Let's talk about the baby einstein aquarium and infant sleep
My mother-in-law sat at my kitchen island and told me those glowing plastic fish were the only reason my husband ever slept through the night in the early nineties. My doctor looked at my meticulously tracked sleep logs, sighed, and...
What the Baby Dory Method Teaches Us About Resilient Kids
I'm sitting on my living room floor in Chicago watching a blue animated tang fish bump into a coral reef for the fortieth time today. My toddler is mesmerized by the screen. Half the moms in my playgroup think this...
Surviving the Unexplainable Evening Crying Phase
My Apple Watch tapped my wrist at exactly 5:14 PM to let me know the ambient noise level in my living room had reached 95 decibels, a volume it cheerfully warned could cause temporary hearing loss. I didn't need the...
Can Babies Eat Baby Doll Pizza? The Takeout Incident
I was standing on Stark Street in Portland in a light drizzle, holding a lukewarm oat milk flat white that cost entirely too much money, while my husband Dave balanced a massive, grease-stained cardboard box on his hip. We were...
Dear Past Priya: The Honest Truth About The Baby Delight Bouncer
Dear Priya of six months ago. You're currently sitting on the cold hardwood floor of our Logan Square apartment, staring at a pile of gray metal tubes and a piece of canvas. Your coffee is cold. The baby is doing...
Can Babies Get High From Breastfeeding? The Brutally Honest Truth
It was 3:14 AM. I was sitting in our creaky nursery glider wearing a pair of my husband Dave's gym shorts that smelled faintly of old protein powder, nursing a four-month-old Leo who was aggressively pinching my left boob. My...
What I Wish I Knew About Giving Babies Water Before I Panicked
It's July 2020. I'm wearing a pair of maternity bike shorts that have a mysterious, hardened yogurt stain on the left thigh, and I'm sweating through my second t-shirt of the day. My husband, Dave, is standing next to our...
Why I Quit Natural Bug Spray for Babies (And What Actually Works)
I was standing on my back porch in East Texas last July, holding a twenty-eight dollar glass bottle of "artisan woodland mist" while a mosquito the size of a Buick casually drank from my oldest kid's leg. Bless my first-time-mom...
The Truth About Cry Baby Perfume & Why Fragrance Ruins Naptime
The clock on the microwave said 2:13 AM, and my living room smelled exactly like burnt caramel and aggressive strawberry milk. I was pacing the floorboards in my ratty nursing bra, bouncing my youngest—who we affectionately call Baby P—while he...