I am all for making a first birthday cake healthy for the toddler, but I draw a line at bone barrow. Yes, bone barrow. But one mom, Bridget Levine, was apparently determined to give her little one a sugar-free birthday cake using watermelon and bone marrow. The result is something that looks edible. Until you realize the frosting is made primarily with the scraped innards of bones from cows or other animals.

Bridget posted a video on Instagram of her husband preparing bone marrow frosting for her to pipe onto the large chunk of watermelon that doubles as their daughter’s cake for her first birthday. I get it. No one wants to stuff their newly minted toddler full of sugar and butter on their first birthday. Save it for their third or fourth, maybe. But this is a little much, at least according to the dozens of comments under Bridget’s video.

The mom really wanted to make sure the cake was sugar-free.

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A post shared by Bridget Levine | Baby Food | Mom Tips | Postpartum Weight loss (@bridgetmlevine)

Bridget uses a frosting piping bag to make a cute design on the rind-free hunk of watermelon before she and her husband give it to their daughter. And their daughter really goes to town on it. Something tells me that prepared bone marrow is something this family has had before, so it might be something that Bridget’s daughter is plenty familiar with. 

Be that as it may, people couldn’t resist sharing their snarky comments under the video on Instagram.

“For my daughter’s 1st birthday I gave her a raccoon carcass,” one joked. Another commented, “She’s gonna remember this cake in therapy in fifteen years.” “If you’re looking for attention, you got it,” someone else added.

Others joked about feeding their dog something similar. Some also commented to speculate on what else Bridget might feed her daughter. “Her two favorite foods are roadkill and swamp juice but we skipped the swamp juice,” one of Bridget’s critics wrote.

It turns out, parents can and do use bone marrow to make a healthy alternative to frosting or to smash cakes in general. One bone marrow recipe includes honey to help sweeten it. But, per the recipe, bone marrow, when prepared properly, is a perfect nutrient-rich option for babies and adults. Well, maybe perfect isn’t the right word. It’s still a wild concept to many.

But it’s definitely a thing.

“I made this recipe but I replaced the watermelon for cake and the bone marrow frosting for chocolate frosting and it turned out pretty good,” someone wrote under Bridget’s video, clearly as a cheeky joke. “Thanks for the recipe!”

Bone marrow reportedly tastes savory and even nutty. If parents are adding honey to naturally sweeten it, then maybe Bridget is onto something, especially for parents who try to steer clear of sugar any way they can.

However, another user added in the comment section, “Just because we can… doesn’t mean we should.”

The post Mom Sparks Debate After Serving Bone Marrow ‘Cake’ for Toddler’s First Birthday appeared first on Mom.com.

Who doesn’t get a little giddy when it’s that magical time of year again—Girl Scout cookie time? We all do. It’s an American rite of passage, basically. But one TikTok creator recently dropped a “very boomer hot take” that’s stirring up more than a few conversations: she thinks that grown-ups helping sell cookies on social media is totally missing the point.

In her video, she brings the heat and gets right to the point: “No more posting cookie links on your adult social feeds.” Because — and hear her out — if your kid isn’t the one knocking on doors, chatting up neighbors, or personally hustling those Thin Mints, are we really teaching them anything at all?

She specifically says she doesn’t think Girl Scouts should be able to sell cookies through their parents’ social media accounts. Now at this point, we all probably know what she means—one of our friends or acquaintances shares a link to their little girls’ cookie page, we buy them, the Girl Scouts organization ships them, and poof! A dozen boxes of Thin Mints can show up on our doorstep less than a week later. There’s zero fuss, but also zero human interaction.

“I know that it’s not, you know, 2003, whatever, anymore, and social media is a big thing,” she explains. “Totally get it. It just defeats the whole purpose of selling Girl Scout cookies.”

Carly, the TikTok mom in question, says that when she was a Girl Scout and her mom was her troop leader, her mom had her wear a button to school that said, “I sell Girl Scout cookies.” She then told her daughter to approach her friends, teachers and neighbors personally by asking, “Would you like to buy some Girl Scout cookies?” with the order form.

