On the surface babies appear to be simple creatures of comfort, but they are in fact complex matrices of problems which you forever remain utterly at a loss to solve.

Whether you’ve read every baby how-to book you can get your hands on or deliberately avoided them in the effort to cultivate the kind of chillaxed, hands-off breeder persona who is too cool for Baby School, being a parent can leave you uncertain and fearful. And exhausted and irritable. And with a sagging face! What to do about that face? Which chemicals do you dab on it now?

I don’t know about all of that. I’m not a chemical professional. I’m not a professor of the Face Sciences.

What I am is a mere parent.

I have had *tries to count on fingers* some amount of babies for *tries to count on fingers* some amount of time now. This qualifies me as an baby expert.

Today, I will answer your imaginary questions about babies.

Q: Ever since the baby came my friends have been calling me “mama.” Do they really think I’m their mom now?

Of course not. That would be ridiculous! What your friends are actually doing, when they address you by your new job title, is acknowledging that this role is so powerfully all-consuming that it completely usurps your personhood.

If you’re in a heterosexual relationship, do you ever wonder why your spouse and his friends don’t call each other “daddy?” Of course you don’t. That would be so bizarre! And that’s because dads are people first. Dadding is a thing they might do on the weekends as a favor to someone else, or to earn accolades from strangers at the grocery store. Dadship lands somewhere down their personhood list between “hobby cyclist” and “home brewer.”

Not so for moms. Did you happen to go by Darla in your old, pre-parent life? Did Darla happen to enjoy game night at the pub, or hitting the trails for a hike? Well, Darla’s dead, and so are her dumb games and hikes. You are mama, now, full stop. It’s what you are and what you do. Mama is where all of you begins and where all of you ends.

So no, don’t question your new name, mama. Lean into it. Wrap your arms around it in a warm, motherly embrace. It’s the only identity you have anymore!

Q: My friend’s baby is only a couple weeks younger than mine, yet she’s already crawling and my baby isn’t. I’m weirdly jealous?

Babies are so different, and the range of normal is so broad, that you don’t need to be jealous. That being said, fuck your friend. She’s letting her baby crawl right on your feelings. Not only is that cruel, it’s rude, and it’s up to you to subtly teach her a lesson by turning the lens of scrutiny back on her baby.

The next time you get together, casually mention that you’re now up to “onomatopoeia” in your flashcard work with your baby. He’s really catching on! Does it matter whether “flashcard work” is actually you scrolling your phone while your baby chews a lamp cord? No. What matters is planting that seed of doubt, fam. Let her go home to mull and stew in how she’s failing to provide the very best start for her offspring. Let her lie awake at night worrying that her baby’s turning out to be a real abecedarian. In your face, friend!

Q: Now that my baby is mobile, everything is so much harder. I can barely change him, let alone get him fed and dressed. What went wrong?

A brand new baby is like a meatloaf that screams every hour on the hour. It’s very needy, but it’s also very boring and very stationary. And that’s the trade-off: you’re on-call 24/7, but otherwise you can do whatever, whenever. Wanna go out? You can tuck your meatloaf up under your arm like a football and take it around town with you. Very portable stuff! Wanna dress up? You can put your meatloaf in the frilliest pinafore you can find, like you’re doing Laura Ingalls cosplay, and the meatloaf just complies. You can grab your meatloaf’s hand and bop it up and down in the air to the tune of Freak Nasty’s Da’ Dip, sheerly for the benefit of your own amusement, and the meatloaf appears to be completely unaware of what’s even happening. A meatloaf don’t care!! And not caring is a beautiful thing.

Beauty doesn’t last, though. One day you realize your meatloaf has sprouted a personality, many dozens of opinions, a will mightier than gravity, and at least six to ten legs and arms. All of a sudden your average diaper change feels like wrestling a angry marmot on the ledge of a skyscraper, but with higher stakes, because the marmot is also covered in poop and you are trying not to get poop anywhere other than where it already is.

Look. I don’t have anything to tell you other than this phase sucks. It’s not you. You’re not the problem here. The problem is that your baby has broken the agreement, which was that you would provide snacks every night at 1:00 am, 3:00 am, and 5:00 am in exchange for the baby staying in one place on the floor at all times. Instead, you’ve now got a marmot that refuses to wear any pants speed-crawling into the bathroom to unroll the toilet paper again. You started keeping the toilet paper up on the lid of the tank to discourage your marmot, but sometimes you forget. Sometimes you want to just have nice toilet paper again, the kind you don’t have to twist your body around to reach, so you put the roll back in the holder only to find it, five seconds later, unspooled on the bathroom floor again. And you’re like: I seriously never imagined that a good portion of my adult life would be spent scooping up loose toilet paper and draping it across the toilet tank lid to use later, because like fuck I’m going to just THROW OUT every single piece of toilet paper that comes into contact with the floor, MOM. You think I’m not thrifty because I don’t spend my Tuesday evenings clipping coupons out of the Valpak mailer but I’m not the one advocating for throwing perfectly good toilet paper in the trash just because it maybe has a little bit of dust on it now. Like dust could possibly be the worst thing my nether regions have ever come in contact with! Mom.

I’m telling you, dude. This phase enough to drive you insane. My best advice is to let someone else raise your marmot during this very special time. He can come back home when he’s old enough to clip coupons. And dust that fucking floor.

Q: My new baby is here, and now I don’t like my older kid so much?

