The Coffee Chat (#114)
My conversation with Quinn Emmett: 6x Webby nominee & 3x Signal winner WGA Screenwriter, Investor, Founder: Important, Not Important, Podcast host and Dad to 3!
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I always found going to a wedding as an adult fun.
Going to a wedding as an adult with your own kids is also a different kind of fun. The kind of fun that going skydiving is. It is an extreme sport. Most people know that some people find it fun. You understand that people do it, you find it crazy that someone you know did it and maybe would want to do it once too. It does not look fun but it certainly makes for great story that a future you can be nostalgic about.
I have been MIA for the last few weeks because I have been in the midst of the latter kind of fun and am just catching my breath after attending (& hosting!) two weddings in my family.
Back in Toronto my plan is to enjoy an easy slow summer, the newsletter will pop in sporadically into your inbox before getting back to the regular cadence this fall.
P.s: Reminder we have now started the reverse countdown to the end of The Coffee Chat Series within Decks and Diapers - this is the second last post of the series.
☕ Now, on to today’s coffee chat…
Meet Quinn Emmett
Quinn is a screenwriter, investor, father of three small humans, and the founder, writer, and host at Important, Not Important: science for people who give a shit.
He is a speaker and advisor to policymakers and business leaders, and his critically-acclaimed newsletter and podcast help you think deeply and act decisively about the world's make or break science news, from climate to COVID, heat to hunger, and agriculture to AI ethics.
His work is consumed on a weekly basis by senators and scientists, investors and doctors, students and CEO's, best-selling fiction writers and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists.
Below is my conversation with Quinn which …
**Note: this conversation was recorded some time back, so some things may have changed since then**
Please tell us a little bit about yourself
My name is Quinn Emmett. I feel like I have 12 jobs sometimes …. all jobs that I work hard at, but I’m privileged to have. Being born a white man in America comes with a lot of cheat codes, basically, that enable you to do things that a lot of other folks have to either work much harder to get their foot in the door on, or to succeed at in some way. So I’m very lucky to have those things, to have done a number of jobs. I worked for the Financial Times. I worked for ESPN and ABC Sports for a while. I’ve done a bunch of digital consulting and philanthropic stuff. I do some angel investing for clean fuel, clean food, clean energy.
My wife, Dana Fox, is a screenwriter. She’s been doing it much longer than I have. She didn’t quite bounce around like I did, and she encouraged me to do so, and I started to do that. It was going well, and it’s still going well, which is fun most of the time. Again, you know, a job that I’m lucky to be able to do … certainly the first years were very much supported by my wife’s hard work and her head start on that stuff. So she was very generous with her support and her time. That’s just who she is as a human, whether it’s to me or anyone else in our life.
So I continued to work at that, and then I started this…like you were saying, a small side project, little passion project called it Important, Not Important. And the original idea - it was literally just like a homepage, and there were these “important” headlines, which were: hey, these are the important headlines of things you kind of missed this week. And then there was the “not important” stuff… all the crazy tabloid stuff. The idea was: hey, these are the momentous things, the paradigm-shifting things, the really good and the really not-so-good that we should all be paying attention to in some way. And it was just sort of a static website, and I updated it here and there… it wasn’t much, and I didn’t spend too much time on it.
And then some friends who were really interested in it and loved the idea encouraged me to spend a little more time on it. So I turned it into a very basic newsletter…just a plain-text newsletter once a week, free and I sent it to some friends and family and some folks in government and business and science and things like that, just saying: hey, this seems to be the things that are moving the needle, the undercurrents - whether it’s climate change, or war, or antibiotics, or whatever it might have been. And this is kind of the biggest news of what happened with those things this week, culled from sort of the most reputable firsthand or media sources. And it kind of took off, which was cool…among friends, sort of friends of friends, friends of friends of friends, going out. I didn’t do anything to try and grow it.
And it became something that I think people really appreciated, in the sense that stuff started to be harder to keep up with as more of those things came to the fore, but also as the media started to pay more attention to those things. And so we tried to do the job of saying: hey, I know it’s a lot, but if you just want to pay attention to these things … if you want to just read this in 10 minutes on a Friday … we’re going to give you the curated version of really the most important stuff you need to keep tabs on. And a lot of this stuff wasn’t sort of breaking news, in that it’s something new, because for instance, the climate crisis has been going on for 30 years. You know, antibiotics resistance has been building up, whether it’s war, space, sea level rise, urban heat, whatever they are these things are there. It’s just that we have more data, more people are paying attention, there’s better writing, there’s more journalism. So it was more updates on those things and how they’re moving.
