Magazine

Tired dad singing to his 11-month-old baby in a dark Portland nursery

Hush Little Baby Bribes: A Late Night Letter To My Past Self

Hey Marcus of exactly six months ago. You're standing in the dark right now, aren't you? It's 3:14 AM. The nursery thermostat reads exactly 68.4 degrees because you checked the app three times. Your left shoulder is completely numb, you've...

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A clumsy oversized baby resembling the Baby Huey cartoon trope

Raising a Baby Huey: When Your Infant Is Off the Charts

It was 2:14 AM on a Tuesday, and I was losing a wrestling match against a seven-month-old. The left leg went into the sleep sack fine, but the right leg was suddenly entirely incompatible with the fabric, mostly because the...

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Frantic dad trying to shop for baby gear online with twins

The Great Megastore Myth and What Babies Actually Need

The most long-standing lie of modern parenting is that you can't safely extract a newborn from the hospital without first making a pilgrimage to a brightly lit, warehouse-sized retail behemoth. I distinctly remember sitting in the dark at 3am, furiously...

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An exhausted father holding a slightly squishy, red-faced newborn baby

The Myth of the Pretty Baby: Surviving the First Messy Months

3:14 AM. Tuesday. Or maybe Wednesday. I'm standing in the dark, heavily stained with an acidic mixture of formula and what I strongly suspect is Calpol, holding a screaming Twin A while Twin B begins to rustle ominously in the...

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Toddler twin girls in London flat playing with soft baby dolls on the floor

Why baby dolls took over my flat (and what the science says)

I'm currently staring at a small, disembodied plastic leg poking out from beneath our sofa. It belongs to β€˜Baby Susan’, a doll who has suffered more blunt force trauma in the past three weeks than an amateur rugby player. If...

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Toddler sitting on a playmat looking frustrated next to scattered wooden blocks

The hostage negotiation of the sorry baby apology milestone

The soft rubber block bounced directly off my collarbone and landed in my lukewarm coffee. It splashed onto my only clean pair of leggings. My two-year-old stood across the living room, chest heaving, waiting for the fallout. I looked over...

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A tired father holding a crying baby in a dimly lit nursery.

The 3 AM Breaking Point and the Truth About Shaken Baby Syndrome

There's a very specific frequency of noise that two eight-week-old humans can achieve simultaneously, and I'm fairly certain it violates several international treaties. It was a Tuesday, somewhere around 3:14 in the morning, and I was pacing the hallway of...

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Tired dad holding twin babies surrounded by wooden toys

The actual nepo baby meaning for severely sleep-deprived parents

My mother-in-law confidently informed me over a lukewarm cup of Earl Grey that it was a highly contagious viral rash sweeping through the North London nurseries. The barista at our local overpriced coffee shop swore it was a new developmental...

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A messy bedroom with a glowing red nightlight and a half-empty coffee cup.

The Justin Bieber Baby Sleep Hack That Would Have Saved My Sanity

It's 3:14 AM on a Tuesday in 2017. I'm wearing hospital-grade mesh underwear and an oversized, stained promotional t-shirt from a local 5K I walked, like, three years ago. I'm sitting on the very edge of our mattress, violently sobbing...

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