Tina Fey Lied to Me: Why Hollywood Baby Tropes Belong in the Bin
It's 3:14 AM. I'm wedged into the corner of our IKEA sofa in an unnatural, spine-twisting posture because moving even a fraction of an inch will wake Twin A, who's currently drooling a warm puddle onto my collarbone. On my...
The 3AM Headlamp Operation: Surviving The Infant Nail Care Phase
I'm hovering over Maya's cot like a deeply unqualified jewel thief. It's 3:14 AM. I'm wearing a 400-lumen camping headlamp, holding my breath so hard my vision is blurring, and my hands are hovering over a sleeping toddler with a...
Surviving a Baby With No Money Left (Especially When It's Twins)
I was sitting in the driverβs seat of a 2011 Vauxhall Astra in the car park of St Thomasβ Hospital, staring at the NatWest app on my cracked phone screen. My wife was in the passenger seat, clutching a strip...
Surviving the great baby pancake experiment of our weaning era
I'm currently scraping a piece of fossilised banana oat batter off the kitchen ceiling with a plastic spatula. It's 7:14 AM on a Tuesday, and the great weaning experiment has officially breached containment. Maya is covered in a sticky paste...
Why Getting A Pet Piglet Might Actually Break Your Spirit
When we decided the twins needed to learn some sort of vague responsibility that didn't involve keeping me awake until 3am, the advice rolled in like a thick London fog. My mother suggested a golden retriever because they supposedly teach...
A Letter To Myself About Surviving The Evening Scream Fest
I found this note sitting in my drafts folder from exactly six months ago. My mate Dave had just texted me from the pub (a man who currently thinks 'tired' means getting eight hours of sleep but waking up once...
Dear past Tom: So your toddler found a bird in the garden
Dear Tom from last May. You're currently standing on the patio in your dressing gown, holding a lukewarm mug of instant coffee while watching Maya and Lily enthusiastically poke at a pulsating lump of grey fluff on the lawn, so...
Surviving the Chaos: The Truth About Raising a One-Year-Old
I was on my hands and knees, using a blunt butter knife to scrape a disturbing amount of smashed avocado out of the grooves of our Victorian skirting board, when I realised the greatest lie of modern parenting. The lie...
The survival guide to your 1 month old baby: Grunting and chaos
It's 3:14 AM and I'm currently having a staring contest with a four-week-old dictator. Before this week, both my twin girls were essentially sleepy, squishy potatoes who occasionally demanded milk. But at exactly one month old, a terrifying switch flipped....