The reality of raising a newborn and a kitten at the same time
There we were at three in the morning. My newborn daughter was asleep in her bassinet, her mouth hanging open like a tiny, toothless baby catfish. I was half-asleep in the glider, holding a cold cup of tea. Then a...
Let's sort out that baby acne on face without losing our minds
I was exactly three weeks postpartum, running on half a REM cycle and cold leftover chai, when I noticed the first angry red bump near my son's nose. By the time my husband got home from his shift at the...
Late Night Monitor Glitches and the Truth About Ghost Babies
My mother-in-law told me to burn sage and recite a specific prayer in the corners of the room because the house was clearly occupied. My old charge nurse from the pediatric ward texted back at three in the morning to...
Troubleshooting Baby Potatoes: Air Fryers, Skins & Starch
I was wrist-deep in my eleven-month-oldβs mouth, desperately trying to scrape a wet, glued-on piece of potato skin off his hard palate while he shrieked like a dial-up modem. My wife, carrying a laundry basket, froze in the doorway, took...
My 3 AM Colic Panic and the Truth About Gripe Water for Babies
It's 3:14 AM. Tuesday. Or maybe a Thursday, time is a flat circle anyway when you haven't slept more than forty consecutive minutes in a month. I'm wearing my husband Dave's gray sweatpants with a mysterious crusty stain on the...
The absolutely chaotic reality of getting a baby passport now
"Just take the picture against the fridge," my sister texted me while I was wrist-deep in a morning blowout. "No, beta, you've to go to the pharmacy and hold him up like Simba," my mother countered on speakerphone, completely unbothered...
My Infant Is Glitching: The Truth About Those Endless Hiccups
It's 3:14 AM, and I'm staring at my phone's stopwatch, logging the exact intervals between my son's chest spasms. Every 4.2 seconds, his entire eleven-pound body jerks like a poorly coded physics engine that can't figure out gravity. He doesn't...
The Honest Truth About Flat Spots and That Expensive Baby Helmet
I was sitting in the pediatrician's office with my oldestβwho's now five and completely fine, but was then a three-month-old potato with a head shaped vaguely like a deflated footballβconvinced I had ruined his brain forever. Iβd gone down a...
What the Baby Emmanuel News Actually Taught Me About Motherhood
I was wearing my husband's stained college sweatshirt, the one with the frayed cuffs that permanently smells like sour milk, sitting on the cold hexagonal tiles of our guest bathroom at 3:14 AM while Leo screamed in the next room....