Magazine

Marcus holding his screaming infant in a dark nursery next to a glowing white noise machine.

Checking For Shaken Baby Syndrome Symptoms At 3 AM Is Terrifying

It was 3:14 AM on a Tuesday, and the decibel meter app on my Apple Watch was aggressively tapping my wrist to warn me about prolonged exposure to loud environments. My son was hitting 92 decibels. I was doing this...

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A tired mom holding her newborn waiting for a real smile

The waiting game of motherhood: exactly when do babies smile

I was hanging over the bassinet at three in the morning making a sound I can only describe as a dying seal. Day forty-two of my maternity leave. I smelled like sour milk and desperation. I had spent the last...

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Pregnant mother holding a tiny organic bodysuit looking anxiously at her belly

The Midnight Panic: When Your Kid Finally Starts Kicking In There

It was exactly 2:14 AM. I know this because I was staring obsessively at the red digital clock on our microwave while sitting cross-legged on the kitchen floor. I was wearing my husband’s oversized, threadbare college t-shirt, crying softly into...

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Exhausted mother holding a screaming infant in a dark nursery

When your sweet newborn suddenly turns into an actual baby demon

It was exactly 6:43 PM on a Tuesday in November. The radiators in our Chicago apartment were clanking the way they always do when the wind picks up. My sweet three-month-old daughter, who had spent the entire morning peacefully cooing...

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Mother holding her sleeping infant in a dimly lit nursery room

What A Baby Chimpanzee Actually Taught Me About Human Parenting

It was three in the morning in the postpartum ward. I was bleeding through a mesh pad, staring at my newborn son in his plastic bassinet, waiting for the maternal instinct software to finish downloading. I thought it would just...

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A tired mother holding her baby boy in a dimly lit nursery

Forget The 2001 Myths: Keeping Your Baby Boy Alive And Thriving

I'm sitting on the nursery floor at three in the morning, holding my screaming infant, and staring at a hand-me-down parenting paperback my aunt insisted I read. It's a guide to raising boys, published right around the turn of the...

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Tired mom in messy bun sitting in a dim nursery holding a squirming newborn

The Late Night Truth About Your Grunting Newborn (And Why I Panicked)

It was exactly 3:14 AM on a Tuesday in mid-November, and I was wearing my husband’s gray college sweatpantsβ€”the ones with the permanent, unidentifiable spit-up stain on the left knee that I absolutely refused to wash because doing laundry felt...

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Close up of a sleeping newborn baby with slight red bumps on their cheek

Let's sort out that baby acne on face without losing our minds

I was exactly three weeks postpartum, running on half a REM cycle and cold leftover chai, when I noticed the first angry red bump near my son's nose. By the time my husband got home from his shift at the...

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Twin babies sitting on a clinical weighing scale looking incredibly suspicious

Chasing the Average Baby Weight: A Twin Dad's Red Book Survival

There's a very specific, quiet humiliation reserved for parents standing in a drafty NHS community clinic in late November, frantically trying to undress a furious infant while a health visitor named Brenda hovers with a clipboard. You have to take...

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