Make sure you have legal cover for what you're doing.

Relationships are complicated, but happiness in a relationship isn't: It's just wanting exactly what you have. Wanting something else is dispiriting.

Your job is to be you, which includes being the chief beneficiary of all things you do right, the chief victim of all you do wrong, and the one person on Earth who has to live with every choice you make. As gatekeeper to your life, you’re it.

Don't freight your answers with any notions of what you're "supposed" to do, and just see where your feelings point you. It can feel weird to be so formal about it, but if you're not used to doing it, then there's no shame in retraining yourself.

I think we'd all hate to be the one who gets declared undateable by one's entire grad-school population based on a couple of told and retold stories.

I realize that people fly with small children all the time, and that babies are easier in some ways because all they do is sit/lie around anyway, but damn it's hard to keep a baby comfortable on any flight, much less a long one, particularly amid the looks of horror they will get from fellow passengers as it dawns on them that their 10- to 13-hour flight might come with a soundtrack of screaming baby.

Live in the moment, this moment, your moment. That is by far and without meaningful rival The Best Position to put yourself in to discover and delight in who your children turn out to be, whoever they turn out to be.