Let's talk about the baby einstein aquarium and infant sleep
My mother-in-law sat at my kitchen island and told me those glowing plastic fish were the only reason my husband ever slept through the night in the early nineties. My doctor looked at my meticulously tracked sleep logs, sighed, and...
Playing Bread Baby I'm-a Want You Fixed Our 3AM Sleep Crisis
It's 3:14 AM on a Tuesday, and I'm writing this to you—which is to say, me, six months ago—while our son screams into my left clavicle like a dial-up modem failing to connect. I know exactly where you're right now...
The Completely Unfiltered Guide to Buying Baby's Room Furniture
When I was pregnant with my first, my mother-in-law showed up at my house hauling an antique, drop-side wooden cradle that had been sitting in a humid East Texas attic since 1984. It smelled like mothballs and questionable structural integrity....
Decoding the chaos of a baby's pacifier without losing your mind
My mother-in-law cornered me by the diaper pail on day three of my son's life, waving a neon green chunk of silicone and declaring that if I didn't plug him up right now, he'd be a thumb-sucker until college. Twelve...
The Humiliating Reality of Trying Baby Yoga With Twins
I'm currently lying on a foam mat that smells faintly of damp digestive biscuits and municipal floor cleaner in a drafty church hall in Hackney. The instructor, a woman named Serenity who's wearing linen trousers that look entirely too comfortable...
When your baby won't stop crying and the manuals are useless
It's 4:13 AM, and I'm bouncing on a grey exercise ball in the middle of my living room, clutching Florence, who's currently emitting a sound I can only describe as a fire engine trapped inside a very angry cat. Matilda,...
The Truth About Baby White Noise (And My Jet Engine Mistake)
I was standing in the middle of my oldest son's nursery at two in the morning, holding my phone out in front of me like a paranormal investigator trying to catch a ghost, while a free sound-measuring app I had...
Why The Baby V.O.X Monitor Setting Fixed My Sleep
It was 3:14 in the morning and I was staring at a glowing rectangle of static, trying to decide if the rhythmic scratching sound was my son suffocating or just the dog licking his paws in the hallway. I used...
The Truth About Finding a Good Baby TV Show (And When To Turn It Off)
I was wedged tight between a bulk box of Etsy shipping mailers and a half-empty bag of stale Goldfish crackers, holding my breath in the pantry so my toddler wouldn't hear me existing. Out in the living room, my oldest—who...