And then what we really transitioned it to was that, but also answering the question I feel like I would get in the back of an Uber all the time, when people say, “What do you do?” and then, “Okay, but what do I do about it? What can I do?” And I’ve always said, sort of, the best answer to that is: well, what can you do? What do you have to offer? What are the skills you have to offer? And I feel like that kind of turns it around to people - are you a graphic artist? Are you a data person? Are you a writer? Are you a filmmaker? Are you a doctor, a nurse, a scientist, a farmer, whatever it might be? And that tends to meet people where they are a little bit, and get them more engaged. And again, that gets them more engaged in what we’re trying to do as well, and makes them feel like: oh, I’m not just doom-scrolling. It’s a place where I can get up to speed, but also take some action.
So we focused on that, and then we launched a podcast to support it a couple years ago. Again, another friend who works in the podcast world said: this is great. I would love some deep dives into these specific things that are happening - not another wrap-up of the news, but something that complements that. Okay, these are the things we’re tracking week to week. Help me have better context for these things.
So we did that. And what we have now … we’ve recorded over 100+ conversations with scientists of every element, farmers, activists, policymakers, elected officials in the US and UK, students, journalists, professors, CEOs, whoever it might be. And what we really do is - instead of “hey, what’s your life story” … we like to say: why is what you’re doing vital? And we try to make it a conversation, as opposed to an interview. We try to stand in for our audience, which is typically under 50, pretty progressive folks who are science-minded. They don’t have to be scientists by any stretch, but they’re science-minded, which is hard not to be these days if you’re paying attention. And people who are frustrated or excited or both, and who keep wanting to take action and want to understand these things so they don’t sound like a moron when they’re at a dinner party. And they also want to feel like, when someone’s telling them to take action, that it’s easy - someone has done the thinking of what they should do, how they should say it, and where they’re sending their money, as opposed to just “help hunger” or whatever.
So that’s what we try to do with those conversations: build context and then work toward action steps that people can take. It’s not just “call your congressperson” or “call your parliamentarian” - it’s: call this person using this tool, say this script, and it will have this effect, and we’ve measured it and double-checked that. Or: donate to this organization, because they’re highly rated by GiveWell and Charity Navigator, and your money will do X, and it’ll solve these first and second order problems. And we try to make that as simple but as impactful as we can.
And that’s been a really interesting ride.
Sounds like you have found work that does not feel like work at all…i love that for you. Tell me more about your family
And to kind of come back to the family side - my wife and I have three kids. Now they are much older but at one point we had three kids under three years, which was an adventure. I come from a big family, so my expectation is chaos, and I enjoy it …. not that it’s not difficult, but I kind of thrive on it. Whereas my wife came from a smaller family, a much more sane situation, I think.
But we’re incredibly lucky again, we’re incredibly privileged. We had a lot of trouble making our children when we decided we were going to do it. We had a number of miscarriages. We had infertility issues. We had to do IVF a number of times. We tried all these different doctors. And making our first kid - our first successful child - took an incredible amount of time and anguish and money that we were lucky to be able to spend, because infertility stuff is not typically covered by American health insurance, which is a crime.
So, yeah it was a little bit “beggars can’t be choosers,” because when we had our first one and decided we wanted another, they said: look, it was a shot in the dark that you were able to make your first one. So if you want to make your second one, you know, we should try again. We did. And then, of course, our third one was a happy accident … which was in retrospect perfect. My wife was breastfeeding, and we managed to make a baby against all odds.
We have a Boy, girl, boy. And my daughter she pretty much runs the place, as she should … because my two sons, I love them dearly, they’re smart and curious and capable and wonderful and generous and kind, but she is becoming very aware that she effectively lives with two animals, basically. And you can see her just leveling up ahead of them. It’s kind of hilarious to watch.
I think we’ve become much better at understanding the female experience of infertility and IVF, but we still don’t hear many men talk openly about what that journey is like for them.
Looking back, how would you describe your own emotional experience? What was it like wanting to become a father while supporting your wife through such an intense physical and emotional process?
