How Do People Abadon Babies? A Letter To Myself

Dear Sarah from six months ago,

It's 2:14 AM. You're sitting on the cold, weirdly sticky tile of the upstairs bathroom floor. You're wearing Dave's gray Villanova sweatpants—the ones with the literal hole in the left knee that you keep threatening to throw away but never do—and you're staring at a news notification on your phone about an infant left at a fire station two towns over.

Your lukewarm French roast is sitting on the counter, forming that gross little film on top. Maya is crying in the bassinet down the hall. Leo is dead to the world in his superhero bed. And you're sitting there, scrolling through the comments section of this news article, feeling this tight, hot knot of righteous indignation in your chest.

You're thinking: What kind of monster does that?

You're judging her. You're sitting in your suburban house with your supportive husband and your fridge full of groceries, and you're judging a ghost. You don't know her name, her bank account balance, or the chemical state of her brain, but you're passing a verdict anyway.

I'm writing this to you from the future to tell you to stop. Just stop it right now.

The night the judgment totally broke

Fast forward a few weeks. Maya hits the four-month sleep regression. And I don't mean she wakes up an extra time or two, I mean she completely stops sleeping. She turns into this tiny, thrashing, inconsolable demon who only accepts being bounced on an exercise ball at exactly 72 beats per minute while you hum the Jurassic Park theme song.

Dave is traveling for work. My mom has the flu. It's just me, a four-year-old who suddenly forgot how to use the toilet, and a baby who hates the universe.

I remember standing in the kitchen at 4:30 AM, staring at the microwave clock. I had been awake for 38 hours straight. My hands were physically shaking. I remember grabbing my phone and trying to search for help, but my thumbs were trembling so badly I was literally just typing why is babi crying so much and how to make babie sleep into the Google bar. Seeing the word "babies" spelled wrong like that, just staring back at me on the bright screen, made me burst into hysterical, hyperventilating tears.

That was the exact moment I looked at the front door. The deadbolt was right there. My car keys were on the hook.

I had this vivid, terrifying, completely overwhelming fantasy of just putting on my coat, walking out the door, getting into my Honda CR-V, and driving to Canada. Leaving them. Just leaving them all behind because the weight of keeping them alive was literally crushing my chest cavity.

I didn't do it, obviously. I sank to the floor and drank my cold coffee and survived. But in that dark, horrifying moment, I finally understood.

What my doctor said about the dark thoughts

When Dave got home, I had a total meltdown in the garage. I told him I was losing my mind. He looked terrified, which honestly just made me mad, because his nipples are useless and he gets to sleep on airplanes.

I ended up sobbing in my doctor's office. Dr. Aris is this wonderful, no-nonsense woman who always smells like lavender and medical-grade hand sanitizer. She didn't look at me like I was a villain when I confessed that I had fantasized about walking away from my own children.

She pulled up her little rolling stool, put her hand on my knee, and basically explained that maternal brains are heavily wired for survival, but when you strip away sleep, support, and resources, that wiring just completely short-circuits. My doctor said it's like your prefrontal cortex—or whatever part of the brain makes logical decisions—just goes completely offline. You aren't acting out of malice, you're acting out of pure, unadulterated psychological trauma.

She told me that in her experience, mothers who walk away aren't doing it because they don't care. They do it because they're in the grips of a severe psychotic break, or crushing poverty, or postpartum depression that has morphed into something so heavy they literally believe their children are better off without them.

It's a sickness. Not a sin.

Anyway, the point is, she told me to get a therapist, and prescribed me some meds, and forced me to make Dave take the night shifts.

The stuff that actually helped me survive

If you're reading this at 3 AM and your hands are shaking, I want to tell you that it's okay to buy things that make your life even five percent easier. You don't get a trophy for suffering the most.

When Maya started teething on top of the sleep regression, I thought I was actually going to end up in a padded room. She was just gnawing on my collarbone, leaving these gross little wet hickeys everywhere. I frantically ordered the Panda Teether from Kianao because it looked cute and I was desperate.

Honestly? It was a godsend. It's completely flat, which makes no sense to my adult brain, but it was the exact right shape for her tiny little weird gummy mouth. She could hold the bamboo-looking part herself without dropping it every four seconds, which meant I could actually put her down and use both of my hands to make a fresh cup of coffee. It's silicone, so I just threw it in the dishwasher when it inevitably fell on the dog's bed. Totally worth it.

I also bought the Organic Cotton Baby Bodysuit. Look, I'll be completely straight with you: the fabric is incredibly soft. Like, buttery, heavenly, I-wish-they-made-adult-sweatpants-out-of-this soft. It didn't irritate Maya's eczema patches at all. BUT. The snaps. Oh god, the snaps. When it's pitch black in the nursery and you're trying to line up three tiny metal snaps on a squirming infant who's kicking like a ninja, it's frustrating. It's a gorgeous bodysuit for daytime, but maybe not the one you want to wrestle with during a blowout at midnight.

If you're spiraling right now and just need to look at pretty things to distract your brain, take a minute to browse through the organic baby clothes collection, because honestly, adding cute tiny outfits to a digital cart is a highly underrated coping mechanism.

The absolute isolation of modern motherhood

Let's talk about the real problem here.

