The newborn enchanting phase is mostly just exhaustion and bodily f...
It was 3:14 AM on a Tuesday, or possibly a Thursday, and I was lying flat on my back on the living room rug, holding a black-and-white card depicting a heavily stylized badger. I was holding this badger approximately ten...
"Baby Please" Go To Sleep: My Messy Fourth Trimester Survival Guide
My mother-in-law told me to put a scoop of rice cereal in the nighttime bottle at two weeks old so the baby would sleep. The hospital lactation consultant told me if I even looked at a silicone pacifier I'd ruin...
Dear past Priya: what I wish I knew about that first photoshoot
Dear Priya from six months ago. You're currently sitting on a sterile puppy pad in a stranger's living room studio, sweating through your nursing bra while a woman named Crystal adjusts a giant ring light. You have a fresh milk...
Dear Past Tom: Why Using Baby Oil as Lube is a Terrible Idea
Dear Past Tom, It's 11:14 PM on a freezing Tuesday in November. By some absolute miracle of the parenting gods, the twins are both asleep at the exact same time. Maya, who usually treats sleep as a mild suggestion, has...
Why I Have Mixed Feelings About Baby Merlin's Magic Sleepsuit
My sister-in-law texted me at 2:14 PM on a random Tuesday with zero context: "Buy the baby merlin's magic sleepsuit right now, it literally cured Leo's regression overnight." Two hours later, my neighbor—who makes her own oat milk and only...
The undeniable madness of the Ralph Lauren baby boy aesthetic
When my mate Dave's wife was expecting their first boy, the unsolicited wardrobe advice came thick and fast, arriving with all the force of a high-speed train. Dave's mum insisted he needed tiny little cable-knit cardigans to look "respectable" (respectable...
The hospital whiteboard standoff over popular baby names
Squeak, squeak, squeak. That was the sound of my former coworker, a night charge nurse named Sarah, tapping a dry erase marker against the whiteboard in Room 4 at Northwestern Memorial. I was twenty-eight hours postpartum. I was leaking from...
Searching For A Plug In Baby: The Truth About Newborn Soothing
It was Tuesday, somewhere around 3:14 AM, and I was standing in the middle of our dark nursery wearing my husband Dave’s stained college sweatpants, smelling entirely like sour milk and absolute defeat. Leo was two weeks old and he...
Debugging the photoshoot: When taking baby photos goes wrong
I'm balancing precariously on a plastic step stool, my phone hovering exactly 28 inches above the crib mattress, sweat pooling in the small of my back. Below me, my 11-month-old son is thrashing like a malfunctioning animatronic, actively destroying the...