Real Talk: The "That's My Baby She's Iconic" Trend Is Exhausting

Dear Sarah from six months ago,

You're currently sitting on the edge of the master bathtub at 2:14 AM wearing those gray sweatpants with the bleach stain on the thigh, and you're literally crying into a mug of coffee that went cold four hours ago. Dave just walked in, looked at you, looked at your phone screen, sighed heavily, and went back to bed without saying a word, which honestly is the only correct response to what you're doing right now. You're frantically scrolling through your camera roll trying to find a perfectly aesthetic, beige-toned video of Leo from when he was an infant so you can stitch it together to that viral Justin Bieber audio about your kid being an absolute icon.

Stop it. Just put the phone down, wipe your face with that half-used baby wipe on the counter, and go to sleep, because I promise you, absolutely none of this matters.

I know you're exhausted and you feel like you're somehow failing at modern motherhood because your actual life looks nothing like the inside of a minimalist influencer's house. You've got a seven-year-old, Maya, who currently refuses to wear anything except a neon Elsa dress that smells faintly of old ketchup, and four-year-old Leo who thinks the dog's water bowl is a sensory bin. But you're looking at these women on TikTok handing their perfectly styled six-month-olds a Rhode lip gloss phone case and thinking, why isn't my baby like that?

Dave thinks I've completely lost my mind over a phone case

Here's the reality of that stupid lip gloss phone case trend that you're currently obsessing over. You were actually considering buying one of those cases, emptying out the gloss, and giving it to Leo to hold for a video, which is honestly the most deranged thought you've had since you considered making homemade organic oat milk at 3 AM postpartum.

When we took Leo to his checkup last month, Dr. Aris—who already looks at me like I'm a slightly unhinged liability—basically told me that giving adult cosmetics to a teething child is a spectacular way to end up in the emergency room. He mumbled something about how adult makeup is just a cocktail of endocrine disruptors and lead, and how those tiny plastic caps are basically weaponized choking hazards just waiting to happen. I didn't fully grasp the exact biochemistry of it, obviously, because I was operating on three hours of sleep and staring at a poster about ear infections, but the gist was that playing Russian roulette with Sephora products so you can get a hundred likes from strangers on the internet is, like, a really bad parenting strategy.

And yet, six months ago, there you were, convinced that if you just got the lighting right, you could participate in the trend. Insanity.

By the way, if you need a mid-night distraction that won't make you feel like garbage, you can look through some stuff that's actually meant for kids instead of adult aesthetic props. Just saying.

The internet is rotting our brains and I'm part of the problem

The whole "sharenting" thing is out of control and you know it. We're all out here just freely broadcasting our kids' faces, their tantrums, their outfits, their exact locations to the entire planet because we desperately need another exhausted mother in Ohio to comment "omg so cute!" to validate our existence. Dave has been telling me for years that putting the kids online is a massive digital footprint nightmare, and I always brushed him off because I thought he was just being a paranoid tech-bro, but he's right.

We don't know who's looking at these videos. We don't know where they end up. And trying to force your baby to be an internet icon before they can even form a complete sentence is just gross when you really sit with it. Oh, and some child psychology article I skimmed at a red light last week said we're supposed to be praising their effort and kindness instead of their superficial aesthetic, which, sure, fine.

That wooden rattle you almost threw away

Do you remember when Leo was actually a baby and teething so badly that he was chewing on the edges of the coffee table like a feral beaver? You wanted to give him your phone case to chew on because it was "convenient." Thank god Dave intervened and handed him that Bear Teething Rattle Wooden Ring.

I'm going to be perfectly honest here. When Dave first bought that thing, I hated it. I thought it looked like something a hipster woodsman would whittle on a porch in Vermont. There were no lights. No annoying electronic songs. Just a crochet bear head and a piece of raw wood. I thought it was boring. But Leo? Oh god, he was obsessed with it. It became the holy grail of our household. He would gnaw on that untreated beechwood for hours while I chugged my lukewarm coffee and tried to remember what day it was. The cotton yarn was soft enough that it didn't completely destroy his gums, and it was seriously safe. No toxic battery acid, no lead paint, no lip gloss chemicals. Just a stupidly simple, totally perfect wooden bear that saved my sanity. That rattle was the real icon of his baby years.

