What no one tells you about bringing a jaundice baby home
My mother-in-law told me to put him in the living room window like a houseplant. The hospital lactation consultant told me to feed him until my nipples literally fell off. My deeply sleep-deprived husband downloaded three different tracking apps, poking...
Why the movie Gone Baby Gone triggered my newborn panic mode
The monitor was finally silent. Kabir had been fighting sleep for three hours, doing that rigid back-arching exorcist move every time I tried to lower him into the crib. My husband and I slumped onto the couch in the dark,...
The baby teeth chart lie: What to expect when fangs arrive
I've got my knee gently pinning her left arm to the carpet, my elbow blocking her right, while I try to wedge a clean index finger past her lips. She has just ruined her first baby tee of the morning...
The 3 AM Battle Between Crusty Pink Eyes and Pastel Aesthetics
It was three in the morning the night before our big extended family photoshoot. I was sitting on the nursery floor staring at two very specific things. One was my fresh manicure, an expensive gel job featuring those trendy baby...
What I Got Completely Wrong About Baby Cereal
There's a patch of gray, cement-like substance currently adhered to the underside of my kitchen island, and I honestly don't think it's ever coming off. It has survived three rounds of antibacterial spray, a vigorous scrubbing with a wire brush,...
What Nobody Tells You About Your Baby's Breath
When we brought Leo home from the hospital eleven months ago, I received exactly three pieces of contradictory advice about his respiratory system within a forty-eight-hour window. My mother told me to hold a tiny compact mirror under his nose...
The ugly truth about that baby alive doll hiding in your playroom
I'm standing over my kitchen sink at eleven at night with a pair of surgical tweezers, trying to extract a solid black clump of fermented synthetic cherry mush from the plastic esophagus of a toy. This is not how I...
Surviving The Ash Baby Look And Other Sweaty Newborn Disasters
It was 3:14 AM on a Tuesday, and I was staring at Leo under the harsh bathroom vanity light, wearing a nursing bra that smelled aggressively of sour milk and my husband Dave's oversized college sweatpants. Leo was three weeks...
The 3am Accutane Baby Panic: Skincare, Pregnancy, and Paranoia
The bathroom tiles were freezing against my bare legs, but the cold barely registered because I was staring at two things: a plastic stick with two faint pink lines, and a half-empty tube of prescription acne cream. It was 3:17...