“Like, that’s the whole point of selling the Girl Scout cookies,” she says. “And I just feel like it’s such a cop-out for the girls to be able to have their parent, adult, whoever post on their Facebook page.”

Now, before you roll your eyes and mutter “OK Boomer,” let’s be real:

Girl Scout cookie selling has changed. Folks can order them online now, which is super convenient, but some parents still feel like something intangible gets lost along the way when adults take the wheel. The system is set up so that if a Girl Scout still wants to sell them in-person, she can—which is great. And the girls can “create” and set up their own website with a custom url to sell them (aka Mom and Dad do all the work). But it’s just not the same.

A lot of commenters agree, saying they miss the good ol’ days when parents would bring the order form to work and set it out in the break room (ah, nostalgia). Though a few people said at the very least, these girls need to “set up out in front of a Walmart” like they did back in the day, lol. The Girl Scouts are a noble organization for sure, but they’re still in it for selling the most amount of cookies no matter what.

What do you think? Is this “boomer hot take” actually onto something, or are we just clutching our pearls for nostalgia’s sake?

The post Mom Says Parents Have Ruined Everything About Girl Scout Cookies appeared first on Mom.com.

There are people who carry two, three, four, and even more babies at once during pregnancies. But to know that and to see it are two entirely different things. A woman named Coco Hannemann who has an Instagram account dedicated to her life with triplets, before and after she gave birth, shared a video of her baby bump that people just can’t get over.

Coco’s pregnant belly looks exactly how you might expect it to. Just picture a standard baby bump with one baby inside, and then multiply that by three. So yeah, pretty large and pretty uncomfortable looking. There is no getting around the discomfort that Coco must feel with her triplet baby bump and for some people, they hadn’t seen a triplet baby bump so up close and personal before now.

Her triplet baby bump looks downright painful.

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A post shared by Coco Hannemann | Expecting Triplets in London (@cocos.triplets)

In her video, Coco shows her pregnant belly before she gave birth to her triplets. She says in the video that people often ask how three babies fit inside her stomach. Although she’s not a medical professional, and probably felt annoyed any time someone asked her an invasive question about her pregnancy, she says in her video that all three babies are “layered.” As a result, her stomach is pointing outward, almost like she is a long watermelon in there, sideways. Comfy, right?

As normal or typical as a pointed belly might be late in a pregnancy for someone carrying triplets, it’s still a sight that not many are used to. Toward the end of Coco’s pregnancy, her Instagram account, her belly got more pointy. But it didn’t start out that way. As her babies continued to grow and move around, and lose space inside of her belly, their positions resulted in her pointed baby bump.

“I’m a triplet, and just to see this makes me want to take my mom out for ice cream on me,” one user commented on Coco’s video. “Good Lord. Best of luck to your blessings.”

Another wrote, “Women’s bodies are AMAZING! Doing an incredible job, Mama!”

Not everyone was as encouraging, though. Some commented to say how “painful” or “uncomfortable” Coco looks late in her pregnancy. One man joked that he is traumatized by the image of her very large baby bump.

“I don’t understand how the skin doesn’t just split open,” someone wrote. Alright, that’s one way to look at the stretched and discolored skin at the top of the pointed baby bump.

To be clear, a bulbous or pointed baby bump is totally normal in pregnancies with multiples. Other moms with multiples have shared their own baby bump journeys on social media. All babies might be different, but the bellies they came out of were all very much stretched and altered in ways that some of us just can’t comprehend.

The post Pregnant Woman Carrying Triplets Sparks Conversation After Showing Her Baby Bump appeared first on Mom.com.

You cannot post your gender reveal on social media if you don’t want the internet picking it apart immediately after it goes live. A woman named Abby shared her fiancé’s reaction to their gender reveal in a TikTok video and it probably wasn’t a good idea. After his general mood during the entire video was less than enthused (or at least appears that way), people absolutely flew to the comments on Spirit Airlines to share their thoughts and claims about the dad-to-be.

Look, some people just aren’t comfortable on camera. In Abby’s video, the scene is just the toe of them at a table with her phone recording them and a cake with pink or blue inside, though, so this isn’t an all-out gender reveal with dozens of guests in attendance. Still, not many are willing to let this guys off easily, and his reaction (or lack thereof) in the gender reveal video is hard to ignore.