If men are already, by default, about 1% of a pregnancy to begin with - we don’t do a lot of participating for those nine and a half months - it’s even more true with infertility. But every journey is different.
Infertility can happen for any number of reasons. We went through multiple doctors and tried everything, from the initial hormone shots all the way to the full scope of IVF. At every stage, you’re trying to answer the same first-principles question: Why can’t we get pregnant? You’re not just trying to make a baby…you want to understand what’s preventing it.
Sometimes the issue is on the male side. So you test everything: motility, volume, all the baseline fertility markers. Then you start narrowing things down.
What made our journey especially hard was that we never really got an answer. But over time, it became pretty clear that the issue wasn’t on my side. And that’s a difficult place to land, because women already carry enough guilt. My wife was 34 or 35 when we started trying, which isn’t old, but it’s easy to spiral. You wonder: Should we have started earlier? Was it environmental? Was it a cyst, a health scare, something we’ll never know about? We never got a definitive explanation.
Once it became clear there wasn’t anything more to test on my end, my role was obvious: be the emotional support system as much as humanly possible. My physical contribution was what it was. There wasn’t anything else I could do.
And it’s incredibly hard watching someone you love go through that.
By the time you’ve seen five doctors, experienced miscarriages, and had transfers that don’t even make it to pregnancy, it takes a toll.
The IVF process itself is an emotional roller coaster. You stimulate egg production, retrieve the eggs, and at first the numbers can feel encouraging. Maybe they retrieve 40 eggs, and you leave thinking, Okay, this is promising.
Then, three days later, they call and say, “Twelve still look viable.”
A little later it’s eight.
Then they fertilize them, and eventually you get another call: “We have one embryo that looks good.”
You go from 40 to one in a matter of days.
Then they tell you, “If you want to transfer it, we need to do it now. But understand the odds are still low.”
It’s almost impossible not to look back and think, We had 40 eggs a few days ago.
I knew none of this was my fault, but I also couldn’t stop thinking about how my wife must have been feeling. It’s so easy to go down the rabbit hole. She’d wonder, I’m 35. Should we have started when I was 28? But we didn’t even know each other then. Your mind starts inventing alternate versions of your life that never could have happened.
Eventually, we reached the point where the doctors said, “You’re probably going to need an egg donor.”
They sent us home to scroll through profiles…where people went to school, family medical histories, everything. You’re sitting on the bed looking at strangers thinking, Wow. We may not even get to contribute biologically anymore.
That’s hard. And I think it’s hard for men, too.
Most of us grow up hearing, Be careful…it’s really easy to make a baby. Then suddenly someone tells you the exact opposite. It forces you to question everything, even though most of those questions are impossible to answer.
For us, we never got a definitive reason. One possibility was that my wife grew up near a river in central New York where Kodak had dumped chemicals for decades. There was one New York Times article years ago, and she knows other women from the area who later struggled with fertility. It’s nowhere near conclusive, but it’s the closest thing we’ve ever had to an explanation.
Which also means all those hypothetical choices you torture yourself over may never have mattered.
From my side, there was nothing I could fix. I couldn’t change any of it. All I could do was sit next to her while she looked through donor profiles, and when she’d ask, “What do you think?” I’d think, Why should I even have an opinion? It’s whatever you need. Whatever feels right to you.
The whole process is just... gnarly. And it’s remarkable how unsupported it is - not just financially, but emotionally and psychologically, especially in the U.S. healthcare system.
We were incredibly fortunate that it eventually worked. We have our own children, and we’re deeply grateful. We also knew that if it hadn’t, we would have adopted. We wanted to be parents…that part never changed.
So my job throughout all of it was simply to be a rock. To be as good a husband and as good a man as I could be.
What was this desire to really want to be a parent? Was it just that you guys felt like you were at that stage in the relationship, ready to do this? Or.. I mean, you come from a big family …
It’s funny - my mom and my wife joke about this all the time now. As my mom has described to my wife, I’ve wanted to be a dad since I was like nine or ten. My mom’s family was huge - she was the second of nine kids, and I grew up with 30 cousins, most of whom lived in the same town. I was the second oldest of all those cousins. I was a swim coach and taught swim lessons to little kids. I was like a big brother in all these things. So I feel like I’ve kind of always been in that role. And I’ve always been romantic at heart … I’ve just always been excited to do that, to have a little partner of some sort, whoever they might be.
