Who writes this

Who I am

A first-time mum raising a boy in a flat in Bengaluru, a thousand kilometres from either grandmother. I'm not a paediatrician, a dermatologist, a nutritionist or a nurse, and nothing on this site is clinical advice. I'm a parent who kept notes.

I don't use my name here, and I don't use his, because he should get to decide what the internet knows about him. Every story says "the cub's mum", and that's who it is: one person, the same person, every time.

Where the products come from

I buy everything myself, at ordinary shops, for our own use. Nobody sends me free things, nobody pays for a mention, and there are no affiliate links. If that ever changes, it will say so at the top of the story concerned, before you read a word of it.

How the research is checked

Each story has two parts. What happened in our home is ours, and I say so. Where a story makes a wider claim about health, sleep, feeding or safety, it sits in a "What the research says" box with a named source: the AAP, NHS, WHO, IAP, CDC, a journal paper or a manufacturer's own page. I open every link before it goes in, I quote what the source actually says rather than what I'd like it to say, and I date each story so you can see when it was last checked. Where the experts disagree, the story says so instead of picking a side.

I can still be wrong. If you spot a detail that needs another look, send the page link through Contact; corrections are made in the story and dated. How corrections work.

What the stamps mean

Up to his age now, every story is from our own home and carries a verdict. For the stages ahead, the notes come from mums who've been there and carry no verdict at all. Start here explains the four stamps; About is the longer version of us.