Magazine

Mom holding a silicone baby teether instead of a dangerous ice cube

When Ice Ice Baby Goes Wrong: Teething, Choking, and Cold Fails

I was standing in my kitchen at two in the morning in a ratty t-shirt, sweat dripping down my back because Texas in July is basically a swamp, watching a piece of ice slide out of my fingers and straight...

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Maya chewing furiously on a green textured silicone teething ring

Beissringe Silikon: The Ugly Truth About Teething Advice

Let's rewind to Maya at four months old. I was wearing a gray nursing tank that smelled strongly of sour milk and desperation, and it had this weird yellow yogurt stain on the left strap that I had completely given...

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Baby chewing on a chilled silicone panda teether next to a wet washcloth.

Dear past Priya: Drop the toxic gel teething ring right now

Dear Priya from six months ago. You're currently standing barefoot on the cold kitchen tile at three in the morning. The refrigerator compressor is humming, and your son is doing that raspy, exhausted whimpering thing that makes you feel like...

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Tired mother holding a silicone teether and looking stressed

Why That Freezer Teether Ring Is Actually Making Your Baby Cry

It was three in the morning in the middle of a Chicago February. The kind of bitter cold that seeps right through the windowpanes and makes the old apartment radiator hiss like an angry cat. My toddler was cutting his...

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Marcus holding a baby who is aggressively chewing on a silicone nursing necklace

Why My Wife Wears a Nursing Necklace (And I Got Yelled At)

There was exactly one drop of blood on Sarah’s collarbone. It was Tuesday at 3:14 AM, the nursery temperature was holding steady at an best 69.2 degrees, and our then-five-month-old had decided that nursing was no longer a standard food-acquisition...

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Silicone baby toothbrush resting on a clean white cotton towel

Babys erste ZahnbΓΌrste and the absolute chaos of tiny teeth

My mother-in-law told me to just rub a pinch of turmeric on his gums and call it a day. The pediatric dentist I worked with back in my hospital days told me I needed to establish a rigid, twice-a-day brushing...

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A natural rubber teether sitting next to a chewed-up laptop charger on a desk

Naturkautschuk Beißring: A Dad’s Guide to Teething Hardware (66 chars)

It was exactly 3:14 AM when I realized my eleven-month-old had somehow bypassed the living room baby gate and was quietly trying to soothe his terribly swollen gums on the braided power cord of my MacBook Pro. There was a...

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A textured natural rubber teething ring resting on a knitted baby blanket

Natural Rubber Teethers: The Mistakes I Made Early On

Three in the morning is a bad time to evaluate your parenting choices. The radiator in our Chicago apartment was hissing, my toddler was trying to gnaw his own fist off, and I was frantically digging through the freezer. I...

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My youngest chewing on a maple wooden teether while sitting in her high chair.

Beißring Holz: Why I Tossed the Plastic for Wooden Teethers

I'm literally sitting on the floor of my laundry room right now, picking golden retriever hair off a neon green, gel-filled plastic teething ring that my three-year-old just excavated from the dark abyss under the living room couch. It’s sticky....

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