Magazine

A tired father holding a sleeping baby in a dimly lit room

Pacing the Kitchen Floor After That Tragic Baby Emmanuel News

The kitchen tiles are brutally cold at 3:14 am, especially when you're wearing only mismatched socks and a t-shirt heavily compromised by regurgitated milk. Florence, the twin who treats sleep as a personal insult, had been screaming for forty-five minutes...

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Tired mom sitting on nursery floor looking at phone in the dark

The Kentucky Cheerleader Case and My Postpartum Wake-Up Call

I was sitting cross-legged on the linoleum floor of my laundry room at 3:14 AM, aggressively folding a pile of those impossibly tiny baby socks that somehow always lose their mates, when the headline popped up on my phone screen....

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A deeply tired dad holding my baby while staring blankly into the middle distance

Surviving The Absolute Chaos Of The First Year With My Baby

3:14 AM. I'm holding a phone torch in my teeth because the main bulb in the nursery just popped with the sound of a small gunshot, and I'm currently elbow-deep in what can only be described as a biological incident....

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A small infant sleeping safely on a firm flat mattress without blankets

The reality of bringing your preemie baby home from the NICU

The hospital sliding doors open and the winter wind hits your face. You're holding a plastic bucket seat containing a human the size of a standard bag of flour. They told you the discharge paperwork was clear and you could...

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A soft bamboo blanket and organic cotton retro shorts folded on a nursery chair

The tiny tuxedo myth and other hard truths about baby boy gifts

I was sitting at my cousin's baby shower in Naperville last month, watching her unwrap a tiny, stiff tweed blazer. The tags said zero to three months. It had elbow patches. Everyone cooed, but I just stared at it, calculating...

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Priya dealing with the baby boomer age range during a nursery visit

My 2 AM Fight About the Baby Boomer Age Range and Safe Sleep

The radiator in our Chicago apartment was hissing that dry, rhythmic sound it only makes in late January. It was two in the morning. I was standing in the doorway of the nursery, rubbing my eyes, watching my mother try...

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Messy pile of yarn and a half-finished blanket on a living room rug

The Truth About That Heirloom Crochet Baby Blanket

I was thirty-seven weeks pregnant with my oldest, sweating completely through a gray maternity tank top in the middle of a Texas July, when my grandmother proudly pulled a massive, neon-yellow afghan out of a plastic grocery bag. It had...

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A sleeping baby in a crib demonstrating a safe babies only sleep environment

The babies only survival guide for the newborn trenches

Listen. You're standing in the hospital parking lot, staring at a seven-pound human strapped into a car seat that looks like a NASA prototype, and you're realizing the discharge nurse actually let you leave. They just wheeled you out and...

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Dad measuring sound machine volume next to baby crib

Decoding Infant Sleep Audio: My War With Sound Machines

It's 3 AM and I'm hovering over my eleven-month-old's crib with a free NIOSH decibel meter app glowing ominously on my phone, watching the needle spike into the red zone. My wife is standing in the doorway in her robe,...

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