And again, children are certainly not for everyone, and it’s a complicated decision for a lot of folks for a lot of reasons. But for us, it was one of those things where we were just really excited to take this journey together - to look at it and say, yes, there’s never a good time to get married, there’s never a good time to have a kid, or whatever it might be. We were just like: well, clearly we don’t get to choose at this point because of the science being the way it is. But also we were just excited to go on that journey together and see what little weird human we could produce. And they’re very weird very us. It’s wonderful.
That’s wonderful. You did mention that you’re a romantic at heart, and a lot of us have these notions about what parenting is. I mean, I once certainly did … I just thought it would be a lot easier than it really is. Because obviously, when you’re babysitting someone, or taking care of a niece or nephew, you only see a very small sliver of what’s involved.
So for you, what was the hardest part of actually becoming a dad?
I mean, for us at least and it seems fairly universal being exhausted all the time is really hard. But knowing that the kids are allowed to be exhausted - they’re kids, they don’t know what’s going on with their bodies, they don’t know how to recognize low blood sugar … they get to be tired. They’re still forming as humans. You can be tired at the end of the day, but until you get them down to bed, you need to be the adult. You need to be their emotional support person, leading them and teaching them tools they can use. And that’s really hard to do when you’re exhausted all the time and you’re working, and also when you’ve got a partner who is trying to do the same thing but in their own way.
Because there are so many new parents who either immediately become their own parents for better or worse, doing the things the way they were raised or purposefully go in the opposite direction. And that’s even more complicated when it’s two people with different histories, whatever they might be, or different expectations from the books they’ve read or what their friends have said. And then you try to merge those things together when you’re exhausted at three in the morning, going: well, it’s your turn.
All of that is to say: patience … extreme patience … is massive. Communication when you’re exhausted. Being open and flexible. Self-awareness - for yourself, for the child, for your partner - just goes a long way. And in the more historically traditionally defined roles of a man and a woman, the best thing you can say as a man is: how can I help? It will go so far. Because even just with the pregnancy and afterwards, there’s only so much physically we can do. But if you open your eyes, you learn that there’s actually a lot of other stuff. The answer is: just do it all. And also just say, how can I help?
And it takes a lot - even for someone like me who’s wanted to be a dad and, like you said, been around kids forever - being in it every single day, and not being able to be the one who gives them a bunch of sugar and then leaves like the uncle … it’s a whole different ballgame. But it’s also, you know, the greatest thing in the entire world. We’re so lucky to be able to do that. It is so hard, and also the best thing ever.
One of the biggest challenges you’ve talked about is just being exhausted all the time. At the same time, you have a demanding career, you’re writing Important, Not Important, working on other passion projects, and you’re in a dual-career household where your wife has her own career as well.
How do you make all of that work? What systems, routines, or agreements have the two of you built that allow you to raise three kids while still pursuing meaningful work individually?
I like to think and it’s been a real relief to see that the systems we’ve spent before we had kids building, both practical and philosophical, have actually held up during this season. The way we’ve learned to communicate, the agreements we’ve made, the values we’ve chosen to build our family around…they’ve been tested, and they’ve held.
Practically speaking, we’ve also been incredibly fortunate.
We’ve been able to afford an amazing nanny who’s been with us since our oldest was three months old. She’s honestly one of the best people we know. She’s incredible with our kids, and while she’s expensive, she’s worth every penny.
Even with that support, we spend more time with our kids than a lot of dual-career households do. I take a lot of pride in that. I never miss dinner or bedtime if I can help it, and I try to be there for breakfast as often as possible. Part of that is also making sure my wife has the space she needs to pursue her own career.
We’ve also had help from family. My wife’s mom lived just down the block from us in Los Angeles for a couple of years, and having that one-on-one support was invaluable. We have a wonderful relationship, and she was a huge help.
Even then, it’s still hard - just nowhere near as hard as it has been for a lot of other families.
The principle we keep coming back to is one we’ve worked hard to build over the years: give each other the benefit of the doubt.
That’s especially difficult when you’re exhausted and both juggling demanding careers. But if your default assumption is that your partner is trying as hard as they can, it changes everything.
Instead of thinking, “You missed dinner again, and I’ve handled bedtime five nights in a row,” you remind yourself: They probably wanted to be here. They’re not on that conference call because they’d rather be there than with the kids. They care about their work, but that doesn’t mean they care any less about this family.
