What a 1980s Movie Taught Me About Dads and Newborns

Dear Sarah from last October,

You're currently sitting in the driver's seat of your Honda Odyssey in a Starbucks parking lot. You're wearing those black Lululemon leggings that have an unidentifiable crusty stain on the left thigh, clutching an iced flat white like it's a literal life preserver, and staring at your phone while it buzzes aggressively in your cup holder. Don't answer it. I repeat, don't go back inside that house yet.

Because inside that house, you've left your husband Dave, his brother Mike, and your brother-in-law Steve alone with your sister's four-month-old nephew, Toby. It's three adult men and a baby who recently learned how to scream at a pitch that I'm pretty sure communicates directly with bats. You left them there to "give them some bonding time" while you escaped for twenty minutes of silence, but really, you just wanted to see what would happen.

It's like an anthropological experiment. We had literally just watched the movie 3 men and a baby the week before on some nostalgic streaming binge, and Dave had spent the entire runtime huffing loudly and pausing the movie to deliver TED talks about how insulting the 1980s "clueless dad" trope is. He was like, profoundly offended that society used to think men couldn't figure out how to operate a diaper without a woman drawing them a map. Dave is a great dad. He manages Leo's chaotic first-grade soccer schedule and remembers that Maya, who's four and entirely unreasonable, currently will only eat toast if it's cut into asymmetrical triangles. He knows his stuff.

But there's something deeply, inherently terrifying about a baby that isn't yours. A brand new, wobbly-headed, unpredictable baby. And right now, as your phone buzzes with a text from Mike that just says "URGENT: WHERE ARE THE WIPES," you're realizing that the movie maybe wasn't totally off base about the sheer panic a tiny human can instill in a room full of grown men.

That stupid cardboard cutout ruined my childhood

I've to take a detour here because every time I think about that movie, my brain violently snaps back to the absolute chokehold the 3 men and a baby ghost rumor had on millennials in the late 90s. Oh god, do you remember this? I was at Brittany Henderson's sleepover in like, fifth grade, sitting in a basement that smelled like damp carpet and Doritos, and we spent two hours rewinding a VHS tape to look at a window in the background of a scene with Ted Danson.

We were so convinced it was the ghost of a little boy who had died in the apartment. Someone's older cousin told us the director left it in the movie as a tribute, and we all just believed it because we didn't have Google to tell us we were idiots. I literally slept with my door open for a month because I thought the ghost boy in the curtains was going to come get me. Anyway, the point is, I found out like ten years later that the "ghost" was literally just a cardboard standee of Ted Danson wearing a tuxedo that someone forgot to move off the soundstage. Not even a real apartment. A soundstage in Toronto. The amount of childhood trauma I endured over a forgotten piece of promotional cardboard makes me want to scream.

But the real myth of that era wasn't the ghost, it was this weird cultural assumption that men are biologically incapable of nurturing an infant. My pediatrician, Dr. Miller—who usually mumbles things at me while Maya is actively trying to lick the sanitary paper off the exam table—told me once that babies absolutely don't have a biological preference for maternal care. Like, there's no magic gender-detecting gland in a newborn's brain. They just respond to whoever feeds them and doesn't drop them. It's something about oxytocin receptors and consistent, responsive care, which means if a dad puts in the hours, the baby's brain wires itself to them just the same. So Dave's righteous indignation on the couch last week was actually scientifically justified.

The great blowout of October

Which brings me back to the texts you're currently ignoring in the Starbucks parking lot. I know what's happening in there right now, Sarah, because Dave will recount it to you later with the thousand-yard stare of a war veteran.

Toby started fussing. Not full crying, just that weird, squeaky pre-cry that means a bomb is about to go off. Dave, trying to prove his modern-dad superiority to his brothers, swooped in. But Toby was teething. Have you ever tried to reason with a teething baby? It's like negotiating with a very small, very drunk hostage taker who only speaks in vowels.

Thankfully, earlier that morning, I had shoved the Panda Teether Silicone Baby Chew Toy into Dave's hand. Honestly, this thing is my holy grail. When Leo was a baby, we used those weird water-filled rings that got disgusting, but this Kianao panda one is 100% food-grade silicone and it just works. It has these little textured bumps on the bamboo part that babies just aggressively gnaw on like tiny rabid dogs. Dave literally texted me a blurry photo of Toby going to town on the panda's ear with the caption "THE PANDA HAS PACIFIED THE BEAST." It's so easy for them to hold because it's flat, and thank hell it's dishwasher safe because Mike definitely dropped it on the rug where our golden retriever sleeps and just wiped it on his jeans before giving it back to the baby. Don't think about that part too much.

If you're also leaving your husband alone to survive a teething meltdown, you might want to casually send him a link to some teething survival gear so he feels like he has tools in his arsenal.

