The Strange Toddler Phase Of Acting Like A Lost Feline
It's precisely 6:14 AM on a Tuesday, and I'm standing in my kitchen wearing a dressing gown that smells faintly of sour milk and defeat, watching my daughter Florence enthusiastically lick the skirting board. Her twin sister, Matilda, is aggressively...
The Midnight Mouse Panic and Why Crumb Control is Everything
It was 7:14 PM on a Tuesday, and I was exactly where I always am at that time: on my hands and knees under the high chair, scraping a fossilized piece of sweet potato off the baseboard with a wet...
What to Do When You Feel Less Fetal Movement in the Third Trimester
My mother-in-law told me babies just get lazy at the end. The girl in my prenatal yoga class said her doula claims fetuses enter a deep meditative state to prepare for birth. A random mom on the internet said to...
The agonizing wait for a tiny flutter: early pregnancy heartbeats
I was staring at the acoustic ceiling tiles in room four of my obstetrician's office, counting the little perforated dots while trying to remember how to breathe. The transvaginal ultrasound wand is nobody's friend. It's basically a plastic joystick wielded...
The Ugly Truth: What Is An Anchor Baby And Why The Myth Hurts
My auntie Sheila told me last Thanksgiving that getting a green card is as easy as dropping a newborn on American soil. Two days later, a charge nurse in the pediatric ICU complained that half our beds were taken up...
How to Talk About the Babi Yar Massacre Without Breaking Your Kids
I was standing at the kitchen island at 2:14 PM on a Tuesday, wearing my husbandβs stained college sweatshirt, trying to order a baby shower gift on my phone while Leo, who's four and completely feral, was repeatedly ramming a...
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...
What the Gracie Abrams Nepo Baby Drama Taught Me About Parenting
I was sitting in the driver's seat of my Subaru in the Target parking lot at roughly 4:15 PM on a Tuesday, wearing gray sweatpants that had an unidentifiedβand honestly, highly suspiciousβstain on the left knee. It was like 84...
The Circus Baby FNAF Incident: Why My 7-Year-Old Stopped Sleeping
It was exactly 3:14 AM on a Tuesday. I know this because the glowing red numbers of my alarm clock were practically burning a hole in my retinas. I was wearing my husband Daveβs old Villanova hoodieβthe one with a...