Dear past me: What I wish I knew about raising happy Dutch babies
It's three in the morning and you're sitting on the edge of the glider in a freezing Chicago nursery. You're holding a screaming six-month-old who hasn't slept a solid stretch since he was born. You pull out your phone, desperate...
How I Finally Learned To Say Don't Worry Baby To My Own Brain
I was hunched over the bassinet at 3:14 AM with my phone flashlight covered by two of my fingers, desperately counting the seconds between my oldest son's breaths. I had convinced myself that because he paused his breathing for seven...
What the Dijon Baby Album Got Right About New Parent Anxiety
It was 2:13 AM, and my husband was sitting on the edge of the bathtub just staring at the tile grout while our oldest—who's basically a walking cautionary tale for why you shouldn't blindly trust anything you read in a...
The brutal reality of raising a velcro baby and keeping your sanity
Listen. It was two in the afternoon on a Tuesday in mid-February. The Chicago wind was rattling the apartment windows, and I had needed to empty my bladder since ten that morning. Dev was asleep, heavily draped across my chest...
My First Kid's Face Looked Like a Pizza: What Causes Baby Acne
I was sitting on my living room floor surrounded by beige tulle, two ignored piles of laundry, and absolute mounting panic. I was trying to wrestle my oldest—who's now five and still my primary cautionary tale for everything—into a perfectly...
The 3 AM Teething Triage: Surviving the First Tooth
It was three in the morning, mid-January in Chicago, and the wind was howling off Lake Michigan. My toddler was thrashing in her crib like she was possessed, her sleep sack completely saturated with drool. I stood there running through...
Why Do Babies Wear Helmets? A Letter To My Freaking Out Past Self
Dear Sarah from exactly six months ago, You're currently sitting cross-legged on the dusty attic floor. You're wearing Dave's old college hoodie that smells intensely of damp cardboard, and you're literally crying into a plastic storage bin of Leo's outgrown...
The Truth About Taylor Swift and the Pressure on Women to Have Kids
When I was twenty-nine, I was sitting in a aggressively air-conditioned Starbucks wearing leggings that hadn't seen the inside of a washing machine since Tuesday, crying into a venti iced macchiato because I had just received three completely conflicting pieces...
The Truth About Custom Baby Onesies: A Letter To My Past Self
Dear Sarah from exactly six months ago. It's October 14th, 2:13 AM, and you're sitting on the very edge of the living room rug, wearing those disgusting gray fleece college sweatpants with the mysterious bleach stain on the left knee...