The Myth of the Pretty Baby: Surviving the First Messy Months
3:14 AM. Tuesday. Or maybe Wednesday. I'm standing in the dark, heavily stained with an acidic mixture of formula and what I strongly suspect is Calpol, holding a screaming Twin A while Twin B begins to rustle ominously in the...
Baby Shower Invitations: The Brutal Truth About Modern Stationery
I'm currently using a dull butter knife to scrape dried, crusty hummus off a piece of 600gsm letterpress cardstock. It's an RSVP card that my two-year-old twin daughters, Florence and Matilda, managed to intercept before I could tally the final...
Why baby dolls took over my flat (and what the science says)
I'm currently staring at a small, disembodied plastic leg poking out from beneath our sofa. It belongs to ‘Baby Susan’, a doll who has suffered more blunt force trauma in the past three weeks than an amateur rugby player. If...
The Absurd Reality of Handing Your Infant a Rack of Baby Back Ribs
I'm sitting across the dining table watching one of my six-month-old twin daughters hold a massive, grease-slicked pork bone in her tiny, dimpled fist. She is gnawing on it with the intense, primal focus of a prehistoric hunter who has...
Decoding the Relentless Midnight Screams of Your Tiny Human
It’s 3:14 in the morning and both twins are vibrating with the kind of acoustic violence usually reserved for heavy metal festivals. I'm standing in the dark, rocking on my heels in a rhythm that has permanently damaged my lower...
The Baby Gronk Illusion and What It Means for Normal Parents
It was exactly 5:43 AM. I was sitting on a suspiciously sticky silicone weaning mat on the living room floor, clutching a lukewarm cup of instant coffee, watching a young boy push a weighted metal sled across an astroturf field...
The Great Baby Myth And Other Delightful Lies We Tell New Parents
At precisely 3:14 AM on a rainy Tuesday, while scraping what I desperately hoped was mashed sweet potato off the nursery ceiling, I realised the central lie of modern parenting. Before the twins arrived, well-meaning relatives and aggressively pastel-coloured books...
The Brutal Truth About Choosing a Baby Formula for Your Infant
The biggest myth in modern parenting is that the price tag on a tin of powdered milk directly correlates to how much you love your child. I used to believe this. Before the twins arrived, I assumed that unless a...
The great purée delusion: Surviving the transition to solids
I'm staring at forty-two perfectly uniform, ice-cube-sized blocks of steamed organic courgette, all painstakingly decanted into a premium silicone freezer tray at one in the morning. This was my Everest. I had spent an entire Sunday boiling, blending, and portioning...