How to Actually Do a Target Baby Registry Search Without Tears
When I was about seven months pregnant with Maya, three different people gave me three completely contradictory pieces of advice about how getting people to buy us newborn gear actually worked. My mother-in-law insisted that guests just walk up to...
What Is a Rainbow Baby? The Complicated Truth
The monitor is beeping a steady, boring 145 beats per minute, but the woman on the paper-covered table is still holding her breath. She has her eyes squeezed shut, her hands gripping the plastic edges of the bed so hard...
Why Hard Baby Shoes Are a Trap (And What to Use Instead)
There was a moderate amount of blood on my living room rug. It was February in Chicago, the kind of cold that seeps up through the floorboards and makes your bones ache. My son was ten months old and wearing...
The Nightly Bubble Bath Lie and Finding Safe Soap for Babies
I was standing in the middle of a Target aisle at eight o'clock at night with spit-up down my back, staring blankly at a giant wall of purple, lavender-scented bottles promising me the world. My firstborn was three months old,...
The Plastic Avalanche: A Real Parent's Guide to Better Play
The singing plastic dog went off at exactly 3:14 AM. I know the exact time because the microwave clock was glaring at me in the dark kitchen where I was standing in a milk-stained gray nursing tank, furiously shaking a...
The Real Truth About People Actually Finding Your Baby Registry
I was sitting in a literal pile of bright pink cardboard boxes on my living room floor, four days after my first baby shower, ugly-crying into a burp cloth because not a single person bought the organic crib sheets I...
How A Sugar Baby Watermelon Defeated Me And My Twin Toddlers
If you ever find yourself wondering whether a standard kitchen sponge is abrasive enough to remove dried fruit pulp from a matte-painted wall, let me save you a frantic Google search. It isn't. You need a dedicated scraper and a...
The absolute hell of buying baby furniture (and what to buy)
It was 2017, I was twenty-four weeks pregnant with Maya, and I was sitting cross-legged on the linoleum floor of a massive warehouse store crying into a half-empty iced oat milk latte. I was wearing these atrocious grey Target maternity...
The Great Formula Panics: What I Learned About Feeding My Kid
It was 4:12 AM, I was holding a screaming, thrashing newborn, and my laptop screen was glowing in the dark with a massive spreadsheet titled Formula_Matrix_v4_FINAL.xlsx. My wife walked into the kitchen, looked at the screen, looked at my bloodshot...