MUTHA Magazine

3 weeks ago | muthamagazine.com | Cheryl Klein

The first time you rode in my car, it wasn’t my car, and you were not quite you. It was a rental, gray or white or silver. You were just five pounds, had just passed the car seat test: ninety minutes in the car seat in your hospital room. You were one month old the first time you saw the sun. Maybe it glinted between the cement columns in the parking structure. Or maybe the structure was enclosed, and all the light was artificial.

1 month ago | muthamagazine.com | Becky Barnicoat

For more comics on the exploits of new motherhood check out…Becky is a cartoonist and writer published by The New Yorker, Grazia, The New Statesman, The Guardian, BuzzFeed, New York Magazine, Private Eye, Netflix, and more. Her graphic memoir Cry When the Baby Cries — an honest account of having babies — is published by Gallery in the US and Jonathan Cape in the UK. You can find all Becky’s latest cartoons on Instagram @beckybarnicomics.

Mar 28, 2025 | 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.

Feb 10, 2025 | 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.

Jan 28, 2025 | 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.