Magazine
Why I threw our smart baby heart monitor in the trash
It was 3:14 AM on a Tuesday, raining sideways against our Portland windows, when the klaxon sounded. It wasn't a gentle beep. It was the specific, terrifying frequency of a submarine dive alarm broadcasting directly from my nightstand. My wife...
That time I thought my baby's heart rate was dangerously fast
The gel on the ultrasound wand was aggressively cold, but that wasn't why I was sweating through my only clean jumper in a dimly lit NHS clinic in North London. The sonographer was clicking a mouse with the sort of...
The Panic Over Getting a Baby Helmet for Flat Head Syndrome
Dr. Lin pulled out a pair of large plastic calipers, and my stomach immediately dropped. We were at the four-month checkup, and I had fully expected a standard firmware update—weigh him, check his reflexes, use the scheduled vaccines, and send...
When My Back Gave Out: The Ugly Truth About a Baby Hip Carrier
We were twenty minutes into the Parker County Peach Festival when I felt something in my lower spine actually shift. It was 98 degrees in the shade, the air felt like a wet wool blanket, and my sixteen-month-old son, Beau,...
When You Become the Default Human Holder for Your Baby
It was four in the morning in mid-February, the kind of Chicago winter night where the radiators hiss aggressively and the air feels like dry ice. Maya was six weeks old and deep in the trenches of her peak colic...
How a Baby Horse Name Crashed My Naming Spreadsheet
I was staring at row 842 of my master Google Sheet when the system finally broke down. Column A contained the potential name. Column B tracked the syllable count. Column C was tied to a Python script I wrote to...
How to Survive the Feral Baby Hyena Phase of Human Toddlerhood
It happened at exactly 3:14 on a Tuesday morning. I was attempting the treacherous transfer from shoulder to cot—a maneuver that requires the stealth of a ninja and the steady hands of a bomb disposal expert—when Florence woke up. She...
Surviving the Fourth Trimester: When Your Newborn Owns You
I was wearing a nursing bra that smelled aggressively of sour milk and my husband Dave’s old college sweatpants with a mysterious crusty patch on the knee, standing in the kitchen at 3:17 AM swaying like a seasick sailor. Maya...
Dear past me: surviving the botanical shower and the infant year
Dear Priya from six months ago. You're currently sitting on the floor of the living room in Wicker Park, staring at a stack of expensive cardstock. You decided to throw a baby in bloom baby shower because it looked nice...