About — Tales of a New Mom

I'm Nora Callahan — first-time mom to a very busy eighteen-month-old, and a former project manager who walked into motherhood with a color-coded spreadsheet and walked out of the first night home understanding that the spreadsheet had opinions but the baby had the votes.

Tales of a New Mom is the site I needed at 3am that year: a friend about eighteen months ahead of me who would say, plainly, here's what this stage actually feels like, here's what's normal, here's what helped, and here's when to call the doctor. Not a highlight reel, not a lecture — just the honest version, written for whoever's holding the phone one-handed in the dark tonight.

Here's how the site is laid out, in the same order it will happen to you: pregnancy & birth for the last stretch and what labor really feels like, postpartum recovery for your own body and mind afterward, baby by week for what's developing stage by stage, is this normal? for the noises and rashes and weirdness nobody warns you about, and sleep & feeding for the long nights — starting with the newborn sleep survival guide.

Two promises. First: I'm a mom, not a medical professional. When a topic touches health — yours or the baby's — I stick to what the pediatric and obstetric guidance actually says, I say so plainly, and I tell you when a question belongs to your pediatrician or OB, because it usually does. Second: no guilt. However you're feeding, wherever the baby is sleeping, whatever got you through last night — you're doing fine. That's the house rule here.

If you're brand new, start with the cluster feeding guide — it's the thing most likely to be happening to you right now. I'm glad you're here. Now go sit down while you can.

A note on affiliate links: some posts contain affiliate links — if you buy through one, I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. I only recommend things that earned their place on my own nightstand.