The truth about royal family baby number 4 (and my own panic)
It was 6:43 AM on a violently rainy Tuesday, and Twin A had just successfully wedged a soggy, half-eaten piece of Marmite toast into the lower vents of our living room radiator. Twin B, not to be outdone by her...
Searching For The Real Love Baby Connection At Eleven Months
My mother-in-law told me that if I pick him up every single time he cries, I'm going to completely ruin his operating system permanently. My barista, entirely unprompted while handing me my third espresso of the morning, told me that...
Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields and the Myth of Normal Parenting
I'm currently paused on a frame of a 1980s television talk show host asking an 11-year-old child an incredibly inappropriate question about her body. The harsh glow of the TV is illuminating the half-empty bottles on our coffee table, my...
Pretty Baby Full Movie Searchers: A Mom's Take on Screens
I was sitting on my living room floor at 10 PM last Tuesday, folding what felt like my four-thousandth load of tiny toddler socks, when I went down a massive Google rabbit hole. I had just finished watching that two-part...
Why the pretty baby 1978 aesthetic is ruining modern motherhood
I spent three hours last Tuesday trying to wedge a screaming four-month-old into a neutral-toned, structured linen romper just so my mother-in-law wouldn't text me about how unkempt her granddaughter looked in my Instagram stories. The romper had eight tiny...
Why OPI Baby Take A Vow Is The Only Polish Surviving My Chaos
I was 38 weeks pregnant with my oldest, sitting on the cold tile of my bathroom floor because reaching my toes was a logistical impossibility, attempting to paint my fingernails a color called something ridiculous like "Neon Midnight." It was...
The Baby Heart Rate Gender Myth: Twin Dad Survives The Scan
The room at Guy’s Hospital was aggressively dim, smelling faintly of antibacterial wipes and the specific, cold terror of impending parenthood. My wife was lying on the examination table with a generous dollop of freezing blue gel smeared across her...
Baby J DJ Drama: Surviving Loud Wedding Dance Floors
I was huddled in the damp corner of a rustic wedding barn outside Austin, vibrating. And I don't mean figuratively. The bass from the DJ's speakers was physically shaking the cheap folding chair I was sitting on while I desperately...
My Glitchy Attempt at Sci-Fi Parenting With an 11-Month-Old
My guildmate on Discord told me to just slap on a noise-canceling headset and game while the baby slept on my chest. My mother-in-law insisted the ambient 5G from the Wi-Fi router was actively rearranging his aura. And a random...