If your baseline assumption is that you’re both doing the best you can and that you’re both just as tired as the other person…it becomes much easier to support each other instead of keeping score.
That doesn’t make it easy. But it makes it a whole lot easier.
One theme I've heard from a lot of parents is that they often hesitate to ask for help, when in reality it's one of the biggest enablers of a healthy family. You've clearly invested heavily in building that support system. Has that changed the way you think about asking for help or valuing the people who help raise your children?
It’s crazy how difficult we make raising kids for most people in America. And we should acknowledge: we are not most people in America. We are incredibly privileged and lucky, largely because of my wife’s amazing career and because of the circumstances we were born into. But even with all of that privilege, the system makes this incredibly hard.
What is it…one of only two countries in the world that doesn’t have paid parental leave as a law? And we’re one of them. I mean, how is that possible?
When we had our first child, my wife was in the middle of running a television show. She works incredibly hard, she’s extremely talented, and she cares deeply about what she does. Running a show is essentially being the CEO of a company - you oversee the writing, production, marketing, all of it.
Our son was born in early December, and because most shows slow down around the holidays, everyone takes a few weeks off. But she had to go back to work running the show eight days later.
And this was after a nightmare delivery - an emergency C-section - and after we had spent a significant amount of time in the hospital. We eventually had to convince the company, who ultimately did help, to put a trailer next to the studio so she could nurse our son every two hours because he was only eight days old.
On one hand, from a business perspective, I understand it. She was the person responsible for this entire operation. On the other hand, you step back and think: What are we doing?
And again, this is someone with enormous privilege. She had support. She had a partner who could say, “Okay, my job right now is to support this as much as possible.” And even with all of that, it was still completely insane.
The irony is that my wife is also someone who believes women should be able to do whatever they want. Paid parental leave should exist, and people should be able to use it however they want. Maybe you take two weeks. Maybe you take a year. Maybe you never go back. Maybe you return to the same company. Maybe you start something new. The point is that people should have the choice.
We do a terrible job creating the safety nets that allow people to navigate one of the most important things humans do: raising the next generation.
And my wife was never someone who wanted to just step away from work and say, “I’m going to take six months and only be a mom.” She did more of that over time, but she genuinely loves her work. It gives her energy, contentment, gratitude, and joy. It’s intellectually stimulating for her.
So she found her way back into it little by little. And she had to figure that out for herself. I had to figure out how to support that while also recognizing: okay, we still have a baby who needs to eat. There are certain realities you can’t negotiate around.
I loved giving bottles and doing those things, but ultimately it’s about figuring out the math together and making it work.
My job has always been and I’ve succeeded and failed at this like anyone else to be as supportive as I can.
My wife is six years older than me. She had a significant head start in her career and has been incredibly successful because she works hard, she’s curious, and she’s talented. So, in many ways, my career has been behind hers.
And I’ve made choices because of that. For example, I had opportunities to join television writing staffs, but those jobs are notoriously brutal hours: in at 7 a.m., out at 1 a.m. If I had been 26 with no kids, maybe that would have been the right choice. But my wife was already working incredibly hard, and I decided: No, I want to be home for dinner and bedtime.
As amazing as our nanny is, I believe kids need consistency. They need someone who is there, who they can depend on, who they look forward to seeing. And sometimes that has meant passing on opportunities.
It also means that when you’re tired and you’re fighting, and you say, “You’re not contributing in this way,” you have to come back to the reality that both of you have made intentional choices about how you want your family to work.
My wife is running another television show now that she created, and it’s wonderful. They’re in their second season. But the first season required her to spend long stretches of time in Vancouver.
Objectively, it was incredibly hard.
Our kids were five, four, and three. At that age, they don’t understand time. You can say, “Mommy will be back in a week,” but a four-year-old doesn’t know what a week means.
There were moments where I would get frustrated and say, “Well, you’re not the one who’s here, so that’s the reality.”
But then I’d have to step back and remind myself: she wants to be here. She also wants to be there because this is something she cares deeply about and, frankly, it’s also what supports our family financially.
It’s complicated.
And that’s where the benefit-of-the-doubt principle becomes so important. It doesn’t magically solve everything, but it helps. Anything you can do to make things slightly easier for each other, to understand each other’s position especially when you’re in a less traditional setup where she earns more and had a head start in her career…matters.
