The Day My Toddler Brought a Wild Baby Hare Into Our Kitchen
I was elbow-deep in cold dishwater trying to scrape dried oatmeal off a plastic bowl when my four-year-old marched through the back screen door with his hands cupped together like he was protecting a fragile treasure. He had that specific,...
Why our gender-neutral baby shower actually saved my sanity
I was standing in a stranger’s kitchen in Hackney, trying to discreetly spit out a bright blue cupcake that tasted distinctly of Smurf and regret, when I realised everything I believed about the modern baby shower was entirely wrong. Before...
I Googled "Do Baby Teeth Have Roots" at 3 AM and Now I'm Terrified
It's exactly 3:14 AM, and my index finger is currently wedged inside my eleven-month-old's mouth. I'm conducting a blind tactical sweep of his lower gums because he has been waking up screaming every two hours, and I'm desperately trying to...
Choosing safe gold earrings studs for babies without panicking
My mother-in-law cornered me in the kitchen with a pair of twenty-two karat hoops, telling me it was tradition and that I was overthinking it. A few hours later, my old charge nurse texted me to say that piercing a...
Choosing my first baby doll before the new sibling arrives
My daughter was holding the plastic newborn by its left ankle, dragging its bald, rigid head across the kitchen tile like a club. The eyes clicked open and shut with every hollow bounce. I was seven months pregnant with baby...
Lactose Free Baby Formula: A Dad's Guide To Tummy Troubleshooting
Dear Marcus of exactly six months ago. You're currently standing in the kitchen at 3:14 AM, the rain is aggressively hitting the Portland windows, and your son is screaming in a frequency that I'm pretty sure is permanently damaging the...
The honest guide to personalized baby gifts
I was three days postpartum, sitting on the floor of my Chicago apartment in mesh underwear, weeping openly over a cardboard box. My aunt had sent a gift. It was a massive, aggressively pink velvet pillow, roughly the size of...
Real Geschenk für Mutter zur Geburt: What Moms Actually Want
Before I had my son Leo, three completely different people cornered me with their brilliant gifting strategies for my impending motherhood. My sweet but clinically insane coworker Susan handed me this massive, scratchy, hot-pink tulle tutu in the breakroom and...
The Truth About Why Every Parent Needs a Babydecke Merinowolle
It was a Tuesday, I think. Honestly, those first few weeks are a blurry hallucination, but I remember I was wearing my black maternity leggings—the ones with a faint spit-up stain on the left knee that had been there since...