Why Everyone Lies About Receiving Blankets On Baby Registries
I was exactly twenty-three weeks pregnant with my oldest, standing in the middle of a big box store aisle in town with that little plastic registry scanner gun, staring at a four-pack of flannel squares while my mom insisted we...
The Real Truth About Buying A Graphic Baby Tee Without The Rash
My mom took one look at the retro Snoopy shirt I bought for my third baby and flat-out told me the plastic ink would give him a rash so I should throw it in the trash immediately. My mother-in-law, bless...
Surviving Baby Clothing Stores Without Losing Your Damn Mind
It was 7:45 PM on a random Tuesday in 2016, and I was standing in aisle four of one of those massive, fluorescent-lit baby clothing stores, eight months pregnant with Maya, sweating through a mustard-stained maternity tank top. My husband,...
The 3 AM Pajama Panic (And How I Finally Figured Out Baby Sleepwear)
It was 2:14 AM and the red numbers on my alarm clock were basically mocking me while I stood in the middle of our drafty farmhouse nursery trying not to have a complete meltdown. My oldest son was four weeks...
The reality of newborn wardrobes and the toy box triage
I was thirty-eight weeks pregnant sitting on the floor of the nursery folding a pair of microscopic stiff denim jeans. I actually ironed them. I think about that night a lot. I think about how profoundly stupid I was to...
Surviving the 3 AM Panic: A British Dad's Guide to Baby Rash Cream
The glow of the GroEgg in the corner of the nursery was an ominous, angry red, which felt entirely appropriate given what I was about to uncover inside Florence's sleepsuit. It was 3:14 in the morning, a time when human...
The 4 AM Starfish Incident and the Happiest Baby Swaddle
It's 3:17 AM on a Tuesday, though in the windowless temporal void of my daughters' nursery, it might as well be 1994. The room smells faintly of Calpol, sour milk, and my own evaporating dignity. I'm standing over the cot...
Dear Past Me: The Dreamland Baby Sleep Sack Is A Terrible Bug Fix
Dear Marcus from exactly six months ago, You're sitting in the glider chair right now, aren't you? It's 3:17 AM in Portland, the rain is aggressively smacking against the nursery window, and you're staring at your phone screen with the...
Do Babies Cry In The Womb? What Those Ultrasound Scans Really Mean
When my wife was twenty weeks pregnant with our twin girls, we received exactly three pieces of deeply conflicting, entirely unsolicited advice within a forty-eight-hour window. My mother-in-law insisted we needed to play Mozart pressed directly against the bump to...