That Christmas Baby Please Come Home Year (Letter To Past Me)

Dear Sarah of exactly six months ago,

You're currently sitting in the driver's seat of our crusty Honda Pilot, parked outside a CVS in what can only be described as a disrespectful amount of snow, aggressively crying into a lukewarm oat milk peppermint mocha. You're wearing those maternity leggings that pill between the thighs and your husband Mark's oversized flannel, and you're having a full-blown panic attack because your sister's water just broke. Two days before Christmas. In a blizzard.

The radio is playing, and I know exactly what's on because it's burned into my brain forever. It's Darlene Love. And as you sit there listening to the christmas baby please come home lyrics echoing through the pharmacy parking lot, you're realizing that bringing a literal newborn into the world during the loudest, messiest, most overstimulating week of the year is going to require a level of stamina you currently don't possess. You're exhausted. You have two kids of your own—Leo is four and currently believes he's a dinosaur, Maya is seven and rolling her eyes at everything—and now you're the designated birth partner for your sister.

You're terrified.

But I'm writing to you from June, with half a year of hindsight and a much better cup of coffee, to tell you that you're going to survive this. Your sister is going to survive this. Baby P is going to survive this. It's just going to look a lot weirder than a Hallmark movie.

The hospital on a holiday is weirdly quiet

Right now, your biggest fear is that the labor ward is going to be a ghost town. You've convinced yourself that every doctor is at home drinking eggnog and your sister is going to be delivered by, like, a janitor who watched a YouTube tutorial. Stop spiraling.

When you finally get her to triage—after screaming at Mark for hitting every single pothole on Interstate 95 because you thought it would jostle the baby out, which is not how anatomy works—you're going to find out that the hospital is actually incredibly calm. My sister's midwife, this amazing woman named Brenda who smelled like peppermint oil and patience, told us that because all the elective inductions and scheduled C-sections get paused for the holidays, the labor ward is just... focused. It's just the emergencies and the spontaneous births.

It's quiet. The lights are dimmed. There's this weird, almost sacred stillness in the hallways. You're going to sit in that uncomfortable vinyl chair for fourteen hours holding your sister's hand while she literally chants baby please, baby please come home to the child currently crushing her ribs, begging to just be done with being pregnant.

Your bleeding uterus doesn't care about the turkey

Okay, this is the part nobody talks about when you've a holiday baby. The physical aftermath. Oh god, the aftermath.

Your sister is going to deliver a beautiful, screaming eight-pound girl at 3:00 AM on Christmas Eve. We started calling her Baby P because we were too tired to say Penelope, and honestly, it stuck. But the second you get back to your parents' house on Christmas Day, your mother is going to expect your sister to sit at the dining room table in hard pants and eat a dry turkey.

Listen to me very carefully: You have to be the bad guy. You have to be the bouncer for your sister's crotch.

From what my own pelvic floor therapist told me after I had Leo, when the placenta detaches, it leaves a literal wound inside the uterus. I think she said it was the size of a dinner plate? Or maybe a salad plate? I don't know, science is fuzzy, but the point is it's a massive internal crater. Plus, your sister will have stitches. Sitting upright in a dining chair for three hours while Uncle Gary talks about cryptocurrency is going to make her perineum swell up like a water balloon. You're going to want to pack three bags and laminate a strict visitor schedule and scream at your mother for caring more about the centerpieces than her daughter's hemorrhoids, but honestly just physically block the bedroom door and tell everyone she's sleeping.

If they want to see the baby, they can look at a photo. The end.

The car ride from hell (and how to survive it)

Getting a two-day-old infant from the hospital to the house in freezing temperatures is going to take years off your life. You're going to be sweating through your coat. Mark is going to have the car heater blasting so high it smells like burning plastic.

My doctor told me years ago that you can't put a baby in a car seat wearing a puffy winter coat because the material compresses in a crash. Like, the straps will seem tight, but if you hit the brakes, all that air squishes out and the baby just flies out of the straps like a slippery little watermelon. Or something like that. It sounded terrifying. So you've to put them in normal clothes, strap them in tight, and then tuck blankets OVER the straps.

This is where that Organic Cotton Baby Blanket Playful Penguin Adventure Design you bought your sister is going to save the day. It's a double-layer organic cotton blanket, and I'm not exaggerating when I say it became the shield of armor for Baby P. It has these little black and yellow penguins on it, and it's shockingly heavy for cotton? Not like a weighted blanket, but substantial. We tucked it tightly around the car seat (over the buckles, obviously) and it blocked the wind perfectly. More importantly, when we got to the house, it acted as a visual barrier. If the baby is fully swaddled in penguins, nosy relatives are slightly less likely to reach their unwashed, germ-covered hands in to touch her face.

Seriously. Best thirty bucks I ever spent. Buy another one for yourself.

Don't bother bringing a massive diaper bag into the house, by the way. Just shove some wipes and a diaper in your pockets.

Toddlers ruining the aesthetic

While you're playing doula/bodyguard for your sister, Mark is going to be at home trying to keep Maya and Leo from destroying the house. This will yield mixed results.

If you're also drowning in the holiday chaos and just need someone to magically deliver nice, safe, non-toxic things to your door so you don't have to put on a bra and go to the store, shop all the organic essentials here.

