My son was eleven days old the first time I cried over a spreadsheet. Not a work spreadsheet — a sleep log, color-coded, because some sadist on a parenting forum told me tracking would “reveal patterns.” It revealed nothing except that he slept for forty-one minutes, then ninety-three minutes, then nineteen minutes, in an order
My son started crawling on a Tuesday. By Thursday he’d found the one outlet I swore I’d covered back in month four — behind the bookshelf, half-hidden, the kind of spot you forget exists until a seven-month-old with surprising upper body strength drags himself over there like it’s a mission. He wasn’t even going for
My son was eleven weeks old the first time I cried over a diaper rash. Not because it was gross — because nothing was working. I’d tried three different creams, I’d left him bare on a towel until he peed on the rug twice, and the rash just sat there, red and shiny and clearly
At 3 a.m. with my first baby, I remember standing in the nursery doorway, swaying a screaming eight-week-old, and thinking, “Why doesn’t anyone tell you it’s actually this bad?” I’d read three books on newborn sleep before she was even born. None of them prepared me for the reality of a baby who seemed to
