Baby By Justin Bieber: From Pop Song To Real Parenting

It was 3 AM, the house was entirely silent except for the hum of our busted AC unit, and I was desperately trying not to drop my firstborn child. Hunter was screaming like I had personally offended him by offering him a bottle, and I was doing that awful, heavy-eyed head nod where you keep micro-sleeping while standing up. To keep myself awake, I popped a single AirPod in and hit shuffle on my old middle school throwback playlist. Massive mistake. The beat dropped, I started bopping my head, lost my grip on the burp cloth, and suddenly I was whispering the baby by justin bieber lyrics like they were a sacred nursery rhyme. Hunter stopped crying for exactly three seconds, stared at me like I was a complete lunatic, and then threw up down my shirt. Never try to entertain yourself during a night feed. Keep it boring, keep it quiet, and just get the job done.

Fast forward a few years. I'm three kids deep, living out in rural Texas where the closest Target is a forty-minute drive, and I pack Etsy orders during whatever scattered fifteen-minute nap intervals I can get. And out of nowhere, the guy who sang that massive 2010s anthem just had an actual, human baby. The internet has been absolutely losing its collective mind over Jack Blues Bieber. But I'm just gonna be real with you—what actually caught my eye wasn't the designer newborn clothes or the endless celebrity comments on Instagram. It was the weird, glowing red light in the background of their nursery photo.

Stumbling around in the dark and the red light trick

With my oldest, Hunter (who's my absolute cautionary tale of a child because I did literally everything wrong with him, bless his heart), I used to clamp my iPhone between my teeth with the flashlight on high beam just to change his diaper at two in the morning. Let me tell y'all, that's the single dumbest thing you can do to a sleeping baby.

My doctor, Dr. Evans—who's a saint but always looks like she just ran a marathon in blue jeans—mumbled something to me once about how bright white or blue light totally wrecks your brain's ability to sleep. Apparently, your body thinks the sun just came up, so it dumps all these waking-up hormones into your bloodstream. I don't know the exact science, something about cortisol levels and circadian rhythms acting up, but I can tell you that every time I used that phone light, Hunter would be wide awake, staring at the ceiling fan for the next three hours.

So when I saw the red light in that celebrity nursery, I felt entirely vindicated. Red light has these long wavelengths that supposedly trick your brain into thinking it's still pitch dark outside, giving you just enough visibility to wipe a bottom without stepping on a rogue Hot Wheels car. We switched out the bulb in our nursery lamp to a red one a few months ago. Yes, it looks like you're living inside a submarine, and yes, my husband made fun of me for it, but I swear on my grandmother's cast iron skillet, it actually helps the baby go back to sleep. You feel like a weirdo operating in a darkroom, but when you're getting an extra hour of sleep, you stop caring what it looks like.

Of course, the lighting is only half the battle because babies are basically tiny, unpredictable space heaters. You can have the perfect red lamp, but if they're sweating through their pajamas, absolutely nobody is getting any rest. I bought the Bamboo Baby Blanket in the Universe Pattern late one night while aggressively scrolling on my phone, hid the $40 receipt from my husband, and just hoped for the best. Y'all, it's the only thing that actually works for us right now. Most blankets make my youngest sweat profusely, but bamboo has this weird natural ability to wick moisture away, so she stays cool. Plus, it has these little orange and yellow planets all over it that look really cool under the red nightlight. It's huge, too—120x120cm—so I can swaddle her tight enough that she can't break free and punch herself in the face, which was her favorite 4 AM hobby. It's soft, it washes well, and it doesn't pill up into rough little balls like the cheap polyester garbage my mother-in-law bought us.

Healing from birth is an unglamorous trainwreck

Then Hailey Bieber came out talking openly about her birth experience, mentioning leaking fluid and doing the whole unmedicated labor thing for eighteen hours. Society expects us to just bounce right back into our pre-baby jeans, but the fourth trimester is a brutal, messy collision of hormones and pain.

I remember my mom telling me to just "get up and walk it off" a few days after my second was born. Respectfully, that's absolute trash advice from a generation that thought rubbing whiskey on gums was peak medical care. Your organs have literally rearranged themselves, your hormones are crashing so hard you're sobbing at dog food commercials, and you're wearing mesh underwear that feels like a fishing net.

