The Conflicting Advice About Having A NICU Baby That Broke Me
I was standing by the ridiculously deep metal scrub sink at 3:14 AM when I realized I was completely, utterly paralyzed by other people's opinions. My mother-in-law had just texted me: Let her rest, touch overstimulates them right now. The...
The Midnight Terror of Silent Reflux (And How We Survived It)
"It's the fenugreek in your dal," my mother-in-law announced via a grainy WhatsApp video call. "Prop his crib mattress on two thick telephone books," a random mother in my neighborhood Facebook group swore. "He just needs to latch longer to...
Why "The Babys" Sleep Rules Broke Me (And What Really Worked)
I was standing in the kitchen at 3:17 AM wearing a gray maternity bra that smelled aggressively like sour milk and desperation. My husband, Dave, was asleepβor pretending to be asleep, the bastardβwhile I was furiously typing misspelled medical queries...
There Goes My Baby: Surviving the Absurdity of the Newborn Phase
I'm standing in our freezing London kitchen at 4:12 in the morning, holding what appears to be a very angry, red-faced sweet potato wrapped in a slightly damp muslin cloth, when my phone, completely unprompted, shuffles to an R&B playlist...
Troubleshooting the hardware of your very first infant car seat
My wife's contractions were six minutes apart upstairs in room 412 of Legacy Emanuel, and I was down in the subterranean hospital parking garage violently wrestling a molded plastic base into the backseat of my Subaru. The Portland rain was...
How to Debug the Exact Baby Blue Color Code for Your Nursery
Three different people gave me completely conflicting advice while I was standing in an empty room holding a dry paint roller. My mother-in-law called to insist I needed to find something she referred to as "stork blue" because it supposedly...
Let's talk about the newborn reality check with your baby baby
Listen. It's three in the morning and the white noise machine is making a rhythmic thumping sound that my sleep-deprived brain has somehow translated into that ancient baby baby justin bieber song. I'm staring at the ceiling fan, calculating exactly...
Baby Acne Treatments That Actually Work According To A Nurse
I was staring at my newborn son's face under the harsh, unforgiving fluorescent light of our master bathroom at three in the morning. He was exactly three weeks old. Just two days prior, he had the kind of perfect, porcelain...
The babies only survival guide for the newborn trenches
Listen. You're standing in the hospital parking lot, staring at a seven-pound human strapped into a car seat that looks like a NASA prototype, and you're realizing the discharge nurse actually let you leave. They just wheeled you out and...