The clinical truth about stealing that baby yoda name for your kid
I'm staring at a hospital bassinet card at three in the morning in the pediatric ward, reading the name Anakin and quietly judging the parents from the hallway. That was me five years ago. Crisp scrubs, zero kids, and heavily...
The absolute exhaustion of finding truly unique baby names
The lady from medical records was tapping her pen against her clipboard, shifting her weight from one Dansko clog to the other. I was forty-eight hours postpartum, sweating through a hospital gown that smelled like iodine, holding the birth certificate...
The brutally honest guide to choosing baby names boy edition
There's a pervasive, highly destructive lie floating around the maternity wards and NCT classes of Britain, and it goes something like this: don't worry if you haven't picked a name yet, because the second they hand him to you, you'll...
The Real Deal on Baby Name Meanings Without Losing Your Mind
I was thirty-eight weeks pregnant, sweating through a maternity tank top in the middle of July, when the great naming summit occurred in my living room. My mom looked me dead in the eye and said I needed to pick...
Why I Let a Computer Name My Kids and Tossed the Giant Books
I was sitting on the floor of our half-painted nursery in the dead of a Texas July, sweating through my maternity leggings, when I aggressively hurled a 1,000-page naming dictionary across the room at my husband. It missed him, thankfully,...
What I Wish I Knew Before Obsessing Over Popular Baby Names 2024
It was 2017, a Tuesday, and I was sweating through a heather-gray maternity tunic at a crowded Starbucks on 4th Street, desperately trying to ignore the fact that my compression leggings were actively cutting off circulation to my thighs. My...
The hospital whiteboard standoff over popular baby names
Squeak, squeak, squeak. That was the sound of my former coworker, a night charge nurse named Sarah, tapping a dry erase marker against the whiteboard in Room 4 at Northwestern Memorial. I was twenty-eight hours postpartum. I was leaking from...
Why I Googled Sereia Baby And Other Naming Bugs We Caught
I slammed my laptop shut so fast I nearly pinched my own fingers in the aluminum chassis, knocking over my lukewarm coffee in the process. My wife looked up from her iPad, blinking at me across the kitchen table. It...
The truth about naming your kid Mia and the digital footprint night...
Listen. You're sitting in the dark right now, the blue light from your phone illuminating that tiny, sleeping face against your chest. Your thumb is hovering over the Instagram post button. You've spent twenty minutes crafting the perfect caption with...