Magazine

Vintage nursery window next to a modern organic baby bodysuit

What the Lindbergh baby taught me about nursery security

Listen, it's two in the morning in Chicago, the radiator is hissing like a dying snake, and I'm standing in my toddler's room staring at the window latch. I should be sleeping. Instead, I'm thinking about a homemade wooden ladder...

Read more

Exhausted millennial mother staring at baby name lists on her glowing laptop screen.

Dear Past Priya: The Truth About Social Security Baby Names

Listen. You're sitting in the sweltering heat of the Target parking lot on Elston Avenue, crying into a lukewarm chai because an influencer just named her kid the exact moniker you've been hoarding for eight months. I know you're devastated....

Read more

Marcus looking stressed at a pharmacy aisle holding pregnancy safe ginger drops.

Why the thalidomide baby tragedy still dictates pregnancy rules

I was standing in aisle four of a aggressively crunchy Portland natural grocery store, holding a box of German herbal nausea pills that smelled like dirt and black licorice. Sarah was eight weeks pregnant. For the last seventy-two hours, she...

Read more

A mom looking stressed at her kitchen island holding a cold cup of coffee.

How to Talk About the Babi Yar Massacre Without Breaking Your Kids

I was standing at the kitchen island at 2:14 PM on a Tuesday, wearing my husband’s stained college sweatshirt, trying to order a baby shower gift on my phone while Leo, who's four and completely feral, was repeatedly ramming a...

Read more

A glowing hospital NICU monitor next to a half empty cup of cold coffee

The NICU, My Sanity, And The Wild History Of The Coney Island Baby

3:17 AM. St. Jude's NICU. November. I was wearing my husband Dave's oversized grey hoodie that smelled distinctly like stale Dunkin Donuts and absolute panic, just sitting there staring at the translucent skin of my son Leo's tiny chest rising...

Read more

A tired father holding a baby while looking at his smartphone

The Late-Night Rabbit Hole That Changed How I View "Toxic" Baby Gear

I was pinned beneath a sleeping 12-kilogram toddler, desperately trying to breathe as shallowly as possible so as not to wake her, when my casual 3am doomscrolling took a violently dark turn. I had been trying to search for some...

Read more

A tired dad holding a sleeping baby in a dark nursery thinking about lullabies

The midnight debugging of the rockabye baby lyrics

It's exactly 3:14 AM. The rain in Portland is doing that aggressive, sideways thing against the nursery window, and my son is currently running his four-month firmware update, which apparently means his system has completely forgotten how to execute a...

Read more

A confused dad looking at the back of a prenatal vitamin bottle in a grocery store.

What Thalidomide Babies Taught Us About The Placenta Firewall

I was standing in aisle 14 of the Hawthorne Fred Meyer at 9 PM on a Tuesday, aggressively squinting at the back of a ginger supplement bottle while my pregnant wife dry-heaved in the passenger seat of our Subaru. She...

Read more

An exhausted dad looking at his phone while holding a sleeping baby in a dark room.

A 3 AM Deep Dive Into Sleep Coaches and 19th-Century Babies

The thermostat on the baby monitor says exactly 69.8 degrees, which is supposedly the good thermal threshold for an 11-month-old human, yet my daughter is currently thrashing against my chest like a malfunctioning Roomba. It's 2:14 AM. We're in the...

Read more