The Sherry Baby Search That Saved Me

It was 3:14 AM and I was wearing a pair of gray sweatpants that had a mysterious crusty stain on the left knee which could have been spit-up or maybe hummus from two days ago. The biggest lie they tell you about motherhood is that the second they put that slippery, screaming little human on your chest in the hospital, the clouds will part and you'll instantly be flooded with this pure, unadulterated, magical maternal instinct that tells you exactly what to do. Total bullshit.

I was sitting in the dark in our cramped living room, violently rocking Maya—who's seven now but was at that time a colicky little potato of rage—and watching a grainy stream of the movie Sherrybaby on my iPad with the brightness turned all the way down so I wouldn't wake up my husband Dave, who was snoring in the bedroom like he didn't have a care in the goddamn world. If you haven't seen the movie, it's this incredibly gritty, R-rated indie drama from 2006 starring Maggie Gyllenhaal. She plays a young mom who just got out of prison and is battling addiction and desperately trying to reconnect with her toddler. It's heavy. It's dark.

And sitting there, completely sober but totally out of my mind with sleep deprivation, I realized that the absolute panic and desperation in Maggie's eyes as she tried to figure out how to just be a mother felt wildly, uncomfortably relatable. Because nobody tells you that the postpartum period feels a little bit like you've been dropped onto an alien planet without a map, and you're just supposed to smile and post cute pictures on Instagram while your nipples bleed. Wild.

Down the 3 AM algorithm rabbit hole of maternal experts

So obviously, because I was awake and my brain was running on half a cup of lukewarm coffee and pure anxiety, I pulled out my phone and googled "sherry baby" with one hand while trying to keep Maya's pacifier in her mouth with my chin. I was trying to find out if the real woman the movie was supposedly based on ever got her life together, because honestly, I needed a win right then. I needed to know that someone who felt that hopeless figured it out.

But the Google algorithm is a weird, invasive beast, and maybe it had been listening to my exhausted crying for the last three weeks, because it didn't just give me IMDB trivia about Maggie Gyllenhaal. It gave me this bizarrely specific army of maternal and infant doctors who were all, coincidentally, named Sherry. Or Shari. It was like I had accidentally typed in an incantation that summoned a coven of highly credentialed fairy godmothers who actually understood how badly I was drowning.

There was Dr. Sherry Ross, an OB/GYN who actually talks about the physical wreckage of having a baby in a way that doesn't make you feel like a defective machine. When I had my six-week checkup, my own doctor basically patted me on the shoulder, handed me a blurry photocopy of some kegel exercises, and said I was "cleared for normal activity." Normal activity? Are you kidding me? My pelvic floor felt like a stretched-out rubber band that had been left in the sun for six years. I'm pretty sure the medical community just expects us to ignore the fact that our organs literally rearranged themselves and we're just supposed to bounce back and fit into our pre-pregnancy jeans by Thanksgiving. Anyway, reading Dr. Sherry's stuff about how your body just went through a massive physiological trauma and you need actual, dedicated recovery time made me start sobbing right there on the couch. Relief.

You can browse through some of the baby stuff that actually made my life easier during that blurry first year if you want.

When feeding feels like a full contact sport

Then there was Shari, an RN and lactation consultant who showed up in the search results, talking about infant feeding in a way that didn't make me want to throw my breast pump through a closed window. I don't know exactly what the AAP says about the exact percentage of women who struggle with breastfeeding, but my entirely unscientific guess based on my friend group is literally all of them.

My pediatrician, Dr. Gupta—who's a very nice man but has definitely never tried to get a screaming infant to latch onto a swollen, cracked breast—kept telling me to "just keep trying, it's the most natural thing in the world." Yeah, well, bears eating people in the woods is also natural, but that doesn't mean it's fun. I was hooked up to this motorized pump that sounded like a dying robot, pumping out maybe an ounce of milk while Maya screamed in her bassinet, and I felt like an absolute failure of a mother. Finding a lactation expert online who basically said, hey, this is really hard, it's okay if you need to use a nipple shield, it's okay if you need to supplement, it's okay if you hate it—it was like someone finally gave me permission to breathe.

And because feeding was such a nightmare, everything else felt ten times harder, especially keeping Maya's skin from breaking out. She had this awful baby eczema, probably because she was constantly covered in a mix of my tears, spilled breastmilk, and whatever synthetic crap her cheap onesies were made of. I eventually bought the Organic Cotton Baby Bodysuit from Kianao and I'm not exaggerating when I say I bought six more the next week. The organic cotton seriously let her skin breathe instead of trapping all that heat and moisture, and the flutter sleeves were cute but the real win was that the neck stretched enough that I could pull it down over her body when she had a massive, up-the-back blowout, rather than pulling poop over her head. I saved them all, and when my son Leo was born three years later, he wore them too. They literally survived hundreds of washes and never got that weird, stiff feeling that cheap cotton gets. Worth it.