During that specific newborn chaos, you don't need complicated outfits for your kid. I see these Instagram moms putting their three-week-olds in tiny stiff denim overalls, and I just want to shake them. Do you know how hard it's to unbuckle miniature overalls when your hands are shaking from sleep deprivation? I just grab a basic Organic Cotton Baby Bodysuit and call it a day. Look, it's a sleeveless onesie. It's not going to win any fashion awards, but at around twenty bucks, it gets the job done. It stretches over their massive bobbleheads easily, the snaps don't require an engineering degree to close, and because it's organic cotton, it doesn't give my kids those weird red rash patches that cheap synthetic fabrics do. It catches the spit-up, you throw it in the wash, and you move on with your life.

Instead of obsessing over fitting into old clothes, scrubbing the kitchen baseboards until they shine, and hosting endless streams of extended family who just want to hold your baby while you do their dishes, put on the ugliest, largest sweatpants you own and tell everyone your front door is locked until further notice.

If you're currently trapped under a sleeping infant and trying to figure out how to survive the next twelve hours without losing your mind entirely, you can go ahead and browse Kianao's organic baby clothes while you panic-scroll from the rocking chair.

Celebrity PR statements vs my living room floor

The Biebers recently released this perfectly polished statement about their core family values being things like "Rest as Worship" and "Health as Stewardship," which is super cute for them, but my current family value is just trying to keep the dog from eating the baby's discarded floor-waffles.

Honestly, the biggest threat to our family peace right now isn't a lack of intentional core values, it's the absolute nightmare of teething. My youngest is currently sprouting four teeth at once, turning her into a feral little gremlin who tries to bite my shoulder every time I pick her up. My grandmother used to swear by rubbing a little bourbon on a baby's gums when they were fussy, which is exactly how you end up with a call from child protective services nowadays.

So instead of intoxicating my infant, we rely heavily on the Panda Teether Silicone Baby Chew Toy. It's a cute little silicone panda, but what I really appreciate about it's that it's flat enough for her chubby little fists to grip without dropping it onto the dirty rug every five seconds. I don't know the exact mechanics of infant jaw pressure, but the silicone seems thick enough that she can really gnaw on it aggressively without breaking pieces off. And more importantly, it's completely dishwasher safe. If a baby product can't go in the top rack of my dishwasher, it goes straight in the trash, because I'm absolutely not hand-washing a tiny plastic panda at nine o'clock at night.

Letting go of the picture-perfect illusion

The whole pop star having a baby phenomenon is just a funny reminder that no matter how much money you've in the bank or how many platinum records are hanging on your wall, you're still going to end up covered in an unidentifiable sticky substance at 6 AM. We're all just guessing out here in the trenches. The internet desperately wants you to believe there's a perfect, aesthetic way to raise a human being. There isn't. It's messy, it's loud, and half the time you're just praying you don't wake the toddler while you're sneaking out of the nursery.

Before you completely give up on getting any actual rest tonight, do yourself a massive favor, grab that temperature-regulating bamboo blanket so your kid stops waking up in a puddle of their own sweat, and try to get some sleep.

Why do babies wake up the absolute second you put them in the crib?

Because they can smell your fear, obviously. But really, it’s a temperature change thing. You’re warm, the crib sheets are cold. When you lay them down, their little internal alarm bells go off. Try putting a heating pad in the crib for ten minutes to warm the sheets up, then take it out right before you lay them down. It tricks them into thinking they’re still being held.

Is the red light trick genuinely better than a regular nightlight?

I thought it was internet garbage until I tried it. Regular white lights wake up your brain and make you feel alert, which is exactly what you don't want at 3 AM. The red light is creepy at first, but it genuinely keeps the baby sleepy and helps you fall back asleep faster once you're done changing the diaper.

Are organic cotton baby clothes genuinely worth the extra money?

I used to think it was a scam for wealthy people, I really did. Then my oldest broke out in full-body eczema from cheap polyester pajamas. Organic cotton breathes better, doesn't trap sweat, and isn't coated in whatever weird chemicals they use to process cheap fabrics. You don't need a massive wardrobe of it, just a few good bodysuits.

How do I survive the fourth trimester with a toddler running around?

Lower your standards until they're completely underground. Let the toddler watch way too much TV, feed them cereal for dinner, and stop apologizing for a messy house. Your only job right now is keeping two small humans alive and letting your body heal. Everything else can wait until next month.

When does teething genuinely stop ruining my life?

I'll let you know when it happens. Honestly, it comes in waves. You get a terrible week of drool and screaming, a tooth pops through, and then you get a few weeks of peace before the next one starts migrating. Just keep the dishwasher-safe teethers cold and your coffee hot.