How to Survive Your Baby Announcement With Your Dignity Intact
I'm standing in our damp London garden, holding two helium balloons shaped like the numbers one and two, while my wife tries to gently coax our neurotic rescue greyhound into wearing a chalkboard sign around his neck. The sign says...
What Is An Anchor Baby? Debugging A Toxic Immigration Myth
My 11-month-old son had just figured out how to forcefully eject his mashed peas across our kitchen island when my wife Mayaβs college roommate, Sofia, started quietly crying over her water glass. Sofia is six months pregnant. Her husband, Leo,...
A Letter To My Past Self About Surviving An IUGR Baby Diagnosis
Dear Tom from exactly six months ago, You're currently sitting in the windowless, overly warm scanning room at St Thomas' Hospital, entirely oblivious to the fact that your life is about to tilt on its axis. The NHS sonographer has...
My Coffee Disaster and the Wild Reality of Sixty-Year-Old Parenting
My feet were literally sticking to the linoleum. It's 6:12 AM on a Tuesday, I'm wearing Mark's faded college hoodie that smells permanently like old milk and vague regret, and Maya is aggressively trying to shove a plastic triceratops into...
Dear Past Sarah: The Ugly Truth About Glass Baby Bottles
Dear Past Sarah. Yes, you. The one sitting on the kitchen floor at 2:14 AM on a random Tuesday exactly six months ago. Youβre wearing that gray fleece robe where the zipper is permanently stuck halfway down. Youβre drinking Folgers...
How to Pick a Girl Baby Name When Everyone Has an Opinion
I was thirty-two weeks pregnant with my second, sweating through my maternity leggings at a baby shower I didn't even want to have, staring at a plate of lukewarm spinach dip while three different women cornered me about names. My...
The clinical and emotional reality of dead babies in our world
Before I had my own kid, I thought I understood how the worst-case scenario worked. I used to sit in the pediatric ICU breakroom at three in the morning, drinking lukewarm coffee out of a styrofoam cup, charting the vital...
When Your Baby Refuses to Flip (My Honest Breech Experience)
I was thirty-six weeks pregnant with my oldest when the ultrasound tech got real quiet, typed something furiously on her little keyboard, and excused herself to get the doctor. Cut to twenty minutes later in the H-E-B parking lot where...
The "Be My Baby" Delusion: Surviving Your First Year Alive
I'm sitting on the edge of a creaky glider at 4:17 AM while my oldest, Wyatt, arches his back like a feral cat who just got dipped in cold water. I remember standing there in the dark, smelling vaguely of...