What the baby icon method actually looks like at 3 AM
It was 3:14 AM on a Tuesday in late November. The wind was howling off Lake Michigan, rattling the thin windows of our Chicago apartment, but I could barely hear it over the sound of my six-week-old son screaming. He...
What the Baby Goku Parenting Debate Actually Means for Us
The blue light from the television was illuminating a fresh patch of spit-up on the couch cushions. It was two in the morning. My husband was sitting cross-legged on the rug, and our toddler was wedged between his knees, furiously...
What Nicole Kidman actually gets right about maternal burnout
Dear Priya from six months ago. You're currently sitting on the bathroom tiles at three in the morning. The radiator is making that hissing sound you hate. Your daughter just threw up milk on your only clean sweatpants, and you're...
The Hilarious Truth About Planning a Baby Moon in the Real World
I was hunched over a Buc-ee's toilet somewhere off I-35, entirely convinced I was going to throw up my own spleen, when my husband tapped on the stall door and asked if we should start booking our baby moon. Iβm...
What the Story of Baby Patrick Taught Me About Surviving Fatherhood
Before we even left the hospital car park, the senior midwife leaned into my personal space with the gravity of a seasoned war general and whispered that I absolutely must do skin-to-skin contact for exactly forty-five uninterrupted minutes a day...
The baby scale anxiety trap (and why we threw ours out)
It's 4:12 AM on a Tuesday, and I'm standing in the kitchen illuminated only by the aggressive blue backlight of an LCD screen, trying to calculate the relative density of a soiled nappy. I'm staring at an Excel spreadsheet that...
How To Survive An Angry Baby When You Are Losing Your Mind
My mother-in-law told me I was holding him too much and he was already "manipulating" me at four months old, which, like, how? My favorite Facebook mom group told me his root chakra was blocked and I needed to rub...
The Ugly Truth About "Anchor Babies" and The 26-Year Wait
I was frantically dabbing at Zoe's birth certificate with a wet wipe this morning, trying to lift a very suspicious brown smear that was either Marmite or something far worse, when the radio started up with yet another political debate....
Minka Kelly's Memoir and the Parenting Bugs We Can't Fix
Don't, under any circumstances, ask your postpartum wife if she's crying because the Wi-Fi dropped while she's reading in the dark. I learned this at exactly 3:14 AM last Tuesday. The eerie blue glow of her Kindle was illuminating the...