The midnight origami crisis: A letter to my past swaddling self
Dear Past Tom, You're currently sitting on the edge of a plastic-covered mattress in the maternity ward of St Thomas' Hospital, staring at a screaming, red-faced potato named Alice, while her twin sister, Lucy, is somehow already escaping the blanket...
Why adopting a rabbit baby is a truly terrible idea for your home
My mate Marcus texted me at half-past eleven on a Tuesday night, which is universally acknowledged as the hour when parents of toddlers make their absolute worst life decisions. "Mate," the message read, glowing aggressively in the dark while I...
A late night letter to myself about the baby gap discount code
Dear Priya from last November. You're sitting in the dark. The baby is finally down after three false starts. Your phone screen is blinding you because you forgot to turn on night mode. You're staring at a cart containing fourteen...
Why That Cute Baby Moose Is Actually A Hiking Nightmare
I was holding my breath so hard I thought I was going to pass out right there on the gravel trail in Rocky Mountain National Park. We had blown our vacation budget driving up from Texas just to get out...
The Honest Truth About Using Baby Oil Gel on Newborns
My mother-in-law told me to massage my son in warm mustard oil until he resembled a glazed donut. My favorite attending physician from the pediatric ward said to stick to dry air and benign neglect. The internet moms told me...
Surviving the great baby shark costume incident that nearly broke me
I was kneeling on the kitchen linoleum at 4:35 pm on a rainy Tuesday, frantically sawing at a yellow polyester chest cavity with a butter knife while muffled, upbeat electronic music mocked my failures. Maya, who's two and possesses the...
Debugging My Yard: Surviving the Juvenile Copperhead Panic
I was standing completely frozen in the wet grass holding a plastic watering can like it was a broadsword, staring intensely at a patch of overgrown clover. My smartwatch was aggressively buzzing on my wrist, alerting me that my heart...
That 3AM Moment We Met a Baby Centipede (And Panicked)
The luminous dial on the baby monitor read 2:14 AM. I was standing in the semi-darkness of the nursery, holding a soiled nappy at arm’s length, trying to calculate if I had the energy to take it to the outside...
Surviving the 2024 Baby Carrots Recall in a Jetlagged Haze
We were three days into a Thanksgiving visit to my wife's parents in Massachusetts, and I had just spent twenty minutes wrestling the rental baby car seat into my father-in-law's astronomically large SUV, when my mother-in-law burst through the front...