Anyway, Mark decided that Christmas morning was the perfect time to set up the Alpaca Play Gym Set with Rainbow & Desert Toys we got as a shared gift for Baby P's eventual arrival. He thought it would be cute for photos under the tree. And yeah, it's beautiful. It's this minimalist wooden A-frame with a crocheted alpaca and a little wooden cactus. It looks like it belongs in an architectural magazine, not our chaotic living room that currently smells like stale milk and pine needles.

But here's the honest truth: I thought it was just okay for our specific situation. Why? Because Maya, who's seven and theoretically has impulse control, immediately decided the hanging wooden cactus was a weapon. And Leo, being four and feral, tried to climb the A-frame like a ladder. The quality is gorgeous—the wood is super smooth and the crocheted pieces are soft—but keeping older, destructive siblings away from aesthetically pleasing baby toys is a full-time job. I spent half of Christmas morning yelling, "DO NOT HIT YOUR BROTHER WITH THE ALPACA."

If you've an only child, it's a dream. If you've a pack of wild animals for older siblings, maybe keep it in the nursery behind a locked door.

Food on the floor

While we're on the subject of Leo being feral, let's talk about holiday dinners. We brought Baby P home, my sister went to sleep, and I finally sat down to eat.

Leo was in his high chair, hyped up on candy canes and spite. He picked up his ceramic plate of mashed potatoes and launched it like a frisbee across my mother's dining room. It shattered. Mashed potatoes everywhere.

Past Sarah, please, for the love of god, pack the Silicone Suction Bowl for Babies. I left it in the cabinet at home because I thought, "Oh, it's Christmas, we'll use the nice plates." No. Never use the nice plates. The silicone suction bowl is a lifeline. It sticks to the high chair tray like it's cemented there. It's 100% food-grade silicone so it's not full of weird plastic toxins, and it doesn't break when a four-year-old inevitably pries it off and drops it. It just bounces.

It comes in nice colors too, so it doesn't look like cheap plastic garbage in the background of your holiday photos. But mostly, it saves you from scraping gravy out of the rug while your sister is upstairs bleeding. Bring the bowl.

The reality of the phrase

You know that old song, Christmas Baby Please Come Home? It takes on a whole new meaning when you're literally just trying to get a fragile, tiny human from the fluorescent lights of the hospital to the safety of a dimly lit bedroom without anyone catching RSV.

You're going to feel a lot of pressure to make it magical. To have the baby in a little red velvet onesie. To take a photo by the tree.

Screw the onesie. Red velvet isn't breathable anyway and it usually has those scratchy synthetic tags that make newborns scream. Dress that baby in an organic cotton sleeper that zips from the bottom (because snaps in the dark are a form of psychological torture) and call it a day.

The magic isn't in the aesthetic. The magic is in the survival. It's in the moment your sister finally gets to lie down in her own bed, propped up on three pillows, drinking water out of a hospital cup, holding Baby P against her chest in the quiet dark. It's in you sitting on the floor next to her, eating a cold piece of pie, knowing you both made it through the hardest part.

You're going to look back on this in six months and realize it was messy, and chaotic, and exhausting. And it was perfect.

Now wipe your eyes, finish that terrible coffee, and go inside. She's waiting for you.

Love,
Sarah (who finally got some sleep)

Before you dive into the FAQ, if you're expecting a holiday baby and want to stock up on things that actually make your life easier instead of just looking cute on Instagram, check out Kianao's full collection of sustainable essentials.

Messy, Honest FAQs About Holiday Babies

Do I really need to bring the baby to my family's house for Christmas?

Absolutely not. Oh my god, no. If you just had a baby, your only job is healing and keeping that tiny potato alive. You have a built-in, doctor-approved excuse to stay home on the couch in adult diapers for the next four weeks. Use it. If people want to see the baby, they can bring you a casserole, drop it on the porch, and wave through the window.

Is the hospital really empty on Christmas?

Empty of patients doing elective stuff? Yes. Empty of staff? No. Hospitals don't just close. My sister's labor ward was fully staffed with on-call doctors, anesthetists, and midwives who were honestly in a pretty good mood because it wasn't chaotic. They brought us tiny hats knitted by volunteers. It's weirdly peaceful.

How do I dress a newborn for a winter car ride without them freezing?

Layers, but thin ones. My doctor drilled this into my head: no puffy coats in the car seat. Period. Put them in a long-sleeve cotton onesie, pants, socks, and a fleece sweater that sits close to the body. Buckle them in tightly. Then, tuck a solid blanket (like our penguin cotton one) over the straps. They will be fine from the hospital doors to the pre-warmed car.

What if my older kids get jealous of the new baby during the holidays?

They will. It's inevitable. Leo threw a toy truck at my head when Maya was getting attention once. Have some cheap, wrapped "gifts from the baby" ready for the older kids when they come to the hospital or when you get home. It's bribery, yes. But survival parenting is 90% bribery anyway. Just lean into it.

How do I deal with relatives who want to hold the baby constantly?

Baby-wearing. Strap that infant to your chest in a wrap or a carrier. It's incredibly socially awkward for Aunt Linda to try and rip a sleeping baby out of a tightly bound fabric carrier attached to your torso. If that fails, just lie and say the doctor said "no passing the baby around during flu season." Blame the doctor. Always blame the doctor.