But at the end of the day, my priorities are clear: my kids come first, and my wife comes first.
I’m incredibly proud of my work. I’m proud of Important, Not Important.
My kids could have 101 conversations about what I stood for. They could see that I tried to make the world better, that I tried to support people, that I tried to move things forward. I consider that part of my parenting.
And my wife gives me the benefit of the doubt on that too. She understands that this work doesn’t make us much money…in fact, sometimes it costs us money but she knows it matters.
The audience isn’t huge, but qualitatively it’s incredible. It grew through word of mouth, through our guests. We have policymakers and CEOs listening people who can actually influence change.
So when we’re intentional about who we bring on, especially when we talk to diverse voices or people who don’t always get a platform, that matters. Maybe it doesn’t move the needle financially for our family, but it can move the needle in society.
And I think there’s value in me, as a white man, saying: these people deserve the microphone. I can use whatever platform I have to amplify people who might not otherwise get heard.
I see that as part of my growth, part of my responsibility, and part of being a parent. I’m just trying to learn from it every day.
That’s really powerful. I think what’s interesting is that you’re challenging norms in multiple ways. Through your work, you’re trying to give people a platform and break certain patterns, but as a family, you’re also showing your kids a different model of what a family can look like.
For your daughter and your sons, they’re growing up seeing that there isn’t one way a family has to be structured. It’s okay if Mom has to fly somewhere for work because she’s doing something important. It’s okay if Dad is the one making dinner or handling bedtime. It doesn’t always have to be the traditional model of father as provider and mother as caregiver.
And at the same time, if a family chooses that more traditional structure and it works for them and their children are happy and healthy, that’s okay too.
Exactly. If it works, if it’s good for the children, and they grow up to be good little humans…who cares what the mechanics are?
But we are incredibly privileged, and it’s still really hard. So I try, as much as humanly possible and we try through philanthropy, giving back, and direct support - to keep ourselves grounded in the reality that we are incredibly fortunate.
And then you look around, especially somewhere like Los Angeles, which was already an incredibly unequal and broken city even before the pandemic, and you think: If this is hard for us, I cannot imagine what this is like for so many other people.
We try to help our kids understand that too.
Their elementary school in Los Angeles has about 1,000 kids, and something like 20 to 25 of those kids are homeless. And this is one of the better public schools in Los Angeles. We are privileged to live in a neighborhood where that school is available to us and yet there are still kids there who don’t have a stable place to live.
So when our kids say, “Well, Jeff got a new backpack every year,” we try to put it into perspective. We’ll say: “That’s great for Jeff. But you don’t need that. And I know you’re upset that you got creamy peanut butter instead of crunchy today, but understand that we are incredibly fortunate to even be able to buy peanut butter.”
We don’t want to make them feel guilty. That’s not the goal. But we do want them to understand that there are kids around them who don’t have those basic things.
And in Los Angeles, it’s hard to shield them from inequality anyway. We walk to school and see people experiencing homelessness. It’s part of their reality. So the more we can expose them to service bringing them to soup kitchens, helping them participate, helping them understand the world around them the more hopefully they can become part of creating change.
It’s complicated.
Ultimately, you’re trying to raise little humans who will grow up and make good choices in the world. And I think that’s a really meaningful part of parenting.
A lot of my audience is either made up of new parents - often with kids under five or people thinking about becoming parents.
What’s advice you think new parents should follow? And what’s advice that’s commonly given that they should completely ignore?
It’s interesting because I’m coming from a place of having resources to do this. But there’s a reason that for tens of thousands of years, children were raised in a tribe or a village. Now we expect small nuclear families to do everything themselves and often, we still expect women to carry the majority of that burden, regardless of their careers.
The number of women who have fallen behind in the workforce because of motherhood, and the number who have had to leave the workforce entirely, is devastating.
My wife has absolutely made sacrifices because of this. We’re incredibly lucky that she hasn’t had to step away completely, but it’s still been hard.
So if you have any ability to find support, do it. It could be family. It could be someone you pay. It could even be a 15-year-old or a 12-year-old kid down the street who wants their first babysitting job.
One of the beautiful things about infants is that, once they’re past the newborn stage, they’re not going anywhere. They can’t even crawl yet. If someone you trust can give you an hour to take a walk, lie on your bed, stare at the wall, or read a book, that matters.
