The Zika Baby Panic: What My Pediatrician Actually Told Me
I was staring at the smeared remains of a mosquito on my laptop screen when Sarah walked into the home office, holding our eleven-month-old like a football and looking highly alarmed. We were supposed to fly to a wedding in...
Surviving the evening screams with your sanity mostly intact
There was a specific time, 6:13 PM to be exact, when the atmosphere in our London flat would shift from manageable chaos to complete psychological warfare. You could set a watch by it. The girls would be lying there, looking...
The Search for the Best Humidifier for Baby (Without the Mold)
My mother-in-law handed me a vintage 1990s vaporizer and told me to boil eucalyptus oil in the nursery. Three hours later, the guy at Home Depot practically cornered me in the plumbing aisle to explain why ultrasonic machines are the...
A dad's honest survival guide to baby poop colors and nappies
My mother-in-law told me mustard yellow means they're digesting their milk perfectly. The NCT instructor casually mentioned that anything even slightly green requires immediate, intensive medical intervention. And a bloke at our local pubβwho freely admitted he hasn't held a...
Decoding Your Infant's Pink Fingernails (And Surviving Trim Time)
I was sitting on the floor of my nursery at 3:00 AM with my oldest son, Jackson, sweating right through my maternity pajamas and holding a pair of baby clippers like I was trying to defuse a bomb. He was...
The Messy Truth About Raising Cute Babies (And Surviving The Crying)
It was 3:14 AM on a Tuesday, and I was trying to wrestle a screaming, four-day-old Leo out of a stiff, scratchy mustard-yellow linen romper that had, like, seventeen tiny wooden buttons. I was sweating through my nursing bra. My...
The Medical Reality of Buying Baby Headphones: A Nurse's Guide
We were sitting in row fourteen at my cousin's sangeet in Schaumburg when the bass from the dhol vibrated through the floorboards and straight up into my sternum. My daughter was barely three months old. I had my hands clamped...
The Bizarre Lifecycle of Infant Hair (And Why We Don't Shave It)
My mother-in-law was dead serious when she handed me my beard trimmer. We were sitting in the living room, staring at the side of my 11-month-old's head, which currently looked like a poorly maintained lawn. He had thick patches on...
The Exhausted Parent's Guide to Choosing a Great Baby Doctor
I'm currently typing this one-handed on my phone in a clinic waiting room that smells aggressively like rubbing alcohol and cheap cherry lollipops, while my youngest tries to aggressively gnaw my collarbone off. The lady across from me is staring...