That’s because your older kid sucks. Her opinions are shit! Your older kid does things like:

  1. Eats cheese quesadillas dipped in peach yogurt. Sorry but that’s not gastronomy, that’s absurdity;
  2. Runs upstairs and slams her bedroom door because you merely suggested choosing shorts over fleece-lined leggings on a 98°F day, but sure, whatever, pants are your prerogative Miss Sweaty Kneecaps;
  3. Throws a tantrum coming out of the restaurant because she wants to take a different car home than the one you actually own, sorry but this isn’t a rental lot, THIS ISN’T ANARCHY, we can’t take someone else’s car just because it’s a more appealing shade of silver than our own;
  4. Scream-whines at you that she can’t see when her eyes are closed, why doesn’t she just FUCKING OPEN HER EYES THEN, why does she have to involve you in the process??

Child experts will say, oh, this is a prime example of kids exploring their independence, and that’s fine. But as a child expert myself, I additionally want to point out that kids are also just shitty. It’s what they do. They start off as shitty people and it’s our jobs, as parents, to make them un-shitty.

Which is something I really wish I’d have known before I made the investment! I mean I only had babies in the first place because I wanted photos of them wearing knit caps in a basket of burlap and feathers, with their heads propped extremely unnaturally atop their hands. That was my whole reason for having them. I didn’t realize I had to do things with them AFTER the photo session was over.

So yeah, you’re totally justified in not liking your older kid so much. Let’s hope she figures her shit out (and agrees to eat things that are not a microwaved tortilla with cheese) before Awkward Thanksgivings Home From College become a thing.

Q: My baby prefers my spouse over me! I feel hurt and offended.

AS WELL YOU SHOULD BE. Especially if you were the spouse who did the birthin’. You grew AN ENTIRE PERSON and that person isn’t remotely adoring or appreciative enough of his former home. What is blood? What are bonds? Why is human connection? The baby will have plenty of time to choose his own family later! He doesn’t need to be making those choices NOW.

Rejection hurts, but then again you don’t want to get too invested in the drama. Babies are like cats in that they can smell desperation. So the next time you’re in the same room as the baby, pretend you don’t even see him sitting there. Act casual. Yawn a lot. Shrug! Why are you shrugging? No one knows! It’s just what casual people do. If the baby comes near you, scoot away. And never, under any circumstances, make eye contact.

Remember, the more disinterested you act, the more the baby will be drawn to you. Bonus, you are setting baby up for a lifetime of normal, healthy relationship behaviors. Go win that baby’s affection back, tiger!

Q: My baby prefers me over my spouse! I feel exhausted and resentful.

AS WELL YOU SHOULD BE. You never get a break! You TRY to get a break but it’s hard to relax when a baby’s in the next room, screaming like the world is ending. It might be nice to feel so loved if you didn’t feel so needed.

In times like this, it might be helpful to remember that parents are like seasons. Summer parents, for example, should only wear soft neutrals with rose and blue undertones. A summer parent would look amazing in a powder blue suit. Choose power colors that exude confidence! You want a look that says, “Mother does not wish to be touched right now and also for the next 5,683 hours.”

And if that doesn’t work, wait. Take solace in the fact that a baby who really, really, extremely needs you now might first turn to your spouse in a different season of life. Especially if, say, you are spending that season of life in a remote cabin in Montana while your spouse raises the children solo. A summer parent can dream!

Q: My baby makes noises that sound like demons having a knife fight over a trembling fissure in the earth’s crust inside of which molten lava is reaching a roiling boil. Is this normal?

Oh my word, yes. If it stops, call your doctor immediately.

Q: Sometimes I feel like my baby just… doesn’t like me?

That’s because your baby doesn’t like you. Here are the things your baby likes:

  • Making improbable claims
  • Mashing food in hair
  • Trying to catch sunlight in hands
  • Wanton destruction
  • Certain death
  • Gumming shoes
  • Licking the polish off of your furniture
  • Sticking fingers in strangers’ mouths

You’re not on there. Sorry!

Q: My baby is not sleeping. How do I make my baby sleep?

There are very few truths to baby sleep, because there are very few facts. Even after decades — centuries! — of study, the only rule scientists have ever been able to observe about baby sleep is known as Weekender’s Law:

Weekender’s Law states that a baby at rest can remain at rest until 7:30 or 8:00 am UNLESS it is a Saturday or Sunday, in which case the baby will remain at rest until no later 5:30 or 6:00 am.

To borrow from a mid-aughts meme about humanoid beard Chuck Norris, babies don’t sleep, they wait. They wait for the next time they are hungry, and then they start screaming. What happens in the space between doesn’t really matter, does it? It doesn’t actually matter if they ever go to sleep, because they’ll just wake up again! Screaming! From this view, it is meaningless to even try.

(Fun fact you won’t find on Wikipedia: the very first subscribers to nihilism were a group of exhausted parents!)

So yes, how do you make a baby sleep? You don’t. You simply realize one day that they are sleeping, regularly, and at last you are over the hump. Your process to get there could have included anything from swings, to swaddles, to sleep training, to strict drug regimens (for you, not the baby). And none of these will even matter because you ultimately won’t remember them. It’s nature’s blackout method of survival, but for babies.

Let’s give it up for nature! And drugs!

Q: I feel guilty—

Yes.

Q. You didn’t let me finish—

There’s nothing to finish here. You are guilty. You just are. All the time! Even when you already know the game, and you know the game is rigged, and you set out to actively ignore all the triggers. It just happens! It creeps up on your like floodwaters. You can sandbag all you want but some of it always seeps in. Don’t worry, you eventually learn to live with it, sort of like how you’ve learned to live with toilet paper on the floor.

HEY OKAY that’s all we have time for today. Thanks for reading, mama!