Magazine

Exhausted dad figuring out the correct medication dosage for his sick baby at night.

Tylenol for Babies: What I Wish I Knew Before the 3 AM Fever Spike

Dear Marcus from six months ago. You're currently standing barefoot on the cold hardwood floor of the nursery at 3:17 AM. You're holding a sticky plastic syringe filled with an unnervingly bright purple liquid. Your wife is gently rocking a...

Read more

Mom feeding sweet potatoes to a baby in a high chair in a messy kitchen.

The Real Truth About Starting Solid Foods With Your Little One

My mother-in-law cornered me at the Piggly Wiggly the other day and told me that if I didn't put a scoop of rice cereal in my three-month-old's nighttime bottle, he would never sleep through the night and I'd be tired...

Read more

Sleep-deprived dad holding a baby in an oversized wrap bodysuit

System Failure at 3 AM: HM Baby Clothes and Newborn Survival

The poop had somehow achieved terminal velocity. It was 3:14 AM on a Tuesday, and my two-week-old daughter was lying on her changing pad, screaming with the piercing intensity of a malfunctioning smoke detector. The payload had defied all known...

Read more

Tired dad holding a teething baby while staring blankly at a list of names

Surviving the Minefield of Hispanic Baby Girl Names

The greatest lie they peddle in those glossy parenting magazinesβ€”usually the ones featuring a serene mother in white linen looking lovingly at a perfectly clean infantβ€”is that picking a name for your child is a beautiful, intuitive process. They suggest...

Read more

Tired mom holding a crying newborn in a dark nursery at 3 AM.

The Real Cost of Saying Hello Baby: Surviving the First Weeks

I was standing in my kitchen at 3:17 AM wearing a stained nursing bra and my husband's old high school track shorts, violently bouncing my screaming oldest child while crying into a cold cup of chamomile tea. The dog was...

Read more

Safe wooden baby toys scattered on a rug instead of toxic plants

Why I Almost Put Hawaiian Baby Woodrose in My Baby's Nursery

I'm sitting on the floor of my oldest kid's room at 2 AM, folding a mountain of tiny mismatched socks, trying to figure out how to make baby number three's nursery look like one of those minimalist forest-fairy wonderlands you...

Read more

A tired dad inspecting a baby diaper under a smartphone flashlight.

Troubleshooting Green Baby Poop When You're Running on Empty

It was 2:14 AM on a Tuesday when my iPhone flashlight illuminated a diaper that looked like it had been sponsored by a 1990s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles action figure factory. Neon, radioactive, undeniably green. I froze with a baby...

Read more

A mom sitting on a living room rug laughing while her baby babbles at a wooden toy.

The Truth About Googoo Babies (And What Mine Are Actually Saying)

I’m currently elbow-deep in printing shipping labels for my Etsy shop while my youngest, Levi, is having what sounds like a very heated political debate with the ceiling fan. He’s six months old, completely pantsless, covered in what I hope...

Read more

Confused dad looking at a smartphone while a toddler chews on a wooden panda toy

The 3 AM Search for Goo Goo Babies Uma Musume and Real Life

The iPad was glowing with an accusatory harshness against the peeling wallpaper of our London flat, illuminating a very specific kind of 3 AM domestic hell. Lily, the slightly more volatile of my two-year-old twin girls, had just violently expelled...

Read more