The Parent’s Lounge
Pull up a chair. Everything we wish someone had told us, from two lines on a stick through the first year.
Expecting the runway
From Positive Test to Birth
Appointments, tests, and when to call
Products & Gear
The essentials, the skippables, the recalls
Building Your Village
Pediatricians, nannies & daycare, calmly
Baby's here the deep end
The First Twelve Weeks
The fourth trimester, decoded
Feeding & Formula
Bottle, breast, and solids, plainly
Sleep & Soothing
Safe sleep, the 5 S's, wake windows
What to Look For
The 100.4° rule & true emergencies
The parents you count too
Your Wellbeing
Baby blues, PPD, and real recovery
For Dads & Partners
The playbook, night shifts included
Screens, Sugar & Play
The honest rules, by age
The Bookshelf
Twelve famous baby books, reviewed
Handy Tools quick answers, nothing stored
Due Date Calculator
Last period in, due date out
🌡️Fever: What Now?
Age + temperature = what to do
🧊The Fridge Card
First-weeks numbers, made for a magnet
📋Registry Checklist
Real essentials + the recall check
If you memorize one thing
100.4 °F (38 °C). In a baby under 3 months, a rectal temperature of 100.4 °F or higher means call the pediatrician right away, day or night, and don't give fever medicine before the baby is seen. More on fever and warning signs →
Hi, we're John & Haley — close friends, basically family, each raising our own kids with our own wonderful partners. We were lucky: we had great people showing us how to be parents. The Lounge is us passing that on — what we found useful, and what we wish we'd known.
Everything here is checked against current AAP, CDC, FDA, CPSC, and NHTSA guidance. Where experts disagree, we say so — and when this site and your pediatrician differ, your pediatrician wins.
The names behind the initials — who we cite, and why they count
- The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP)
- The professional organization of America's pediatricians. Its guidance on safe sleep, fevers, feeding, and screen time is what your own pediatrician is trained to follow; its parent site is HealthyChildren.org.
- The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
- The U.S. government's public-health agency. It sets the childhood vaccine schedule and publishes the developmental-milestone checklists.
- The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
- The federal agency that regulates medicines and food safety — including every infant formula legally sold in the United States.
- The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC)
- The federal agency that sets mandatory safety standards for cribs, bassinets, and other baby products, and runs the national recall system.
- The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA)
- The federal agency in charge of road safety. Car seats are legal to sell only if they pass its crash-test standards.
When you get a quiet minute ✦
We also make free, gentle games and storybooks for little ones. (Per our own screen-time guide: games are for toddlers with a grown-up nearby. Babies get faces and books.)
Story Smash Story Match