@abbys_life__

🩵🩷🩵🩷

♬ original sound – A B B Y

People agreed that the gender reveal is “hard to watch” because of the dad.

In the video, Abby explains to her fiancé that they will both push a champagne glass into the cake without looking and then, once they both have a slice in their respective glasses, they will open their eyes to find out the gender of their baby. For some, it’s a gender reveal method we’ve seen before. But even before they both learn they’re having a boy, the fiancé’s facial expressions paint a picture of a guy who just isn’t thrilled to be having a baby.

Then again, maybe this is a clear case of the Internet just not knowing how lovable and kind the man is IRL. Hey, that’s totally possible. But this was the video Abby decided to post with the intent of sharing the happy news, despite her fiancé’s lackluster performance? Oof.

“Ummmm, that was kind of uncomfortable for us,” one user wrote in the comments.

Someone else added, “‘Y’all. It’s OK. He just doesn’t show his emotions and I really love him. He’ll make a GREAT dad’ video coming tomorrow.”

“Commenting so it maybe brings me back in a couple years to your new single life!” Another user wrote.

Others theorized that maybe the dad-to-be is “camera shy,’ which is totally fine. But if he is, then Abby didn’t have to share the video on TikTok.

Toward the end of the video, as Abby explains, “It’s a boy,” her fiancé does smile, but he never quite meets her eyes with his. He also doesn’t say anything to give away his thoughts or opinions on having a child, let alone a boy.

Judging by Abby’s reaction and telling her fiancé, ‘You get a boy,’ it sounds like that might have been what her fiancé was hoping for. But you wouldn’t know that from anything he actually says.

The post Gender Reveal Has People Asking If the Dad Even Likes the Mom appeared first on Mom.com.

A day at the beach turned into no picnic for one mom after an uncomfortable encounter with another family. The mom, who has a toddler, shared a video on TikTok explaining that she is trying to teach her daughter how to make friends. As a fellow mom of an only child, and an only child myself, it’s an important skill for little ones to learn from a very young age.

However, she was shocked and saddened when her fellow parents and their small children weren’t receptive to her daughter.

Allie Hagerty, a mom who lives in New England with her husband and two-year-old daughter Charlotte, was on vacation when she had the awkward encounter. In her video, which was filmed on the beach shortly after, she explained that she’s taught Charlotte how to go up to kids and introduce herself.

Hagerty went on to explain that her daughter saw two other little girls who looked to be around her age on the beach while playing with her dad.

“My name’s Charlotte, what’s your name?” she asked, attempting to make friends with them.

As this was happening, Allie described her own encounter with the mom of the two girls. And it sounded super awkward. Meanwhile, her daughter was having her own awkward encounter with the girls and their dad, who didn’t seem so interested in making friends.

“The mom was SO weird when I asked how old her daughters were and didn’t even ask how old Charlotte was,” she wrote in the video’s caption. “And the dad STARED at her. And then looked at us like wtf is your kid doing? Let’s be inclusive. Let’s teach our children to welcome others to their table. Being an only child is hard and it takes GUTS to go and make new friends.”

Many people in the comments took the side of the other parents.

“Everyone is free to enjoy their day at the beach as they please. If they don’t want to socialize they don’t have to,” one person wrote.

“Normalize that not everyone wants to interact with everyone,” another commenter wrote.

“Not everyone has to be your friend or be bubbly and friendly. That’s not everyone’s personality. It’s not their responsibility to protect feelings by engaging and being friendly. Some people are just shy or just don’t like other people and that’s fine,” someone else wrote.

Others called out those commenters, and honestly, I agree.

“This is so sad and then I read the comments and it’s even sadder.. don’t go outside if you don’t want to potentially have to communicate with other ppl jeeze!” someone wrote.

“Ok I get it the family may have wanted to be left alone but they didn’t have to act rude, especially to your daughter. Those are weird people for sure,” a commenter added.

“I agree with you. It is just play time for kids. Stop thinking it is a lifetime commitment. It is simple beach time.”

