Magazine

A dad nervously holding a baby spoon with thinned peanut butter next to a high chair

The peanut butter baby protocol: Debugging a first allergen

Flashback to a misty Portland Tuesday about six months ago. My wife Sarah was in the other room on a muted Zoom call, and I was standing in the kitchen staring at a nine-dollar jar of organic, single-ingredient peanut butter...

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A folded organic bamboo baby blanket resting on a wooden nursery chair

The Truth About Personalized Baby Blankets (A Hindsight Guide)

It was a Tuesday. 3 PM, raining, and I was wearing a nursing tank that smelled strongly of sour milk and desperation. Three-week-old Leo was finally asleep on my chest, and I was holding a dangerously lukewarm mug of coffee...

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Tiny premature baby sleeping in a NICU incubator with medical leads.

What Nobody Tells You About Having A Premature Baby At 33 Weeks

It was three in the morning on a Tuesday when the bradycardia alarm went off. The overhead lights in the neonatal intensive care unit were that specific shade of hospital fluorescent that makes everyone look mildly deceased. I was staring...

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A tired mom wearing a baby in a floral pattern soft structured carrier.

My Messy Journey With the Tula Carrier (And Why I Kept It)

It was a hundred and two degrees in July, right in the middle of a rural Texas Target parking lot, and my arms were bent backward like a stale pretzel. I was leaning heavily against the side of my minivan,...

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A bewildered dad looking at a baby platypus plush toy next to a modern laptop and baby gear.

The Baby Platypus Taught Me More About Parenting Than Books

When it came time to figure out how we were going to explain the birds and the beesβ€”or just basic mammalian biologyβ€”to our kid, I got three entirely different pieces of advice within a 24-hour window. My mother-in-law told me...

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A tired dad holding a swaddled baby pig and a coffee mug in a messy kitchen.

What I Learned Debugging Life With Baby Pigs

I'm currently sitting on the kitchen linoleum at 3:14 AM with a laser thermometer in one hand and a syringe of milk replacer in the other. My 11-month-old daughter is finally asleep upstairs after a brutal teething episode, and I'm...

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Stressed mom sitting on the living room rug looking at a baby percentile calculator on her phone

Dear Past Me: Please Put Down That Baby Percentile Calculator

Dear Jess from six months ago, You're currently sitting on the faded living room rug with a floppy yellow sewing tape measure in one hand and your phone in the other, furiously typing slightly inaccurate measurements into a baby percentile...

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Mother sitting on a park bench watching her toddler climb a wooden structure.

Watching my kid fall off the playground cured my helicopter anxiety

The wind coming off Lake Michigan was aggressive enough to make my eyes water, but I couldn't blink. My two-year-old was fifteen feet up a rope climbing pyramid at Maggie Daley Park. His left foot was wedged between two cables....

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A very tired mom wearing a stained t-shirt holding a coffee mug and looking thoughtfully out a window

The Myth That Ruined My Newborn Days (And The Baby Orangutan Fix)

I was wearing Tom's vintage college hoodieβ€”the gray one with the mysterious yellow mustard stain from 2014β€”and it was somewhere around 3:17 AM. Maya was three weeks old and screaming like I'd personally offended her entire bloodline. I had a...

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