Our pediatrician wrote a book called Eat, Sleep, Poop, and I recommend it highly. The basic idea is: if your baby has eaten, isn’t tired, and has a clean diaper, you can let someone you trust simply be with them while you take care of yourself.
Sleep when the baby sleeps. Find help wherever you can. It doesn’t have to mean a full-time nanny. Living near supportive family is amazing. Any amount of support adds up.
The other thing is: don’t create routines you’re unwilling to maintain.
If you decide your child only naps if you drive them around for 25 minutes, guess what? That becomes the thing they expect. It’s the ultimate “if you give a mouse a cookie” situation.
Schedules can feel restrictive, but they pay off especially with sleep. Sleep is everything. When everyone is exhausted, every problem becomes bigger and harder.
And pay attention to your relationship. That’s easy to lose.
Early on, we tried to do date nights every couple of weeks. They were not glamorous. We were leaving the house at 5 p.m. because that was when restaurants opened for old people dinner. But it didn’t matter. We just needed to sit across from each other and remember we were still a couple.
Sometimes my wife would just stare at her cocktail and sigh. But we were out. We weren’t talking about the baby for an hour. We were reconnecting with each other…the entire reason this family existed in the first place.
So: prioritize sleep, give each other the benefit of the doubt, and protect your relationship.
We also kicked devices out of the bedroom about three years ago—everything except Kindles. That room became our little escape from the world. No kids, no work, no politics. It’s easy to lie there and scroll, but having one place where you’re actually present makes a difference.
And what advice should people ignore?
There are philosophical things and scientific things. When it comes to raising kids, follow good science. Reputable science is your friend.
I remember during our infertility journey, when we were desperate, you start grasping at anything - old wives’ tales, random advice, anything that might help.
At one point my wife asked our fertility doctor, the doctor who ultimately helped us have our children, “Some friends told me I should eat six ounces of meat a week to improve fertility.”
And he said, “Well, I think there are probably a billion and a half people in India who would disagree with you.”
Or the idea that carrying high means you’re having a boy. His response was basically: if that were true, it would be science. But it’s not.
Our pediatrician’s book is great because it combines science with his own experience. He’ll explain what the research says, but he’ll also admit the ways he struggled as a parent and didn’t always follow his own advice.
And most of his scary symptom charts basically end with: “It’s probably fine.”
Babies are weird. They breathe weird. They do things that terrify you. Of course, pay attention, see your doctor, do your checkups but chances are, your baby is okay.
Also: give yourself grace.
Let yourself off the hook for your body, your sleep, your eating, not seeing your friends. Life comes back. It might look different, and that’s okay.
Ignore the people especially on Instagram who say, “I got my body back in two weeks.”
First, that’s probably not healthy. Second, who cares?
Sweatpants are fantastic. Do your version. Be healthy. But don’t hold yourself to impossible standards after what you’ve just been through.
And remember: you’re going to keep parenting for the next 18 years.
And nobody tells you that it also flies by.
So be patient with yourself. Your friend might have some anecdote about apple cider vinegar that supposedly changes everything. Sure, try it if it doesn’t hurt. But mostly, trust yourself.
Remember: babies don’t create their own schedules. You’re the adult. You set the rhythm.
When they know when they’re eating, when they’re sleeping, when things happen, everyone’s life gets easier. Feed them healthy food if you can. It helps expand their palate and supports their health.
And above all: support your partner.
Support your partner because they’re a wonderful human being, and that’s why you started this journey together in the first place.
🤓 Open tabs…
(I have modeled this section after those “open tabs” that we all have with a few (okay 30-40) interesting links that we promise we will eventually get to one day. These are the links that I had open for sometime that I finally got to …)
⭐Sharenting: What happens when children’s lives are shared online?
From ultrasound photos to graduation pictures, many parents share their children's lives online. For some families, these posts help maintain connections with friends and relatives or build supportive parenting communities. But what does it mean for children to grow up with a digital footprint that begins, in some cases, before they are even born?
⭐Why You’re Better Off Reading a Book Than Learning AI
Most worryingly, though, this surge in AI-generated sludge is also accompanied by something else: the decline in the one skill that could help us navigate it.
Literacy rates are now the highest in history. And yet, they’ve also been falling off a cliff in recent years.
📖 My private thoughts from my very public diary…
(Sometimes on X (Twitter)…. sometimes on Threads)
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Disclaimer: All views expressed are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views of my employer