Stop Saying Mongoloid Baby: Real Talk About Down Syndrome
I was sweating straight through my maternity leggings in the back of our Honda Odyssey, crying so hard I couldnβt see the buckles. It was August in rural Texas, which is basically the surface of the sun, and we hadnβt...
The Terrifying Bobblehead Phase: Babies Holding Their Heads Up
My mother-in-law was holding Florence, who was precisely eighteen days old at the time, when she decided to gesture wildly with both hands while telling a long-winded story about a rogue fox in her garden. For three horrifying seconds, Florenceβs...
When Do Babies See Color? (And Why My Newborn Hated Pastels)
I was standing in the middle of the nursery at two in the morning, wearing nursing pads that were definitely leaking, holding my three-week-old daughter Maya. I had just spent an embarrassing amount of money on this gorgeous, handcrafted, organic...
When Do Babies Start To Crawl? A Letter To My Clueless Past Self
Hey Marcus from six months ago. I know you're currently enjoying the stationary phase where you can set the kid down on the rug, go make an espresso, and return to find him occupying the exact same coordinate space. Enjoy...
When Do Babies Teeth? An Honest Timeline For Exhausted Parents
I was standing in the checkout line at Trader Joe's in 2019, balancing a frozen pizza on my hip because I didn't grab a cart, when the contradictory advice started. Maya was about five months old, wearing a mustard yellow...
The Messy Truth About When Your Baby Finally Learns to Sit Up
I was sitting on the cold linoleum floor of a slightly damp church basement wearing yoga pants that hadnβt seen a yoga studio since Obama was in office, staring at a six-month-old named... Brayden? Jayden? Let's go with Jayden. Jayden...
The Kewpie Baby Obsession: A Letter to My Sleep-Deprived Self
Dear Sarah from exactly six months ago. Yeah, you. The one currently standing in aisle four of the Sleepy Hollow Antique Mall, wearing those black maternity leggings that have literally lost all their elasticity, clutching your third lukewarm coffee of...
Do Babies Have Kneecaps? Surviving the Kitchen Tile Crawling Era
The sound of a two-foot-tall human slamming knee-first into Victorian ceramic tile is a noise that bypasses the eardrum and registers directly in the parent's soul. It's a wet, hollow thud that makes you instantly calculate the distance to the...
Searching Reddit for a Baby Walking Game at 2 AM Was a Mistake
Itβs 2:14 AM. I'm wearing my husbandβs horrific faded college track sweatpantsβthe ones with the inexplicable bleach stain on the left kneeβand I'm hunched over my phone in the dark, furiously refreshing a forum thread. I'm holding a mug of...