Dear Past Me: The Baby Sonic Toothbrush Wars Will Break You
Dear Tom of six months ago, It's currently Tuesday evening, and you're sitting on the cold, damp tiles of the family bathroom. You have a standard-issue manual infant toothbrush clutched in your sweating right hand, while your twin daughters have...
The Brutal Truth About Baby Washcloths And Infant Bath Time
I'm currently staring at a grayish ring of curdled formula trapped in the third chin fold of my toddler. It smells vaguely like a frat house basement. My mother-in-law would probably tell me to fetch the soap and a heavy...
Stop Trying to Swaddle With a Receiving Blanket
It was 3 AM in late January. The wind off Lake Michigan was rattling our bedroom windows, and my daughter was doing the newborn startle reflex thing. She looked like she was trying to conduct a tiny, frantic orchestra in...
Dressing a newborn without panicking (was ziehe ich meinem baby an)
It was 2:14 in the morning during a particularly brutal Chicago February when I found myself hovering over my two-week-old's crib, completely paralyzed by a fleece onesie. I had spent six years in pediatric nursing. I had managed ventilators, calculated...
The terrifying truth about having a nec baby in the NICU
It was 3:17 am on a Tuesday when the alarms changed their tune. Not the rhythmic, steady chirp of the standard heart monitor weβd grown intimately accustomed to over two weeks in the NHS neonatal unit, but a frantic, high-pitched...
The Unfiltered, Messy Truth About Your Baby's Diaper Deposits
We were somewhere on I-35 between Waco and Austin when the smell hit. My middle kid, who was about four months old at the time, let out a sound from the backseat that I can only describe as a bullfrog...
The 3 AM Survival Guide Inspired By Justin Bieber Baby Lyrics
It's 3:14 AM and I'm staring at the frozen slush on the Chicago streets below our apartment window, shifting my weight from my left hip to my right hip in a hypnotic, desperate rhythm. My daughter is screaming with the...
Getting rid of oral thrush without losing your mind
It's three in the morning in Chicago. You're holding your phone flashlight in your mouth, trying to pry your screaming infant's lips apart in the dark. You see a thick white coating all over their tongue. You immediately assume the...
Troubleshooting Green Baby Poop When You're Running on Empty
It was 2:14 AM on a Tuesday when my iPhone flashlight illuminated a diaper that looked like it had been sponsored by a 1990s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles action figure factory. Neon, radioactive, undeniably green. I froze with a baby...