Toddler night sweats, triage, and the bettdecke bambus solution
There's a persistent lie circulating in affluent parenting circles that a natural goose down comforter is the ultimate luxury you can offer a sleeping child. We bought into it. It was early November, the Chicago wind was brutal, and I...
Scoring Big at a Baby Merino Wool Sale Without Losing Your Mind
My mother-in-lawβwho's generally a lovely woman but keeps her thermostat set to what I can only describe as 'tropical terrarium'βtold me when Leo was born that I needed to dress him in thick wool from head to toe or he...
The Honest Truth About Finding the Right Baby Sleeping Bag
When I brought my first baby home, my mom took one look at the crib, shook her head, and told me to wrap him in three heirloom quilts so he wouldn't catch a chill from the ceiling fan. Then, at...
Why I Finally Stopped Fighting Blankets for Baby Sleeping Bags
It's 2:14 AM. I'm standing over a crib, attempting to fold a standard square blanket into some kind of secure, un-kickable origami structure around my eleven-month-old son. He is currently employing the evasive maneuvers of a startled squid. Every time...
Debugging the Swaddle: When and How Long to Wrap Your Baby
My mom told me to wrap her tight enough to bounce a quarter off her stomach. The lactation consultant we saw on day three said her hands absolutely needed to be up by her face so she could self-soothe. Then...
The 3 AM bunny and blanket crisis that broke me
My hands were elbow-deep in a hamper of sour-smelling sleep sacks at three in the morning. The radiator in our Chicago apartment was making that metallic rhythmic clanking sound it always makes when it drops below zero outside. From the...
That 2 AM Wool Blanket Panic (And What I Finally Figured Out)
Maya was four months old, it was the middle of January, and the radiator in our apartment was making that rhythmic clanking sound that meant it was tryingβand failingβto produce actual heat. I was sitting on the couch at 2:14...
The truth about using a decke aus merinowolle for baby sleep
The radiator in our Chicago apartment clanks at exactly three in the morning. That was usually my cue to drag myself out of bed, shuffle across the freezing hardwood floor, and do the two-finger neck check on my daughter. It...
Debugging infant sniffles: My search for an allergie bettdecke
It's 3:14 AM and I'm watching the infrared feed on the baby monitor like a security guard waiting for a museum heist. The audio feed is just a continuous, wet, whistling sound. My eleven-month-old sounds exactly like our espresso machine...