Why the all on me lil baby track hits different as a London dad

Tom
2026-05-03T05:39:27+02:00

It was 2:14 PM on a grim, relentlessly drizzly Tuesday in London, and I was on my hands and knees scraping something that I desperately hoped was mashed avocado off the skirting board. Twin A (Florence) was howling on the rug because her socks were "too bumpy," a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions. Twin B (Matilda) was systematically emptying a £4 box of water wipes onto the floor with the dead-eyed, mechanical focus of an assembly line worker.

I had my phone on shuffle, trying to drown out the noise with a mid-2000s indie playlist that used to make me feel cool before I owned a nappy bin. But the Spotify algorithm, in its infinite and twisted wisdom, decided to skip genres entirely. Suddenly, the opening notes of a very specific, bass-heavy rap track filled our cluttered living room.

Listening to the all on me lil baby track while actively being held hostage by two twenty-four-month-olds is a profoundly surreal experience. Here's a multi-platinum rapper talking about the crushing weight of expectations, the sheer pressure of providing for his crew, and the undeniable reality of having everyone rely on him for survival. I paused with the avocado scraper in my hand, wiped a smear of drool off my forehead, and thought, Mate, I completely understand.

The invisible spreadsheet of doom

There's a specific type of exhaustion that comes from being the primary caregiver, and it isn't just physical. It's the mental load—the invisible, never-ending spreadsheet running in the background of my brain at all times. I'm the tour manager, the private chef, the bodyguard, and the emotional support animal for two very volatile, very short celebrities. The Lil Baby lyrics about living three lives and having the weight of the world on his shoulders? That’s just a standard Tuesday morning before we’ve even managed to find two matching shoes.

Nothing exemplifies this psychological torture quite like the evening wind-down routine. The parenting books (which I frequently want to set on fire) suggest that a calm, predictable evening is the key to infant sleep. So, I run the bath to exactly 37 degrees, because if it's 36 they shiver dramatically, and if it's 38 they act like I’m boiling them alive. I dim the lights to mimic the setting sun, ignoring the fact that it’s June in the UK and blindingly bright outside until 10 PM. I turn on the white noise machine, which sounds exactly like a broken jet engine, because without it, the sound of a neighbor sneezing three doors down will wake them from a dead sleep.

Then comes the frantic mental calculus of getting them dressed. Which twin needs the steroid cream on the left elbow? Which one currently has a mysterious, slightly scaly rash on her tummy? I’m frantically trying to maintain a soothing, zen-like presence while Florence is practicing her martial arts on my collarbone and Matilda is trying to eat the tube of Sudocrem. It's a deeply absurd performance art, pretending everything is calm and peaceful while your heart rate is sitting at a solid 130 BPM.

Meanwhile, their actual diet consists of a bruised banana and whatever breadcrumbs they scavenge from the bottom of the pram, which seems to sustain them perfectly.

Getting them into their clothes used to be the final boss battle of the evening until we switched to the Organic Cotton Baby Bodysuits. I’m not usually one to get overly excited about fabric, but Dr. Sharma at our local NHS clinic muttered something during a check-up about synthetic blends making Florence's skin flare up. It turns out she was right. These sleeveless little numbers actually stretch over their massive, wobbly heads without getting stuck, and they don’t cause those angry red patches that require three different creams to fix. They just work, which is the highest compliment a tired parent can give anything.

Why a silicone panda is my current best friend

But the real reason those rapper lyrics were hitting my soul so hard that afternoon was the teething. If you haven't experienced twin teething, imagine living with two tiny, furious wolves who are constantly producing the saliva volume of a fully grown Saint Bernard.

I vaguely remember reading somewhere—possibly on a blurry, 3 AM deep-dive into a parenting forum, or maybe it was just a poster at the GP’s surgery—that the adult human brain actually processes prolonged infant crying in the same way it processes physical pain. And when the molars start moving, the crying simply doesn't stop. They're furious at the very concept of existence.

