Why the Kali Uchis Baby Approach Actually Works for Normal Moms

There I was, wedged between the humming dryer and a towering basket of unfolded towels at 2:32 AM, bouncing a highly agitated four-month-old on my hip while desperately scrolling my phone with my thumb just to stay awake. Out here in rural Texas, the nights get so quiet you can hear the coyotes howling two miles over, which does absolutely nothing for my postpartum anxiety. My youngest was in the middle of a sleep regression that felt like a personal attack, and I was deep in an internet rabbit hole when I stumbled across an interview about the new Kali Uchis baby and her whole outlook on this circus we call motherhood. Now, I normally roll my eyes right out of my head at celebrity parenting advice because, bless their hearts, they've night nurses and chefs and I've a microwave burritos and a mountain of Etsy orders to pack by dawn. But something she said stopped me in my tracks and made me look down at the sweaty, crying potato in my arms differently.

She was talking about rejecting the entire modern internet-mom aesthetic, keeping her kid off the internet, refusing to bounce back, and just keeping her baby close instead of shipping him off to a nursery down the hall. It sounded so aggressively normal that it felt radical. It made me realize how much time I spend beating myself up for not running my family like a perfectly curated Instagram grid, and it sent me on a whole messy journey of undoing everything I thought I knew about raising these three wild kids of mine.

My mom's terrible sleep advice

If you've ever had a baby, you know the absolute chokehold sleep advice has on your life. My mom, who I love dearly, is from the generation where you just put the baby in a crib in a dark room, shut the door, and let them figure out their feelings. With my oldest—who's now five and is my daily cautionary tale—I listened to her. I tried the whole "cry it out" thing because I thought I was supposed to, and let me tell you, it was a disaster. He screamed, I cried into a pillow, and to this day that child won't sleep alone without a dramatic negotiation involving three specific stuffed animals and a glass of water.

When my pediatrician casually mentioned at our last checkup that keeping the baby in our room for the first year supposedly cuts down on all those scary nighttime risks by like half, it sounded like magic to me. Supposedly their little brains are wiring themselves for emotional regulation when we respond to them, which I don't totally understand the science of, but I can definitely tell you that having my four-month-old right next to my bed in his bassinet makes my life infinitely easier. The whole Kali Uchis philosophy of just keeping your kids close for the first three years because they need you more than ever really resonated with my exhausted soul. I don't have to walk down a freezing hallway in the middle of the night; I just reach over, drag him into bed to nurse, and we both fall back asleep while my husband snores through the whole thing.

I do try to make sure he's at least comfortable while he's glued to my side all night. I'm basically obsessed with the Organic Cotton Baby Bodysuit Sleeveless Infant Onesie for nighttime because it's literally the only piece of clothing that survived my middle child's epic blowouts and still looked pristine enough to pass down to this baby. It's incredibly soft and stretchy, which is great when you're trying to wrestle a screaming infant into it at 3 AM in the dark, though to be completely honest, I sometimes hate how hard it's to match the muted earth tones with the obnoxious neon hand-me-down pants my sister gave me, but whatever, nobody sees us at night anyway.

The truth about those postpartum jeans

Let me just be real with you for a second because I've absolutely zero patience left for the snap-back culture that has infected every corner of the internet. You see these influencers posting selfies in their pre-pregnancy jeans exactly eleven days after giving birth, and it makes you want to throw your phone directly into the nearest creek. It's a toxic, exhausting lie that we're all supposed to just shrink back down like nothing happened, ignoring the fact that our bodies literally grew a human spine from scratch.

I read that Kali Uchis explicitly refused to take those new weight-loss shots like Ozempic to drop her baby weight, saying she wouldn't play with her health because she wants longevity for her child. That hit me right in my squishy, scarred, C-section shelf. When I had my first, I practically starved myself trying to fit into my old cutoff shorts for a summer barbecue, and I ended up so dizzy I almost dropped a plate of brisket. The maternal health folks always say it takes a full year for your hormones to level out and for your body to heal, but somehow we all think we're the exception to basic biology.

I've decided to violently reject the idea that my body is a problem to be solved. It took me three kids to get here, but I finally threw away my scale and bought pants that actually fit the body I've right now, because my baby doesn't care if my stomach jiggles when I bounce him, he only cares that I'm soft and warm and smell like milk. If you're currently crying in a Target dressing room, please know that you're doing just fine and those high-waisted jeans are lying to you.

Honestly, the teething phase is starting now too and everyone tells me to freeze wet washcloths or buy fancy gel rings, but I usually just hand him whatever safe object is clean and hope for the best. I did buy that Panda Teether Silicone Baby Bamboo Chew Toy, and it's fine. It does the job when he's cranky and I appreciate that it doesn't look completely obnoxious, but realistically half the time my kid prefers gnawing aggressively on my actual collarbone, though the panda is way easier to wash when it inevitably falls in the dirt driveway.