Look, you don’t have to be best friends with other parents at the beach or the playground. But it doesn’t take much to say hello or nod and encourage your kids to make friends for a few hours. Your kids look to you as an example on how to interact with the outside world. 

If the parents genuinely didn’t want their children to interact with Hagerty’s, they could have very easily said so. You can be respectful without being overly friendly.

The post Mom at the Beach Describes ‘Weird’ Encounter With Snobby Parents appeared first on Mom.com.

One of the most fascinating parts of pregnancy for me is the way it changes a person’s body. It’s really amazing that your body adapts to grow an entire person. Another thing that blew my mind was how the body doesn’t stop changing after you give birth. I chose to breastfeed, and I was really fascinated when I learned how that works. A mom on TikTok also recently made an interesting discovery about your breastfeeding body — you can have nipples in parts of your body that aren’t your breasts. Apparently, our bodies have something called a milk line, and it goes farther down than you’d expect!

Mom Jasmine shared her shocking discovery nearly a week after giving birth to her second child. Running on maybe three hours sleep, she had a conversation with a lactation consultant that blew her mind. As a second time breastfeeding mom, she had thought she’d heard everything.

But she was seriously wrong.

The LC asked if she had noticed any excess breast tissue, and Jasmine explained that she noticed some in her armpits. She also mentioned that her armpits had changed color. During pregnancy, your nipples and areolas get darker, which also happened to her armpits.

Despite understanding the change, the new mom couldn’t have anticipated what the lactation consultant told her.

“That’s a nipple!” was not a sentence you hear every day. “You have a third nipple in your armpit,” the consultant said. 

“I’m gagged,” Jasmine admitted in her video. “You know how cows and puppies and kittens have that line of nipples?” she asked. “Humans have that too.”

The mom was one of the many people who learned about the “milk line,” something that exists in our bodies and we don’t even realize. 

According to eMedicineHealth, breast tissue can grow anywhere along the milk line, which extends basically from your armpit to your groin area. “It is quite common to have breast tissue up toward and even in the armpit,” the article states. An extra nipple can grow anywhere along the area, and so can an extra breast.

Commenters on her video were also gagged.

“So we can just grow utters????” one person asked.

Another commenter revealed they’re not uncommon. “I have one on my bra line and when my daughter was born I learned she has a matching one,” they wrote.

“As someone that has literally leaked milk from both armpits it was a shock for me and the lactation consultant,” another commenter wrote.

People overwhelmingly asked if they could see the alleged armpit nipple. In a follow-up video, the mom obliged. She revealed her armpit boob, noting how it was acceptable to show that, but not her actual breast in a video.

The extra breast tissue looks exactly how you would imagine it would.

It was slightly flat on top because she had her arms down for an extended period of time. In fact, when she put her arm back down, you couldn’t even tell it was there.

Jasmine explained that the tissue became more engorged if she needed to breastfeed her daughter. She doesn’t know if it can produce milk, and made it very clear she has no interest in finding out! I can’t say that I blame her.

A lactation consultant commented on the video, writing “yes milk might could likely come out of it. The size should reduce once you are out of the engorgement phase.”

Did you know this was possible? I definitely learned something new today.

The post Breastfeeding Mom Discovered an Armpit Nipple & People Are Spiraling appeared first on Mom.com.

Can you even really say you experienced the full spectrum of childhood if you weren’t crying over your homework with your parents in the room at some point? I’m still traumatized by my dad trying to explain math to me over 33 years ago. In a hilarious yet extremely relatable TikTok video, one mom shares the absolutely impossible homework question her child brought home—and the simple word problem made the whole house spiral.

“Kai has 10 marbles,” the poor, sniffling little boy reads aloud. “Seven are blue. The rest are red. How many red flowers does Kai have?”

If you’re thinking, “hold up now, how did we go from marbles to flowers?!!” you’re not alone. Because HOW DID WE GO FROM MARBLES TO FLOWERS? Seriously though!

My initial reaction was, “Surely this must be a typo because WHAT ON EARTH?!”

I’m crashing out right along with this family.

“So many questions. Why are we testing them right before winter break?!” the mom writes in her caption to the video. “Why make it so confusing for a first grader. Also, for his parents. We laughed. He cried. Kai has no flowers was the final answer. But we still dont know if it was right! LMAO.”

