Magazine

A confused dad folding a breathable organic cotton baby blanket in a Portland nursery.

Troubleshooting the Breathable Blanket for Newborns Paradox

I was standing in our Portland apartment's second bedroomβ€”newly converted from my gaming office to a nurseryβ€”staring at a stack of fourteen folded textiles. Fourteen. My wife, Sarah, had washed, dried, and color-coordinated a mountain of fabric based on a...

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Blush rose fitted crib sheet on a minimalist mattress with no loose blankets

Why My Perfect Pink Infant Bedding Set Ended Up In The Trash

I was thirty-eight weeks pregnant, sitting on the floor of my Chicago apartment, crying over a contractor bag. Inside the plastic bag was roughly four hundred dollars worth of perfectly coordinated blush textiles. It was a complete crib set I...

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Tired dad holding a baby lovey blanket next to a sleeping toddler

The 3 AM Disaster That Taught Me Everything About Baby Loveys

Tuesday, 6:42 PM. The Central Line. Specifically, the perilous two-inch gap between the train carriage and the platform at St. Paul's station. That's exactly where it went. Maya's beloved, slightly grey-tinged, biologically questionable scrap of fabric slipped from her sticky...

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Folded organic cotton baby blanket on a wooden nursery rocking chair

What the hospital ruined about my cozy baby blanket fantasies

I'm currently staring at a hand-knit, cable-stitch monstrosity that my great-aunt sent from Delhi. It weighs about as much as a small dog. Before nursing school, before I had a child of my own who treats sleep like a hostile...

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Baby sleeping safely in a ribbed infant knit romper with secure snaps

The brutal truth about buying an infant knit romper for your kid

My mother called from San Jose on a Tuesday to warn me that wool would give my baby a rash that would scar him for life. The very next morning, my sister-in-law swore that unless I put him in thick...

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A wrinkled bamboo sheet stretched tight over a small mattress next to a laundry basket.

Why I Finally Ditched Cotton for Bamboo Mini Crib Sheets

There I was in a La Quinta Inn somewhere outside of Waco, wrestling a sandpaper-stiff cotton sheet over a travel mattress at two in the morning while my oldest, Tucker, screamed like he was being exorcised. Every time I got...

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A confused dad holding a wool baby sleep sack next to a thermostat

Sweating bullets over baby wool in a Portland heatwave

It was mid-July, the Nanit camera was flashing a menacing red 81 degrees, and our 1924 Portland craftsman was doing its best impression of a pizza oven. I was frantically trying to program a portable AC unit with one hand...

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A tired dad researching sleeping bags for infants online.

Why We Switched To Sleeping Bags For Infants (And You Should Too)

My mother-in-law told me to pile three heavy quilts on him because Portland nights are drafty and he was going to freeze. The exhausted NICU nurse at the hospital swaddled him so tightly in a receiving blanket that he looked...

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A very tired British dad staring at a badly wrapped baby blanket in the nursery.

Dear Past Me: The Brutal Truth About Wrapping Babies in Cotton

Dear Tom of twenty-four months ago, It's currently Tuesday evening, and you're standing in the nursery of our flat in Zone 3, staring at a stack of twenty-four identical white squares of fabric your mother-in-law just dropped off. You're holding...

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