Why my kids are no longer on the internet

Running a small Etsy shop out of a spare bedroom means I spend a ridiculous amount of time on social media trying to game the algorithm so someone will buy my custom diaper bags. For a long time, I used my oldest son as a little billboard. I posted his face everywhere, documenting every cute thing he did, thinking it made my brand relatable. But when the news broke that Kali Uchis deleted most of her social apps during pregnancy and absolutely refuses to post her son's face because "kids aren't public property," I felt this horrible knot form in my stomach.

I started reading up on digital footprints, and apparently cybersecurity people say kids these days have thousands of photos circulating online before they even hit middle school. It made me feel sick. I had never asked my son for permission to broadcast his meltdowns or his bath times to strangers on the internet. So, I made some massive changes to how I operate, and it was the hardest but best thing I've done for our family's privacy.

• I permanently deleted Facebook from my home screen so I stop doom-scrolling when I should be watching them play.
• I went back and scrubbed my business accounts of any recognizable photos of my kids' faces.
• I started buying physical, real-world toys instead of relying on the iPad to babysit them while I work.
• I told my extended family, in no uncertain terms, that they're not allowed to post photos of my baby on their public profiles.

It’s caused some drama with my mother-in-law, bless her heart, but I don't even care anymore. My kids deserve to grow up without an audience.

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Trying to play on the floor when there's laundry to do

The hardest thing for me to unlearn has been the constant need to hustle. My immigrant grandma worked three jobs just to keep the lights on, and she passed down this deep-seated belief that if you aren't working, you're failing. I took that trauma, wrapped it in a bow, and called it "running a small business." I used to pack orders with one hand while shushing the baby with the other, completely ignoring my own burnout until I'd snap at my husband over something stupid like the way he loaded the dishwasher.

I guess there was some advisory from the Surgeon General recently about how nearly half of all parents are so stressed they can barely function, which is the most validating and depressing thing I've ever heard. Hearing how deliberate Kali Uchis is about setting work-life boundaries to break her own family's generational cycle of hustle culture really made me look in the mirror. You just have to force yourself to close the laptop, ignore the sink full of dishes, and sit on the rug with your kid for a few minutes every morning before the day derails.

To keep myself accountable, I got the Wooden Baby Gym | Rainbow Play Gym Set with Animal Toys and set it up right in the middle of my living room. It's actually really beautiful and doesn't light up or make horrendous electronic noises, which is a massive win in my book. I make myself sit there with my coffee for exactly 15 minutes while he bats at the little wooden elephant. I don't check emails, I don't fold clothes. I just watch him learn how his hands work. It sounds so simple, but those 15 minutes usually reset my brain enough to keep me from losing my temper when my oldest inevitably spills cereal all over the kitchen floor an hour later.

Oh, and if you've a little girl, my middle daughter practically lived in the Flutter Sleeve Organic Cotton Baby Bodysuit Ruffled Infant Romper. It's incredibly soft and she looked adorable in it, though I'll warn you that if they eat spaghetti while wearing it, that flutter sleeve is going to act like a mop and you'll be soaking it in stain remover for two days.

Motherhood is loud, messy, and mostly done on zero sleep. But if we can learn anything from the folks who step back from the spotlight to just be present with their babies, it's that we don't have to perform for anybody. We can just be here, in our stretchy pants, doing the best we can.

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The messy questions y'all keep asking me

How do you handle relatives who want to post your baby online?
Look, I had to get real blunt about this. I literally sent a text to the family group chat saying, "Hey y'all, we're keeping the baby off social media, please don't post his face." My aunt threw a minor fit about not being able to show him off to her church group, but I just blamed it on "internet safety" and stood my ground. You just have to embrace being the bad guy for a minute.

Did keeping the baby in your room ruin your sleep?
Honestly? No. It saved my sleep. Every time he grunts I don't have to physically get out of bed to go check the monitor in a panic. I just crack one eye open, see him breathing in his bassinet, and go back to sleep. My husband wore earplugs for the first month, bless him, but we all adjusted.

How do you seriously find time for floor play when you work from home?
I don't "find" time, I've to aggressively steal it from my chores. The laundry will literally always be there. The Etsy orders can wait 15 minutes. I just plop down next to his wooden gym the second I wake up, before I even let myself look at my phone. If I wait until I've "free time," it never happens.

What if I can't afford all the fancy organic baby stuff?
I'm just gonna be real with you: babies don't need a lot of stuff. If you're on a budget, buy two or three really good quality organic onesies that you wash constantly, and get the rest secondhand. Spend your money on the things that touch their skin the most, and ignore the pressure to buy a wipe warmer or whatever other useless junk the internet tells you that you need.

Is attachment parenting going to make my kid clingy?
My pediatrician laughed when I asked this and said you can't spoil a baby. My oldest kid, the one I tried to sleep-train and make independent early on? He's the one who won't leave my side at birthday parties. The baby I'm wearing all day and sleeping next to seems totally chill. They just need to know you'll answer when they call, and then they eventually figure out how to wander off on their own.