Katie Allison

At 35, my friend Spike (nee Jacqueline) Gillespie is only a couple of years older than I. We met more than a decade ago while we were both waitressing in Knoxville, Tenn., at a nightclub called Ella Gurus. For two years, we lived in the same…

Parents may reasonably ask why, with research demonstrating the many and serious potential health hazards of routine bottle-feeding, do so many otherwise competent doctors continue to take a neutral or even pro-formula stance with their patients? As…

When Tabitha Walrond's 7-week-old infant died of starvation last year, the fact that this young New York mother had attempted to breast-feed her baby -- albeit with obvious lack of success -- was widely blamed for the complex and haunting tragedy.…

I was having one of those infamous Very Hard Mommy Days, the kind that entail crabby kids, messy arts-and-crafts projects and rainy weather. Elbow deep in roll-on glue and glitter, my young children created refrigerator-door masterpieces with…

With her long, graying hair, often in braids, and her flashback '60s clothes, Ina May Gaskin isn't as glamorous as many other pregnancy and childbirth "experts" seen frequently on television and in the glossy parenting magazines. Instead, Gaskin…

Lori Rivas finds it painful to think back to the first few months after her 2-year-old son Daniel's birth. Rivas, a 29-year-old stay-at-home mother from Santa Clarita, Calif., remembers days and nights of struggling to ignore her baby's crying, of…