blistered breasts thanks to the clusterfuck that is cluster feeding. I am a deflated cow, my tits hanging like airless balloons, aching and burning, ready to refill to the point of bursting the moment I hear her cry.

Jan 24, 2025 | muthamagazine.com | Cheryl Klein

On Wednesday morning, we packed things that were important: old photos, the kids’ adoption papers, teddy bears, a file folder labeled “Records” that usually lived in the back of the nine-year-old’s closet. We packed things that were important in the moment: clothes and Hot Wheels cars and cat litter and a jug of oat milk. We loaded them into our cars next to the cats and the kids.