The Truth About Burtβs Bees Infant Gear: A Dad's Guide
At approximately 3:14 am last Tuesday, I found myself trying to locate my daughter Aliceβs foot inside a yellow sleepsuit that appeared to have been tailored for a medium-sized golden retriever. I was sweating, the baby was screaming, and the...
What Nobody Tells You About Buying Cribs for Babies
I was sitting on the floor of what used to be my home office, dripping sweat onto a set of Scandinavian assembly instructions, clutching a tiny Allen key like a weapon. It was 2am. My wife was heavily pregnant with...
Dear Past Tom: A Warning About The Dijon Mustard Situation
Dear Past Tom, You're probably reading this while standing in the maternity ward bathroom, staring at a tiny, screaming human you met roughly four hours ago. You're holding a nappy under the harsh fluorescent light, and you're sweating. You've just...
Finding the Best Organic Baby Formula (Without Losing Your Mind)
Dear Tom of two years ago, You're currently standing in the kitchen in yesterday's tracksuit bottoms, using the dim light of the microwave to read the German instructions on a tin of imported infant milk. Both twins are screaming upstairs...
Finding the Best Baby Gates Before Your Children Learn to Fly
At exactly 4:12 PM on a rainy Tuesday, I watched my daughter, who until that morning had possessed the mobility of a sack of King Edward potatoes, execute a perfect commando crawl across the living room and attempt to eat...
The absurdly high stakes of keeping your bassinet baby alive
Before we even brought the twins home from the hospital, three different people gave me three mutually exclusive pieces of advice about where they should sleep. My mother-in-law insisted I needed to line their little bedside cribs with rolled-up cashmere...
Surviving 29 Weeks: From Butternut Squashes to Tiny Terrorists
I'm currently watching a piece of steamed sweet potato make its third, highly ambitious trajectory across my kitchen, propelled by the shockingly strong left arm of a child who, until very recently, was basically a sentient bag of flour. If...
Dear Past Tom: Surviving When Your Baby's Coming Back Up
Dear Past Tom of six months ago, You're currently sitting in The Crown on a rainy Tuesday afternoon, enjoying a rare hour of unsupervised freedom while your mother-in-law watches the twins. You have consumed exactly one and a half pints...
Surviving the High-Stakes Math of Your Baby's Bath Temp
I'm currently bent double over a plastic tub that looks suspiciously like an oversized Tupperware container, plunging my left elbow into lukewarm water while Twin A tries to ingest a highly questionable bath sponge. It's precisely 6:14 PM, a time...