Dads are not actually idiots

But then, the real crisis hit. The smell. Toby had a blowout. A massive, up-the-back, code-red situation.

Here's where the parallel to the movie is actually kind of funny, because while Dave knows how to change a diaper, he hasn't changed a four-month-old's diaper in years. He forgot the cardinal rule of explosive baby diarrhea: you don't pull the onesie over their head unless you want to paint their hair with feces. Instead of, like, calmly securing the baby with one hand while pre-opening the wipes and sliding a clean diaper underneath before removing the dirty one to create a containment zone, it was just chaos.

Thankfully, Toby was wearing one of Kianao's Organic Cotton Sleeveless Bodysuits. I buy these for every baby shower now because they're so ridiculously soft—like, 95% organic cotton, no weird synthetic crap that makes eczema flare up—but more importantly, they've those envelope shoulders. When Dave was panicking about how to get the soiled garment off without ruining Toby's life, Mike really pointed out the shoulder flaps. Yes, my childless brother-in-law was the one who remembered that envelope folds mean you can pull the entire bodysuit down over the baby's body, avoiding the head entirely. It's brilliant. I mean, the bodysuit was still totally ruined and ended up in a plastic grocery bag on the porch, but the baby's head remained pristine.

The toys that collect dust

While Dave was wrestling the poop demon, Steve apparently tried to be helpful by pulling out the Gentle Baby Building Block Set. Look, I bought these blocks because they're made of soft rubber and come in these very aesthetic macaron colors that look great on my living room rug. They're completely non-toxic and say they're good for early education.

But let's be real—a four-month-old doesn't care about logical thinking or 3D properties. Toby just stared at Steve blankly while Steve tried to build a pastel tower to distract him from the diaper change. They're fine blocks, they really are, and Maya seriously uses them now to build little houses for her plastic dinosaurs, but for a fussy infant? Completely useless. They just kind of roll under the couch. At least they're soft so when you step on one at 2 AM it doesn't pierce your heel like a Lego.

Oh, and I should mention that Dr. Harvey Karp has those "5 Ss" for soothing a baby—swaddling, shushing, swinging, side-stomach position, and sucking—which is great in theory but usually requires more hands than you really have. The guys didn't do any of that. They just put on a playlist of 90s hip-hop and bounced him in front of the window until he fell asleep on Dave's chest. Whatever works, right?

So, Sarah from six months ago, finish your coffee. Enjoy the peace. When you walk back into that house, you're going to find three exhausted men whispering aggressively at each other about fantasy football while a baby sleeps peacefully on a pile of organic cotton. They figured it out. They always do. Society gives moms a lot of credit for having some mystical maternal instinct, but the truth is, we're all just making it up as we go along, frantically googling things in the dark, and hoping we don't accidentally traumatize them.

Before you scroll down to read the messy, overly-honest answers to the questions you're probably typing into your phone right now, do yourself a favor and stock up on some honestly useful organic baby clothes so the next time your husband has to handle a blowout, he has a fighting chance.

Messy late-night questions

Did the ghost in that movie really exist?
No! Oh my god, I can't stress this enough. It was a cardboard standee of Ted Danson wearing a top hat that they left by the window on the set. There was no ghost boy. There was no haunted apartment. We all wasted so much of our youth being terrified of literal recycled paper products. The internet ruined urban legends, but honestly, good riddance to this one.

How do you get dads more involved with a new baby?
You literally just leave the house. Seriously. Stop hovering. I'm so guilty of this—Dave would be changing a diaper and I'd be standing over his shoulder like a health inspector pointing out that he used too much barrier cream. You just have to walk out the door and let them figure out their own rhythm. They'll put the diaper on slightly crooked and dress the baby in an outfit that completely clashes. The baby will survive. And more importantly, the dad will build his own confidence and stop looking at you like you're the manager of the baby.

Are those organic cotton bodysuits really worth the money?
I used to think organic clothes were just a scam to get anxious moms to spend more money, but yeah, they really are worth it. Babies have incredibly thin skin, and Maya used to get these horrible red rashes from cheap polyester blends that trapped her sweat. The Kianao ones are super breathable and they don't get all warped and stiff after you wash them eighty times. Plus, the envelope shoulders for pulling them down during blowouts are non-negotiable. I won't buy a onesie without them.

When do babies honestly start using teething toys?
Way earlier than you think. Everyone talks about teeth cutting through at like six months, but my kids started the obsessive drooling and chewing phase around three to four months. Their gums start shifting long before you see a tooth. If they're shoving their entire fist into their mouth and crying for no apparent reason, just give them the silicone panda. Even if there's no tooth, the pressure on their gums makes them feel so much better.