Surviving the All Day Baby Phase

It was 3:14 AM on a Tuesday, and I was staring at a half-eaten cold Pop-Tart while swaying aggressively in the dark. My oldest, who's now five and a walking cautionary tale for why we don't negotiate with terrorists, was screaming his little lungs out. My mother-in-law had just told me that morning over a cup of coffee I never got to finish that I just needed to put him on a schedule and sleep when the baby sleeps. Bless her heart. That's the single biggest lie ever sold to modern mothers, because there's no schedule, there's no catching up on rest, and there's only the all day baby.

I'm just gonna be real with you, the idea that infants do anything on a predictable timeline is a myth perpetrated by people who haven't had an infant in thirty years. When you bring that tiny potato home from the hospital, you're clocked in for a twenty-four-hour shift that doesn't end until they go to kindergarten. You don't have a morning baby and a night baby, you've a continuous loop of feeding, burping, changing, and praying for silence.

Instead of making yourself crazy trying to force a rigid routine that just ends with both of you crying on the nursery floor, you kind of just have to surrender to the absolute chaos of it all and accept that the laundry is going to live in that basket for the next three months.

My pediatrician and the sleep math that makes no sense

At our one-month checkup, Dr. Evans handed me a flimsy photocopied pamphlet that claimed newborns sleep something like fourteen to seventeen hours a day. I swear I laughed right in his face. I asked him where he was hiding those hours, because my kid was awake and demanding tribute every forty-five minutes. He kind of chuckled and explained that the sleep is scattered into all these tiny, agonizing little bursts, which I guess means your body never actually hits deep sleep before you're jolted awake again by a phantom cry.

Understanding what the day actually looks like helps you realize you aren't doing anything wrong, you're just existing in the hardest phase of human development. Here's what my reality actually looked like during those early months:

The phantom cries in the shower: You finally put them down, you step into the hot water for two seconds, and your brain immediately manufactures the sound of a screaming infant over the running water.
The endless cluster feeding: I think my pediatrician said something about feeding on demand every two to three hours, but there were days it felt like my oldest was attached to me from sunrise to sunset.
The mountain of bodily fluids: Nobody prepares you for the sheer volume of diapers, which is easily like ten or twelve a day, meaning you're constantly wiping, tossing, and washing your hands until they crack.

My grandma used to swear that the trick to getting them to sleep longer was wrapping them up in heavy, thick quilts, which is terrifying now that we know about safe sleep practices and keeping the crib completely bare. I was terrified of him overheating, but I also desperately needed him to stop flailing his arms and waking himself up. That's when I found the Bamboo Baby Blanket with the Colorful Leaves Design from Kianao. I'm usually pretty cheap with baby gear, but I justified the price because the sleep deprivation was seriously making me hallucinate.

It ended up being the best thing I bought. The bamboo fabric is incredibly lightweight and breathable, so I never felt that panic about him getting too hot in our stuffy Texas house, but it had just enough weight to make him feel secure when I used it for a tight swaddle. Plus, it's organic and didn't trigger that weird red rash he used to get from synthetic fabrics, which was a massive relief when you're already dealing with a million other things.

The witching hour is genuinely four hours long

I don't know who coined the term "witching hour," but they were severely downplaying the situation. With all three of my kids, right around five o'clock in the evening, they would just flip a switch and turn into inconsolable gargoyles. This phase usually lasts until about nine or ten at night. You spend all day catering to their every whim, and then your partner walks in the door from work right as the house descends into pure auditory madness.

I read somewhere that their little nervous systems are just short-circuiting from all the stimulation of the day, or maybe it has to do with my own milk supply dropping in the evening, but honestly, nobody really seems to know for sure. It's just a developmental mystery that you've to suffer through. You bounce on the yoga ball until your knees pop, you do the aggressive shushing right by their ear, you walk them outside into the humid night air hoping a mosquito doesn't carry them away. It's a test of sheer endurance.

We'd try everything. The sound machine, the dark room, skin-to-skin contact. Some nights the only thing that worked was putting him in the carrier and pacing the exact same worn-out track on our living room rug while I doom-scrolled on my phone just to keep my eyes open. It feels endless when you're in it, but I promise the evening scream-fests do eventually taper off around three or four months old.

Oh, and my pediatrician mentioned we only need to bathe them maybe twice a week because their skin dries out so easily, so at least you don't have to worry about forcing a soothing bedtime bath into that evening chaos.

Stuff you seriously need versus the internet fluff

When you're stuck on the couch all day with a baby sleeping on your chest, you do a lot of online shopping. The targeted ads know you're vulnerable. I've bought so much useless junk trying to fix whatever problem we were having that week, but I've also learned what really holds up to the reality of having three kids under five.

Here are a few things that really matter when you're dealing with a baby round the clock:

A massive water bottle with a straw: If you've to unscrew a cap, you're never going to drink it because you only ever have one hand free.
Snacks that don't make crumbs: Eating a crumbly granola bar over a sleeping infant is a rookie mistake that will wake them up immediately.
Clothes that don't complicate diaper changes: You're doing this ten times a day, so buttons are your enemy and zippers are your best friend.

