Our first child is due, and I’m already in the clutches of the baby-industrial complex | Arwa Mahdawi

Thanks to relentless marketing and advice our tiny apartment is already stuffed full of weird stuff, such as snot-suckers. But do I really need an AI-powered crib to be a good parent?

A boob. A bed. Maybe a bottle? In the early days of my wife's pregnancy, I naively thought that was all a newborn baby would really need. After all, all they do is eat, poop, sleep, repeat. You don't need an arsenal of complicated equipment to deal with that, right?

Wrong. Our first child is due imminently and, despite my best efforts to escape the evil clutches of the baby-industrial complex, our tiny New York apartment is stuffed with weird stuff. Reader, I have a snot-sucker. That's not a euphemism - that's a real thing you use to suck mucus out of a child's nose. I asked a friend with kids: Seriously? Do I actually need this?" She gave me a look a lot of parents have been giving me recently. It's a look that says: Damn, you really don't know what you're in for."