The brutal reality of picking rare names for your daughter
I spent three years working the night shift on the maternity floor at Rush. You want to know the actual hardest part of the job. It wasn't the meconium blowouts or the frantic monitor alarms at two in the morning....
How We Debugged Baby Girl Shower Themes Without Pink Glitter
I was holding a plastic tiara that smelled strongly of volatile organic compounds, staring down an aisle that looked like a flamingo had spontaneously combusted. My wife was twenty-nine weeks pregnant with our first baby, currently asleep in the passenger...
What Nicole Kidman actually gets right about maternal burnout
Dear Priya from six months ago. You're currently sitting on the bathroom tiles at three in the morning. The radiator is making that hissing sound you hate. Your daughter just threw up milk on your only clean sweatpants, and you're...
The Great 3AM Hunt for Baby Girl Names Starting With V
The glow of the laptop screen at three in the morning is a uniquely hostile type of light, especially when itβs illuminating a spreadsheet containing seventy-four potential names for a human being you haven't even met yet. Outside our London...
The Algorithm for a Delayed Shower That Doesn't Suck
Dear Marcus from exactly six months ago. You're currently sitting at the kitchen island, staring at a Google Sheet titled Party_Logistics_V3.xlsx, while our five-month-old daughter aggressively chews on a silicone spatula. Since we moved to Portland at 38 weeks pregnant,...
Surviving the pink tulle trap of modern girl baby showers
I was exactly twenty-eight weeks pregnant, sitting on the floor of my Chicago apartment, surrounded by three garbage bags of neon pink tulle. My mother-in-law had just left after proudly declaring my upcoming baby show would be a princess paradise....
Rihanna And A$AP Rocky's New Girl: Let's Talk About Three Under Four
It was roughly two in the morning. I was sitting in the dark of my Chicago apartment, nursing a cold cup of chamomile tea while my toddler used my collarbone as a teething ring. I was doing that mindless, sleep-deprived...
Surviving the Minefield of Hispanic Baby Girl Names
The greatest lie they peddle in those glossy parenting magazinesβusually the ones featuring a serene mother in white linen looking lovingly at a perfectly clean infantβis that picking a name for your child is a beautiful, intuitive process. They suggest...
Surviving the Frilly Nightmare of Cute Baby Girl Clothes
I'm currently standing in the disabled toilet of a Costa Coffee in Wandsworth, staring in abject horror at my daughterβs back. She is wearing a gift from a well-meaning great-auntβa vintage-style, sage green dress featuring no fewer than fourteen microscopic...