The Brutal Truth About Car Seats For Babies And Surviving The Setup
It was late August in Texas, meaning the hospital parking lot felt like the inside of a preheated oven. My husband Dave was violently yanking a seatbelt through a gray plastic base, sweating completely through his shirt, while the discharge...
The Absurd Reality of Buying Newborn Outfits for the First Time
It's 4:13 AM on a Tuesday, and I'm actively wrestling a pair of miniature, stiff denim jeans onto a creature that has the structural integrity of a warm Yorkshire pudding. This was my grand introduction to the greatest myth of...
The No-Nonsense Guide to Buying Secondhand Baby Stuff Safely
I was standing in a humid church gymnasium at 7 AM on a Saturday, seven months pregnant with my oldest son, fighting a woman in a denim jumper for a plastic bouncy seat that smelled faintly of sour milk. I...
The sweet potato incident and the messy truth about infant spoons
There was sweet potato puree on the ceiling. I still don't fully understand the physics of how it got there, but there it was, a bright orange smear right next to the smoke detector in our Chicago apartment. My son...
Surviving baby clothing stores: a nurse's guide to what works
I was thirty-four weeks pregnant, ankles swollen to the size of grapefruits, standing in the middle of a high-end boutique in Lincoln Park. The air smelled like lavender and expensive regret. In my hands, I held a pair of stiff,...
The freezing truth about strapping infants into baby car seats
It's February in Chicago, the wind chill is somewhere around negative twelve, and I'm standing in the concrete wind tunnel of Northwestern Memorial's parking garage at two in the morning. My husband has his phone flashlight clenched between his teeth....
A Letter to Myself: What I Wish I Knew Before Entering the Toy Store
Dear Tom from exactly six months ago, You're currently standing in the middle of aisle four of a massive, warehouse-style toy store just off the M25, sweating profusely into your supposedly breathable cotton t-shirt while the twins double-team a meltdown...
Why I Stopped Trusting the Internet About Early Development Toys
When my son was about four days old, my mother-in-law bought us a plastic command center that flashed strobe lights and yelled the alphabet in a robotic British accent. "He needs cognitive stimulation," she told me with absolute certainty. The...
How to Buy Good Bibs for Adults Without Sacrificing Dignity
We were twenty minutes into Thanksgiving dinner two years ago when it happened. My grandmother, who has always dressed like she’s about to have tea with the Queen, was trying to lift a spoonful of gravy. Her hand gave that...