Our Favorite Comedy Stories: New Parent Smell

New Jersey Stage posted its 25,000th story in December 2021. As the site approached the milestone, we popped the question on social media about how we should celebrate. One response was to highlight our favorite stories over the years. We liked this idea, but couldn’t narrow things down to just 25 favorites, so we’ll be featuring a favorite from different genres every day. Today it’s time for comedy with our report on New parent scent – an illustrated book by Rutgers alum Ben Rosenfeld and his wife Michelle Slonim Rosenfeld.

The feature was released on July 24, 2020 and is available here. In the play, we explain how the two comedians incorporated their pregnancy and parenting tips into their comedy numbers. “We were inspired to create the book because we loved our pregnancy and the new baby jokes, but as our daughter is now a full-fledged toddler, we couldn’t keep talking about being pregnant and having a baby. ‘a newborn,” Ben said. “So we thought a book was a cool way to let our pregnancy jokes live and create something that would be a fun gift to give to your newly pregnant friends/new parents. Michelle made us read a bunch of books when she was pregnant, but even the “funny” ones weren’t particularly funny. So when you combine his research and my “we can do better” you get our book. We have a lot of new material on toddlers, so if it works well, follow!

This was our third time speaking with Ben Rosenfield, with the first being in 2016 after his release. The Russian Optimist, his second comedy album. The second took place two years later following the release of his third comedy album, The United States of Russia.