Sounds right to me and every other person on the internet! Because where did the damn flowers come from and what do they have to do with marbles and mathematics?!

Commenters agree the crash out here is “valid.”

“The teacher is rage baiting 😂😂😂,” one woman wrote. “AI generated worksheets,” says another. “Probably not the teacher’s fault, but the publisher. And the crash out is 100% legit.”

Oh God, are we letting AI make worksheets for kids at school now? Is that a thing? Please say no. Someone pleeeeease say no. All the commenters agree on another thing, too: Kai has ZERO FLOWERS.

Because who is giving and/or receiving flowers in a marble economy?

Here’s how this would go down in my house: Everyone has a different interpretation of whether the flowers are a typo or a trick question. Everybody is wrong. And then we just start yelling words like “FLOWERS” and “MARBLES” across the kitchen like we’re in an escape room designed by a maniac.

Because nothing bonds a family quite like being brought to the brink by a worksheet.

The post Mom Shares ‘Impossible’ Homework Question That Had the Whole House Spiraling appeared first on Mom.com.

A mom on TikTok just did what the internet does not handle well: she said the simple part out loud. In the viral video, she explains her “how to shower with a newborn” hack: you put the baby in a safe place (like a crib), and then you take a shower. No balancing act. No shower bouncer. No baby strapped to your body for a not-at-all relaxing dual cleansing ritual neither of you will enjoy.

Just a clean, contained baby and a mom who gets seven uninterrupted minutes to remember what it feels like to be a human with shampooed hair. Honestly? Genius. Not because it’s complicated, but because in the newborn fog, even obvious solutions can feel impossible until someone spells them out like a permission slip. Especially if it’s your first time on the new parent merry-go-round.

“Repeat after me,” writes @its.dayank, the mom behind the video. “You are allowed to shower even with a baby! My first baby would SCREAM anytime I set him down so I just never did. It didn’t make me a better mom—it just made me miserable and fed my PPD.”

She adds that you’re “allowed to take care of yourself” and that you “absolutely should.”

I’ll take things I wish I had subscribed to when I was a first-time new parent with increasingly greasy hair and a terrible guilt complex. She’s 100% right!

Newborn life trains you to believe you can’t do anything unless the baby is physically attached to you like a tiny, adorable barnacle. But this mom is basically reminding parents that a crib is literally designed for safe containment, and it’s OK if the baby cries for a few minutes while you do a basic bodily function. Sometimes the most helpful parenting advice isn’t another product recommendation — it’s hearing another mom say, “You’re allowed to meet your own needs.”

A lot of comments were supportive, and a lot were—predictably—full of excuses as to why that person couldn’t possibly put their baby down.

Luckily, one of the top comments shut it all down brilliantly:

“K yall so the special circumstances where your baby had something WRONG with them are obviously not what we’re talking about. Go preach elsewhere. All you’re doing is contributing to making women feel bad for BATHING.”

There are a lot of reasons why videos like this one resonate and matter so much. It’s because it’s not saying you’re failing or doing something wrong if you don’t do this. It’s saying, “Hey, if you’ve been waiting for permission to take care of yourself, here you go!” And that’s everything for a lot of moms.

The post Mom Shares the Simple & Controversial Way You Can Shower With a Newborn appeared first on Mom.com.

If you’ve ever wondered what it looks like when co-parents get along and parent their child in a healthy, happy way—look no further than this TikTok, which is going viral for all the right reasons. TikTok user @angelehlers_ shares the cutest story about her five-year-old daughter making friends with her mom, her dad, and her mom’s fiancé. Co-parenting win all around.

“My daughter’s dad and I really pride ourselves in the fact that we have not fought in front of her since she was six months old,” the mom begins the video. “We don’t talk crap on the other parent in front of her, so she has no idea why we wouldn’t all be friends or why we wouldn’t all hang out.”

She describes a holiday gathering where she, her daughter, and her fiancé were at her ex’s house to celebrate. Her ex’s girlfriend was there too, and everyone was getting along because that’s what this family does. The little girl grabs her mom’s fiancé and asks him to close his eyes because she has a “surprise for him.” What happens next is SO cute.

