A Letter to My Clueless Past Self About Hoarding Baby Gear
You're currently standing in aisle four of John Lewis, holding a Β£40 electronic device designed exclusively to warm wet wipes, quietly convincing yourself that if the twins experience a cold wipe on their bottoms, it'll somehow ruin their developmental trajectory...
Why I Stopped Debugging My Baby's Percentile Data
The crinkly paper on the exam table was already shredded by the time Dr. Evans walked in with her tablet. Baby G, completely naked except for a very heavy diaper, was violently executing a series of bicycle kicks against my...
Debugging Fatherhood: What Silverbacks Taught Me About Babies
I was standing in our Portland kitchen at 3 AM, wearing a stained t-shirt and intensely color-coding my son's diaper output in a spreadsheet, when I realized my troubleshooting manual for fatherhood was completely corrupted. The lactation consultant at the...
The Complete Disaster of Buying a Baby Gate for Stairs
I'm halfway down the staircase, suspended entirely in mid-air at 2:14 in the morning, clutching a sticky bottle of strawberry Calpol in one hand and a shrieking twenty-pound toddler in the other. My left foot has just hooked firmly under...
What a Baby Flamingo Taught Me About the 50/50 Parenting Split
The digital meat thermometer flashed 98.6 degrees, which meant the bottle of pumped breastmilk I was holding was exactly best for human consumption. It was 3:17 AM on a Tuesday, the Portland rain was actively trying to dissolve our bedroom...
The truth about baby bump timelines and why apps lie to you
I was standing in our kitchen holding a retractable Stanley tape measure against my wife's stomach, trying to log exactly how many centimeters her abdomen had grown since the previous Tuesday. She looked down at me like I was trying...
The Absurd Quest for Baby Boy Names Unique Enough Not to Be Steve
My mother-in-law cornered me by the kettle at week twelve of the pregnancy to insist that strong, traditional English names like Arthur or George were the only guaranteed way to prevent a child from a life of petty criminality, while...
Why the Three Men and a Baby Cast Lied to Us About Fatherhood
It was 3:14 AM, my 11-month-old son was attached to a bottle, and the glowing screen of my iPad was illuminating my deeply exhausted face. I was watching an 80s comedy classic to stay awake, watching Tom Selleck hold a...
System Meltdown: A Clueless Dad's Guide to Surviving Colic in Babies
I was bouncing on a half-inflated yoga ball at 140 beats per minute, frantically whispering "shhh" while my five-week-old son screamed so aggressively his face looked like a boiled lobster. My Apple Watch buzzed to congratulate me on my intense...