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...
The 3AM Rescue: Why a Jersey Knit Swaddle Blanket Saved Me
It was exactly 3:14 AM on a Tuesday, and I was standing in the dark kitchen in a pair of stained maternity leggings that I had supposedly retired three weeks prior, just staring at my newborn son. Leo was three...
The Great Swaddle Blanket Debugging: A Letter to My Past Self
Dear Marcus from eleven months ago. You're currently balancing on one foot in the semi-darkness of the nursery, holding a screaming, flailing seven-pound human potato against your chest. You're desperately trying to pause a YouTube tutorial with your chin because...
Surviving The 3 AM Swaddle Breakout And Other Newborn Nightmares
The radiator in our Chicago apartment was clanking like a dying engine, and it was three in the morning. My son had somehow managed to free his left arm from his wrap and was currently punching himself in the face...
How a simple swaddle blanket saved my sanity with newborn twins
It's 3:14 in the morning on a Tuesday, and I'm standing in our minuscule London kitchen holding a square piece of fabric, desperately trying to remember the origami sequence the NHS midwife showed me a week ago while one of...
Debugging the Swaddle: When and How Long to Wrap Your Baby
My mom told me to wrap her tight enough to bounce a quarter off her stomach. The lactation consultant we saw on day three said her hands absolutely needed to be up by her face so she could self-soothe. Then...
The Drowsy But Awake Deception and Other Newborn Survival Lies
I was halfway through singing a deeply out-of-tune rendition of 'Wonderwall' to a tiny human who was aggressively trying to headbutt my collarbone when I realised the greatest lie ever sold to modern parents. It was 3:17 am, Twin A...
Surviving Newborn Sleep and Marriage Without Losing Your Mind
My mother-in-law was standing in my kitchen holding a frozen cabbage leaf, telling me to just put the baby in a laundry basket in the closet if he wouldn't stop crying. My best friend, who lives in a totally different...
Dear Past Me: The Brutal Truth About Wrapping Babies in Cotton
Dear Tom of twenty-four months ago, It's currently Tuesday evening, and you're standing in the nursery of our flat in Zone 3, staring at a stack of twenty-four identical white squares of fabric your mother-in-law just dropped off. You're holding...