Can you just picture these two grown men holding hands and reminiscing about the good ol’ days all at the behest of a five-year-old girl they both love and would never disappoint? It’s basically like a chaste, hetero, Hallmark version of Heated Rivalry.

Reading the comments, it’s very clear that this video touched the hearts of many.

One person shared, “I think she’s plotting a re-coupling.” Another wrote, “The fact that they held hands no questions asked is actually so sweet.” Someone else shared, “She’s trying to combine the friend groups.”

“She wants you to have 2 boyfriends… and she wants the boyfriends to be boyfriends too,” one person joked. Another commenter summed up why this is so touching, writing, “Okay but that is genuinely like such a healthy way to co parent you should be very proud of yourself.”

Young kids don’t understand the nuances of adult relationships, but they are little experts at reading the room and picking up on our emotions—good and bad. When split-up parents can share space calmly (and even happily) it lowers a child’s stress and anxiety levels, because even though their parents aren’t together, they’re all peacefully co-existing.

Less anxiety means better sleep, fewer behavioral issues, and more emotional bandwidth for what 5-year-olds are supposed to be doing: playing, learning, imagining, and growing.

And when you consider the long game lessons being learned here, it’s so worth it because this kiddo is being taught what a healthy relationship looks like, even if it’s not “traditional.”

“She loves to do it [make them hold hands] and they both will do it, no questions asked,” the mom says. “I don’t know, but I’m pretty proud of us for thinking we’re all just little besties.”

The post This 5-Year-Old’s Understanding of Family Is Melting Hearts Online appeared first on Mom.com.

We hear so much about how hard it is being a step-parent — and it is, no doubt — but it’s always nice to see a video that shares the flip side of the co-parenting coin. In a heartfelt and honest video, one stepmom shares why it’s so important for her to clean her stepdaughters’ rooms right after they leave, and how she’s healing and breaking her own generational trauma.

Instagram user @mrssmiithy recently went viral for her video, which shows her lovingly cleaning the girls’ bedroom from top to bottom. She says she grew up with “nothing,” and that her childhood was filled with “abuse and chaos.”

In the video, she opens up about how much she loves her stepdaughters and how she shows it as a “symbol of everything I wished I had growing up.”

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A post shared by Tia Smith (@mrssmiithy)

She cleans her stepdaughters’ rooms every time they’re away so they always come back to a clean, safe place.

No passive-aggressive commentary. No “they should be grateful.” Just care and unconditional love. She shares that she grew up without the kind of stability she’s now intentionally creating for these girls. Suddenly, the act of cleaning a bedroom becomes something much bigger.

“I think the point here is the love and care being shown by cleaning and preparing their room for next time, of course they can clean their own room, but this is something she is doing for them to make them feel loved and cared for,” one of the top comments reads.

And it’s so true. Instead of resentment or obligation, she talks about gratitude. About how lucky she feels to be their stepmom. Sometimes love looks like fresh sheets, picked-up floors, and a child walking back into a room that says, You were missed. You are safe here.

“These girls mean the world to me,” mrssmiithy says. “And I will always make sure they feel loved, secure, and cherished.”

In the comments, it’s clear this message really resonated with parents.

Another step mama shared her thoughts, writing, “This right here. As a step mama to my amazing son, I would do ANYTHING for this little boy.”

Someone else touched on how the boy’s mama must feel, too, writing, “I bet this is such a relief for their mom, knowing when they’re apart they’re cherished and cared for by a wonderful bonus mom.”

Other comments included in the thousands left on the video read, “Meanwhile I can be your mom and love you to pieces! You are an incredible person and are so much to be proud of,” “I love this for you and I love this for them,” “My ‘step’ mom is the only reason I got to see how it was to be loved properly by a mother. She’s the reason I am the mother I am to my own daughter. I’m 36 years old and don’t remember a moment without her in my life,” and “You broke the cycle already. You love them take care of them. That’s what Moms do.”

All kids deserve love, and how special this one is!

The post This Stepmom Is Giving Her Kids the Safe Home She Always Dreamed Of appeared first on Mom.com.