The Great Blowout Disaster: What I Learned About Baby Clothes
I was standing in the glow of a turtle-shaped nightlight at 3:14 AM, holding a screaming Jackson at arm’s length like he was a ticking bomb made entirely of mustard-colored liquid. He was exactly four weeks old. The blowout had...
3 AM Blowouts and the Brutal Truth About a Baby Onesie
It was three in the morning in our drafty Chicago apartment when the smell hit me. Not the standard sweet-sour milk smell, but a toxic, biological hazard level stench that wakes you from a dead sleep. I flipped on the...
The Great Bath Time Scam: What To Actually Put On Infant Skin
I was standing in aisle 14 of Target at 8:47 PM on a Tuesday, wearing my husband’s paint-stained sweatpants and aggressively clutching a lukewarm oat milk latte. My phone was vibrating out of my hand with three different text threads....
The baby shower gifts exhausted parents actually want
We were sitting in our ground-floor flat in Zone 3, staring at a six-foot-tall synthetic velvet giraffe named Barnaby that my wife's great-aunt Susan had just proudly manhandled through our incredibly narrow hallway. Barnaby didn't do anything. He didn't hold...
What Nobody Tells You About That Baby Activity Center
I walked into my mother-in-law's house last Thanksgiving and caught her trying to wedge my four-month-old into a plastic rolling walker that looked like a relic from 1996. I pulled him out of that dusty death trap so fast I...
My very messy, tear-filled attempt at babydecke stricken
It was 3 AM on a Tuesday in November 2016, and I was sitting cross-legged on our hideous, scratchy brown living room rug. I was seven months pregnant with Leo, wearing my husband Dave’s oversized college hoodie, and I was...
The Brutal Truth About Heirloom Crochet Baby Blanket Patterns
3 AM in pediatric triage is a specific kind of purgatory. The fluorescent lights hum, everything smells vaguely of bleach, and you're running on stale coffee and adrenaline. I was three years into my nursing career when a frantic grandmother...
Zähne Baby: The Brutal Truth About Surviving the Teething Apocalypse
It was 3:14 AM on a Tuesday when I woke up to a sound I can only describe as a hyperactive beaver trapped in the nursery. I stumbled in, entirely blind, and found Maya standing in her cot, aggressively gnawing...
What I Got Totally Wrong About Buying Educational Toys Toys
It was 2:14 in the morning, and the glowing plastic octopus under my bare heel was loudly singing the Spanish alphabet. I was holding a screaming newborn, trying not to wake my husband, while this neon monstrosity cheerfully flashed strobe...