The nuclear bomb versus coughing infant joke and real colds
Listen. When my son developed his first real chest rattle, I received three distinct pieces of advice within a single hour. My desi mother-in-law told me to heat mustard oil with raw garlic and rub it on the soles of...
How I Finally Decoded My 11-Month-Old's I Love You Baby Signals
Itβs 3:14 AM, and the hallway floorboards are creaking under my exact, heavily mapped pacing route. Heβs arching his back like heβs trying to bridge a network connection with the ceiling, and my brain is completely empty of any actual,...
Dear Past Me: Surviving The First Year And That Lil Baby Age
Dear Sarah from six months agoβ Actually, wait. No. Maya is seven and Leo is four now. So writing a letter to myself from six months ago would just be me aggressively telling myself to buy more coffee before the...
The Truth About Maternity Dresses for Baby Showers
Let me tell y'all the biggest lie the internet ever sold us: that you're going to float into your celebration at thirty-two weeks pregnant looking like a perfectly contoured, dew-kissed fertility goddess in a restrictive satin gown. I'm starting right...
3 AM Teething Panics And The Nikki Baby Google Search Spiral
At 3:17 AM on a Tuesday, I'm standing in the middle of the nursery holding a glowing infrared forehead thermometer like a phaser set to stun. My 11-month-old is thrashing around in his crib like a fish on a dock,...
The Morbid Truth About Rock a Bye Baby and Why It Still Works
Don't open up a search engine at three in the morning to research the origins of nursery rhymes while bouncing a screaming infant. It's a terrible idea that only leads to weird historical rabbit holes and more anxiety. I know...
Why The Modern Baby-Sitters Club Reboot Is Actually Good
Sitting on my sofa last weekend, I made a critical error in judgment. I queued up the baby-sitters club 1995 movie for my ten-year-old niece, Maya, expecting a beautiful bonding moment over vintage denim and childhood innocence. Don't do this....
Debugging Fatherhood: What Silverbacks Taught Me About Babies
I was standing in our Portland kitchen at 3 AM, wearing a stained t-shirt and intensely color-coding my son's diaper output in a spreadsheet, when I realized my troubleshooting manual for fatherhood was completely corrupted. The lactation consultant at the...
Dear Jess: The Unfiltered Truth About Buying Baby Detergent
Dear Jess from six months ago, I see you standing there in aisle 14 of the H-E-B in Corsicana, completely frozen. You've got your two-year-old hanging off the front of the shopping cart trying to eat a bruised banana, your...