We're supposed to raise these tiny humans in a village, right? Everyone says that. "It takes a village!" But where the hell is the village? My village is a Facebook group full of passive-aggressive women arguing about sleep training methods, and a DoorDash driver who leaves my cold fries on the porch.

Mothers are drowning.

We're expected to bounce back from childbirth in six weeks, return to work, pump milk in utility closets, keep a perfectly aesthetic home, cook organic meals, and never complain. And if you don't have money? If you don't have a Dave? If you're a teenager, or dealing with addiction, or living in your car?

It's no wonder people break. I broke, and I've every privilege in the book. Here's a list of things my sleep-deprived, mildly postpartum-depressed brain did that month:

• I put the TV remote in the freezer and screamed at Dave for losing it.
• I cried for forty-five minutes because Leo wanted his toast cut into triangles instead of squares, and I felt like a failure as a mother.
• I seriously debated putting Maya in her crib, locking the door, and sleeping in the bathtub with earmuffs on.
• I poured a full bottle of pumped breastmilk into my coffee instead of oat milk, realized my mistake, and drank it anyway.

And yet, society expects women who have zero resources to just magically hold it together.

A beautiful distraction

To keep Leo away from the baby while I was trying to soothe her, I ended up getting this Bear Teething Rattle. It's this gorgeous little crochet blue bear on a wooden ring. I originally got it for Maya to chew on, but Leo basically claimed it as his own. He carries it around and pretends it's a pet for his action figures. The wood is super smooth and untreated, so I don't freak out when Maya finally manages to steal it back and shove it in her mouth. It's one of those rare toys that doesn't blink, beep, or require batteries, which is exactly the kind of peace my sensory-overloaded brain needs right now.

The legal stuff they don't tell you

Oh, and apparently there are Safe Haven laws in every single state where you can just walk into a fire station, hospital, or police station, hand over a newborn to a staff member, and walk away totally anonymously without getting arrested, which seems like the kind of vital information they should print on those giant mesh underwear they give you at the hospital.

Some places even have these climate-controlled baby boxes built into the sides of emergency buildings so parents don't even have to look anyone in the eye.

But nobody talks about it. Because if we talk about it, we've to admit that motherhood isn't always magical. We have to admit that sometimes, the absolute safest and most loving thing a mother can do is realize she can't do it, and surrender her child to the state care system.

We'd rather judge them. It's easier to call them monsters than to admit that the system is broken and that under the right combination of sleep deprivation, poverty, and mental illness, any one of us could fall apart.

My promise to you

So, Sarah from six months ago. Stop judging.

Get off the bathroom floor. You just have to somehow force yourself to wake Dave up and hand him the screaming baby and lock yourself in the guest room for four consecutive hours of sleep.

It gets better. Maya learns how to sleep. Leo remembers how to use the toilet. The coffee still gets cold, but your brain comes back online.

Be gentle with yourself. Be gentle with other mothers. We're all just doing the best we can with the broken pieces we've got.

Before I get into the heavy, messy questions you're probably panic-googling right now, just do me a favor and check out Kianao's homepage to find something nice for yourself or your kid—you survived today, and that's enough.

The Messy FAQ

Is it completely psychotic that I want to run away from my family?

No, oh my god, NO. My therapist told me this is honestly a super common intrusive thought. When you're severely sleep-deprived and overwhelmed, your brain's fight-or-flight response gets jammed on "flight." It doesn't mean you don't love your kids, it just means your brain is begging for a break. If it gets to the point where you honestly start planning how to leave, though, you need to call a doctor right that second. Wake up your partner. Make the call.

What genuinely happens when someone drops a baby at a fire station?

Okay, so from what I understand, under Safe Haven laws, if you hand a baby (usually within a certain number of days after birth, it varies by state) to a designated emergency worker, they immediately check the baby medically. They don't call the cops to arrest you. The child welfare system takes over, and they usually place the baby with an approved adoptive family pretty quickly. It bypasses a lot of the usual red tape to keep the infant safe.

What the hell is a baby box? I keep seeing that on TikTok.

It's basically a climate-controlled, secure incubator built into the exterior wall of a fire station or hospital. A parent opens the door from the outside, places the newborn inside, and shuts the door. Once it shuts, it locks from the outside and triggers a silent alarm inside the building, so medics can retrieve the baby within seconds. It allows for 100% total anonymity, which stops panicked mothers from leaving infants in dangerous places out of fear of prosecution.

How do you survive the extreme sleep deprivation without losing your mind?

You lower every single standard you've. You let the toddler eat dry cereal for dinner. You stop folding laundry and just live out of the baskets. You wear the same sweatpants for three days. And you beg for help. If you've a partner, you split the night. It doesn't matter if they've to work the next day—childcare is work, too. I literally had to hand Maya to Dave and drive to a Target parking lot just to sleep in my car for two hours. Do whatever it takes.

Why don't mothers just use adoption agencies instead of abandoning babies?

Because logic doesn't exist in a crisis. Navigating adoption paperwork requires executive function, internet access, transportation, and a clear head. If a mother is suffering from severe postpartum psychosis, hiding a pregnancy from an abusive partner, or living on the streets, she's in survival mode. She's not thinking five steps ahead; she's reacting to the immediate terror of the present moment.