Speaking of clothes, I'm just gonna be real with you about the Organic Cotton Baby Bodysuit Sleeveless. It's fine. Kianao makes it incredibly soft, and it definitely holds up in the wash way better than those cheap five-packs I bought from the big box stores that basically disintegrated after two weeks. But honestly? A sleeveless bodysuit means you constantly have to figure out layers if your house has aggressive air conditioning like mine does, or you've to deal with putting a sweater over a squirmy baby's arms. It's great for July in Texas, but it's not a magic wardrobe solution for the whole year.

If you really want to stock up on things that make your life easier, check out Kianao's organic baby clothing collection for stuff that honestly stretches and breathes without giving your kid weird eczema flare-ups.

What they do when they're finally awake

When they aren't sleeping or eating or crying, you suddenly realize you've to entertain them. The CDC and AAP apparently say we should be doing zero screen time before they're eighteen months old, which I guess makes sense for brain development, but I mostly try to follow it just because I don't want my kid addicted to singing animated vegetables before they can even walk.

But entertaining a potato is hard. They can't do anything. I used to just narrate whatever I was doing. "Mommy is fulfilling an Etsy order for customized burlap sacks because Mommy needs to pay the electric bill." I'm pretty sure my oldest's first word was almost 'shipping label.'

You also have to do tummy time, which my kids universally despised. They would just lay there and faceplant into the floor and scream. To distract them from the misery of building neck strength, we used the Wooden Baby Gym with the Rainbow Play Set. It's honestly really pretty, not like those giant plastic neon monstrosities that flash lights and play off-key circus music. The natural wood looks nice in my living room, and the little animal toys hanging down gave them something to stare at and eventually swat at when their motor skills finally kicked in around three months.

The teething monster phase

Right when you think you've survived the fourth trimester and the endless days start to find a little bit of a rhythm, the teeth start moving. Suddenly your somewhat predictable infant turns back into an all day baby, but this time they're drooling buckets and chewing on your shoulder bone.

My pediatrician said some babies don't even notice teething, but clearly my genetics are weak because all three of mine acted like they were passing a kidney stone every time a tooth erupted. The low-grade fever, the flushed cheeks, the night wakings all come roaring back.

When my second kid was teething, I finally stopped trying to use those weird frozen washcloths that just thaw out in three seconds anyway, and I got the Panda Teether Silicone Bamboo Chew Toy. It's BPA-free food-grade silicone, which is a big deal to me because I don't trust whatever plastics are in those dollar-store toys they just gnaw on all day. It's flat enough that he could seriously grip it himself without dropping it every five seconds, and I could just throw it in the dishwasher with the bottles at the end of the night. Worth every single penny when it buys you twenty minutes of peace.

The hormone crash and tagging out

Let's talk about the postpartum hormone drop, because nobody warned me how intense it would be. Combine the sleep deprivation of the all day baby with a massive chemical shift in your brain, and you get a mom who cries because her husband bought the wrong brand of paper towels. It's heavy, and it's messy.

If you've a partner, you've to tag team. You can't do the twenty-four-hour shift by yourself. When my husband got home from work, I'd physically hand him the baby and go lock myself in the bedroom for an hour. I didn't even sleep, I just laid there in the quiet staring at the ceiling fan so nobody was touching me. You have to ask for help, loudly and clearly, because people will assume you've it handled just because you managed to put on pants that day.

You're going to make it through this. The days are incredibly long, but one morning you'll wake up and realize they slept for four hours straight, and the fog will start to lift.

Before you completely lose your mind trying to do it all, grab the essentials that seriously work for your family. Shop our full collection of sustainable, organic baby goods and make these long days just a tiny bit softer.

FAQ: Surviving the endless days

How do I get anything done with an all day baby?
You don't. Seriously, lower your expectations to the floor and then dig a hole and lower them some more. If I managed to feed myself and keep the baby alive, the day was a wild success. Get a baby carrier so you can strap them to your chest and have two hands free to make a sandwich, but let the house get messy. It's fine.

Why does my baby cry every time I put them down?
Because they were literally inside a warm, noisy, squished fluid sack for nine months and now they're out in the cold, bright world. They don't know they're a separate person from you yet. My pediatrician said you can't spoil a newborn, so just hold them. It's exhausting, but it's normal.

Is the witching hour real or is my baby just mad at me?
Oh, it's very real, and it has nothing to do with you. Usually starting around two or three weeks old, they just lose their minds in the evening. Just pass the baby back and forth with your partner, step outside for fresh air, and know that it eventually goes away on its own.

When do babies seriously get on a schedule?
With my oldest, I tried forcing a schedule at two months and we both just cried all day. With my third, I just followed his lead and around four or five months he naturally started taking naps at roughly the same times every day. Stop looking at the clock and start looking for yawns and eye-rubbing.

How do I deal with the constant anxiety of doing it wrong?
Stop looking at Instagram. Seriously. Those perfectly curated moms with their beige nurseries and their sleeping infants are only showing you a five-second clip of their day. Every single one of us is wearing spit-up and wondering if we're ruining our kids. You're doing a great job, just keep going.