Magazine

A mom looking stressed at her kitchen island holding a cold cup of coffee.

How to Talk About the Babi Yar Massacre Without Breaking Your Kids

I was standing at the kitchen island at 2:14 PM on a Tuesday, wearing my husband’s stained college sweatshirt, trying to order a baby shower gift on my phone while Leo, who's four and completely feral, was repeatedly ramming a...

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A glowing hospital NICU monitor next to a half empty cup of cold coffee

The NICU, My Sanity, And The Wild History Of The Coney Island Baby

3:17 AM. St. Jude's NICU. November. I was wearing my husband Dave's oversized grey hoodie that smelled distinctly like stale Dunkin Donuts and absolute panic, just sitting there staring at the translucent skin of my son Leo's tiny chest rising...

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A tired father holding a baby while looking at his smartphone

The Late-Night Rabbit Hole That Changed How I View "Toxic" Baby Gear

I was pinned beneath a sleeping 12-kilogram toddler, desperately trying to breathe as shallowly as possible so as not to wake her, when my casual 3am doomscrolling took a violently dark turn. I had been trying to search for some...

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A tired dad holding a sleeping baby in a dark nursery thinking about lullabies

The midnight debugging of the rockabye baby lyrics

It's exactly 3:14 AM. The rain in Portland is doing that aggressive, sideways thing against the nursery window, and my son is currently running his four-month firmware update, which apparently means his system has completely forgotten how to execute a...

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A confused dad looking at the back of a prenatal vitamin bottle in a grocery store.

What Thalidomide Babies Taught Us About The Placenta Firewall

I was standing in aisle 14 of the Hawthorne Fred Meyer at 9 PM on a Tuesday, aggressively squinting at the back of a ginger supplement bottle while my pregnant wife dry-heaved in the passenger seat of our Subaru. She...

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An exhausted dad looking at his phone while holding a sleeping baby in a dark room.

A 3 AM Deep Dive Into Sleep Coaches and 19th-Century Babies

The thermostat on the baby monitor says exactly 69.8 degrees, which is supposedly the good thermal threshold for an 11-month-old human, yet my daughter is currently thrashing against my chest like a malfunctioning Roomba. It's 2:14 AM. We're in the...

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A soft pink swaddle next to natural wood teething toys on a white rug

Why the baby pink hex code is a total scam for your nursery

I was standing in the middle of the paint aisle at a home improvement store, thirty-eight weeks pregnant and sweating through my maternity leggings. I held forty-two different swatch cards that all claimed to be the definitive pastel blush. My...

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Exhausted dad staring at a laptop spreadsheet while holding a crying baby

Raising A Baby Hitler: Why I Stopped Tracking Cries And Held My Kid

Dear Marcus from exactly six months ago, It's currently 3:14 AM in your timeline, and I know exactly what you're doing. You're sitting in the glow of your laptop in the nursery, holding a screaming, five-month-old Maya, and you're logging...

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Tired mom filling out birth certificate paperwork on a hospital bed

What nobody tells you about the most popular baby names 2024

My mother-in-law told me I had to pick an astrologically aligned name or my son's digestion would be ruined forever. The lactation consultant at shift change whispered that giving a kid an 'A' name makes them aggressive. Then my husband's...

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