Once upon a time there was a little baby who was perfect. The baby was in a solid sleep routine from the day she came home from the hospital. At two weeks old, she learnt, after crying for exactly five minutes, that it was best to settle herself, go to sleep and stay asleep. She fed every three hours. She slept in the middle of the living room because she felt soothed by the sounds of her family as they went about their day around her. She loved tummy time so very much and she couldn’t wait to taste a wide range of healthy foods.
This baby lived in a textbook.
This baby doesn’t exist in real life. This baby is designed to make you feel like you’re doing it all wrong. This baby is a SCAM.
I have a theory that this baby was created by a man in order to demoralise and destroy a mother’s self-confidence so she would stay at home in shame, marinate in her failure and keep a clean house.
No babies will follow the textbook. They’re not great at remembering things at this age. Your routine might be airtight but your newborn can’t figure out how to look at things with both eyes yet, so it’s probably not going to ruin his day if you read a book before bath time instead of after.
You can’t train or spoil newborns. They’re basically potatoes with eyes—eyes that can barely see you. Please don’t punish yourself if your newborn can only sleep in a pitch-black room in complete silence, on your chest, while you stand for hours at a time. He’s not ‘learning bad habits’. He’s still trying to figure out how to be alive.
It is, of course, totally possible you’ll get a textbook baby—they have to base their stories on someone don’t they? They are mythical and beautiful, like unicorns—but if you get one, don’t go boasting just yet.
A Unicorn Baby is a result of pure luck, not a supernaturally talented parent. But this doesn’t stop parents of the Unicorn Baby from rubbing this in everyone’s face. The obnoxious humblebrag is a sin carried out by sanctimummies called Brogany, and the universe will eventually punish them with the four-month sleep regression.
The only people allowed to humblebrag are parents of three or more children who have had successive jerk babies and have finally scored a unicorn. They deserve their moment in the sun. Let them have it.