Aesthetic clothes won't fix your mental health

While we're having this reality check, let's talk about the clothes. Six months ago, you were stressing about how Leo's baby pictures didn't look cohesive. You bought that Organic Cotton Baby Bodysuit thinking it was going to miraculously transform him into one of those serene, neutral-toned children who sit quietly in sunbeams.

It's just a onesie, Sarah.

Is it soft? Yes. Is it nice that it's made of organic cotton so it didn't trigger those weird red eczema patches he used to get on his chest? Definitely. The fabric is super stretchy and it held up in the wash, which is great. But it didn't stop him from having a catastrophic blowout in the middle of Target. It didn't make him an aesthetic genius. It's just a really good basic piece of clothing that fits well and doesn't have toxic dyes. And that's all it needs to be. You don't need it to be a prop in a viral video. You just need it to catch spit-up.

And remember when you tried to film that video and realized the background of our living room looked like a toy store exploded? You grabbed the Organic Cotton Baby Blanket with the Squirrel Print and desperately tried to drape it over the hideous blue couch to hide the laundry pile. The blanket is beautiful, by the way. It's ridiculously soft and Maya still tries to steal it to use as a cape. But it couldn't hide the reality of our messy, loud, chaotic life.

Anyway, the point is, you've to let this go. You have to stop trying to make your kids fit into a 15-second audio clip for strangers. Your baby is not an icon. Your baby is a sticky, loud, irrational tiny human who currently has a Cheerio stuck to their forehead, and that's exactly what they're supposed to be.

Drink your cold coffee. Wash your face. Go hug your kids. They're fine.

Ready to ditch the viral trends and just focus on what seriously works? Shop KIANAO's collection of safe, sustainable baby essentials right here.

The messy FAQ nobody asked for

Are those viral lip gloss phone cases safe for babies to play with?

Oh god no. Listen, my doctor literally rolled his eyes at me when I even brought it up. Adult cosmetics are packed with stuff that shouldn't be anywhere near a teething baby's mouth, like endocrine disruptors and weird heavy metals. Plus, those little caps are basically the exact size of a baby's windpipe. Keep your Sephora haul away from the infant, trust me.

How do I stop worrying about my baby's digital footprint?

Dave made me delete like half my Instagram history last year and honestly, it felt like a weird weight lifted off my chest. You don't have to go totally off the grid, but maybe just stop trying to force your kids into public TikTok trends? Sharing a cute photo with your grandma on a private group chat is one thing, but blasting their face to three million strangers just isn't worth the anxiety. They'll thank you when they're teenagers.

Are organic cotton clothes genuinely worth the money or is it a scam?

I used to think it was just marketing nonsense for wealthy moms who drink green juice, but honestly, it kind of matters if your kid has garbage skin like mine. Leo used to get these awful rashes from synthetic fabrics, and buying that Kianao organic bodysuit genuinely helped because it doesn't have all those harsh chemical treatments. It's not magic, they'll still ruin it with spaghetti sauce, but it's way gentler on their skin.

What kind of teether is seriously safe if they chew on everything?

I'm deeply obsessed with the wooden and crochet ones now. Plastic freaks me out because I never know what's leaching out of it when they chew on it for three straight hours. A raw, untreated wooden ring with a 100% cotton attachment—like the bear one Dave bought—is basically indestructible, totally safe, and doesn't play a robotic song that will haunt your nightmares.

How do I get my toddler to stop chewing on my phone?

You literally have to hide it. I started putting my phone on top of the fridge because Leo thought it was his personal chew toy. Redirect them with a real teether, hand them a snack, or just accept that you're going to have a screen covered in drool for the next year. It's a phase. A really gross phase.