Is there a more torturous tool for babies than the bulb syringe? This device, which oddly (and perhaps frighteningly) resembles a miniature turkey baster, is designed to help parents and other grown-ups get stuff out of baby facial orifices such as the nose and mouth.
Administer it correctly and the thing sucks/slurps/vacuums globules of snot and [...]

Movie fans likely remember the 2006 cult classic film, “Snakes on a Plane.” As the title suggests, the protagonists (my former “E.R.” heartthrob Julianna Margulies among them) wind up on a plane infested with snakes.
During our recent vacation to Hawaii on Alaska Airlines, I feel like we could have been extras on the set of [...]

So we got back from Hawaii on Wednesday (more on the trip later this week). And we drove straight from the Oakland airport to Berkeley, where I dropped off Powergirl for a four-day conference she was chairing.
With simple math you can deduce that this schedule left me as a single-parent for the better part of [...]

Powergirl and I are off with L early Monday morning on the baby’s first major vacation: ten days in Hawaii. While I am certainly not stoked about enduring heightened security measures at OAK on our way west, I’m actually looking forward to seeing how L does on the plane. Here are five other random thoughts [...]

Powergirl and I like to extol our little baby for her mysterious good-natured approach to life. She hardly ever cries. She’s more agreeable than most grown-ups. And she can adapt to pretty much any new situation.
Imagine our surprise, then, when she couldn’t get to sleep Christmas Eve (at my inlaws’ house), and proceeded to cry [...]

When most people hear about postpartum depression they picture the sufferers as new moms. According to an article in today’s New York Times, however, this condition hits us men, too.
The story, titled, “Postpartum Depression Strikes Fathers, Too,” is written in the first-person by a practicing psychiatrist. Over the course of the piece, the author recounts [...]

I’ve read the literature on co-sleeping. I know the Consumer Product Safety Commission warns parents not to place their infants in grown-up beds. I’ve heard the American Academy of Pediatrics agrees, warning parents about rolling over on their babies in their sleep.
That said, I admit it: both Powergirl and I spend a few hours alone [...]

I read with horror today’s article in the Fashion & Style section of The New York Times (full disclosure: a client) about breastfeeding. The piece, written by former editor Catherine Saint Louis, is topped with the headline: “Breast-feed the Baby, Love the Calorie Burn.”
You can read the piece for yourselves and see if you, too, [...]

I’ve never been the type to cry at weddings (except my own, of course, during which I was a blubbering mess) but Powergirl and I attended her best friend’s nuptials this weekend, and I got teary-eyed during the father-daughter dance.
Naturally, I couldn’t help but think about what the dance at L’s wedding would be like, [...]

The last few weeknights have been doozies in the sleep department for all of us humans at TDD headquarters. Powergirl has had trouble shutting down quickly enough to get a good rest. L has had trouble staying shut down for more than two or three hours at a clip.
And—whaddya know?—when Momma and baby aren’t sleeping [...]