Nervous system meltdowns and my hatred of plastic toys

But the real revelation from my 3 AM search was discovering Sherry Levota, a pediatric occupational therapist who talks about infant nervous systems. My understanding of brain science is severely limited by my chronic exhaustion, but basically, she explained that babies get sensory overload just like we do.

My house looked like a plastic factory exploded. Everything we got from our baby shower was neon colored, made loud robotic noises, and flashed flashing LED lights. Maya would lie under this one plastic activity mat we had and just totally melt down after five minutes. I thought she was just a grumpy baby. But apparently, flashing lights and electronic versions of "Old MacDonald" played at a shrill, tinny pitch are incredibly overstimulating for a tiny brain that's just trying to figure out how to focus its eyes.

I eventually packed all the plastic crap into a garbage bag and shoved it in the attic, and got the Rainbow Play Gym Set instead. I can't tell you how much of a difference it made. It's just a simple wooden A-frame with these really soft, muted animal toys hanging from it. No lights. No batteries. No awful music. Maya would genuinely lie under it and quietly bat at the little wooden rings for like, twenty straight minutes, which gave me exactly enough time to make a fresh cup of coffee and stare blankly at the wall. It just felt so much calmer, like it was respecting her space instead of screaming at her to be entertained.

Oh, I also bought a Bubble Tea Teether from them later on when she started teething, mostly because Dave thought it was hilarious that it looked like a boba drink. It's fine. It's safe silicone and easy to wash, but honestly, Maya almost always preferred to just violently chew on my knuckles or the TV remote, so it mostly ended up living at the bottom of my diaper bag gathering lint. Babies are weird like that. Whatever.

You don't have to be in a movie to need a village

Anyway, the point is, I spent so much time during those first few months thinking I was the only one who didn't know what I was doing. I thought because I had a nice apartment and a supportive partner and I wasn't, you know, fighting for custody after getting out of jail like Maggie Gyllenhaal's character, that I wasn't allowed to complain or ask for help. But maternal mental health isn't a competition. If you're struggling, you're struggling.

I eventually figured out that you don't really get a medal for doing this alone, so paying for an IBCLC to help with feeding or talking to a therapist who understands postpartum anxiety is basically the only way to survive without losing your actual mind. The experts are out there. You just have to stop pretending you're fine long enough to google them.

If you're currently hiding in the bathroom eating stale crackers just to get two minutes away from your screaming infant, maybe take a second to grab something nice that will honestly make your life a tiny bit easier, right here at Kianao before you've to go back out there.

The messy questions everyone googles at 3 AM

Are wooden play gyms genuinely better or just prettier?

Honestly, it's a little bit of both. Yeah, they look way better in your living room than a massive neon plastic monstrosity, but from what I've learned from actual occupational therapists, they're genuinely better for the baby's brain. Too many lights and noises just freak them out. The wooden ones let them focus on one thing at a time without getting overstimulated, which means they might honestly play independently for five minutes so you can pee alone.

How the hell do I know if my baby is teething or just mad?

Dude, I never knew. With Leo, he just drooled so much he soaked through three bibs an hour, and he would chew on literally anything—including my shoulder. My pediatrician said to look for swollen red gums, but good luck getting a baby to hold their mouth open so you can look. If they're shoving their fists in their mouth constantly and waking up screaming at 2 AM, it's probably teeth. Give them something cold to chew on and pray.

Is organic cotton really worth the extra money?

If your kid has perfect, indestructible skin, maybe not. But Maya had awful eczema and every time I put her in cheap polyester-blend clothes, she would break out in these angry red patches behind her knees and on her chest. Organic cotton is grown without the nasty chemicals, and it just breathes better. For us, spending a few extra bucks on clothes that didn't make her scratch herself bloody was a no-brainer.

Why does everyone talk about the fourth trimester?

Because human babies are born useless. I read somewhere—and don't quote me on the exact science here—that if human babies stayed in the womb until they could genuinely survive on their own like horses or whatever, our heads would be too big to fit through the pelvis. So they come out three months early. That first three months is just them realizing they aren't inside you anymore and being absolutely furious about it. Swaddle them, hold them, and just survive it.

Should I watch that movie if I'm newly postpartum?

Oh god, no. Don't watch heavy indie dramas about maternal trauma when you're three weeks postpartum and your hormones are plummeting. Watch a baking show. Watch someone organize a closet on Netflix. Save the intense Maggie Gyllenhaal movies for when your kid is like, four, and you can handle feeling feelings again without spiraling.