We were gifted a mountain of aesthetic wooden rings by well-meaning relatives who clearly don't have children. The girls took one look at those solid wooden blocks and immediately used them as projectiles, hurling them at my face with terrifying accuracy. My actual saving grace has been the Panda Teether. I say this without a hint of irony: this silicone bear has saved my sanity. Florence grips the flat little handle like a stressed commuter holding a pint, and she just gnaws on the textured ears for hours. It genuinely seems to offer her some relief, and more importantly, when it eventually gets covered in lint and biscuit crumbs, I can just lob it in the dishwasher.

Matilda, on the other hand, currently has the Bubble Tea Teether. It’s... fine. It looks hilarious in her mouth, and the colourful little boba bits are definitely cute. She’ll chew on it happily for about four minutes before discarding it onto the pavement so she can try to eat my car keys instead. It does the job if we’re strapped into the buggy and I need a momentary distraction, but the panda is the undeniable MVP of this household.

If your house is currently overflowing with useless plastic tat that your kid refuses to use, you might want to browse Kianao's organic essentials—at least their stuff looks good while your toddler is aggressively ignoring it.

Walking away isn't quitting (mostly)

Back to the living room floor, the avocado, and the hip-hop track. The chorus hit, and the sheer noise of my children fighting over a wet wipe was making my left eye twitch violently. It was all on me. My wife was in back-to-back meetings in the home office upstairs, the laundry was overflowing, and I hadn't consumed anything except the crust of a piece of toast since 6 AM.

Dr. Patel, our incredibly blunt GP, looked at me during their last vaccination appointment—probably noticing my sunken eyes and the dried Weetabix on my jumper—and gave me the most useful medical advice I’ve received to date. He basically told me that if they're fed, sitting in a clean nappy, and safely contained in a room where they can't pull a television onto their heads, sitting on the landing to stare blankly at a wall for five minutes is a highly recommended health strategy.

So, I stood up. I put the avocado scraper on the mantlepiece out of reach. I looked at Florence, who was still crying about her bumpy socks, and Matilda, who had now moved on to tearing up a magazine.

I walked out of the living room, closed the door until it clicked, and sat on the bottom step of the stairs.

Through the floorboards, I could hear the muffled sound of the girls complaining, but I could also hear the bassline of the song. I just sat there, breathing in the smell of damp coats and old trainers, letting myself be entirely useless for exactly three hundred seconds. I wasn't fixing the socks. I wasn't cleaning the rug. For five minutes, it wasn't all on me.

When I finally went back in, Florence had somehow taken her own socks off and looked incredibly smug about it, and Matilda was asleep on the rug, using the empty wipe packet as a pillow. The song had ended, transitioning back to some miserable indie acoustic track.

Parenting is relentless. It's messy, it's loud, and it asks absolutely everything of you. But sometimes, surviving it just means finding the right track to soundtrack the chaos, handing over a silicone panda, and letting yourself off the hook for a few minutes.

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The messy realities (FAQs)

Is it actually normal to feel this overwhelmed all the time?
According to my sleep-deprived brain and every honest parent I've ever spoken to at a soft play centre, yes. The mental load is crushing. You're keeping tiny humans alive while trying to remember when you last bought toilet paper. If you don't feel overwhelmed, you're either lying or you've a staff of twelve.

Do organic baby clothes really make a difference, or is it a scam?
I used to think it was just marketing nonsense for people who buy £8 coffees. But when Florence's skin flared up, the organic cotton bodysuits were the only things that didn't make her scratch herself bloody. They don't have those weird chemical finishes on them. It’s not a miracle cure, but it definitely makes a noticeable difference for sensitive skin.

How do I know if they're crying because of teething or just because they hate me?
It's a fine line. Usually, if they're drooling enough to fill a pint glass and trying to gnaw on the hard plastic edge of a toy truck, it's teething. The Panda Teether usually works as a good diagnostic tool—if they aggressively chew it for ten minutes and then calm down, it was their gums. If they throw it at your head, they might just be in a terrible mood.

Is walking away honestly safe when they're having a meltdown?
My GP was very clear on this: if the environment is safe (like a cot or an entirely baby-proofed room), they're fed, and they aren't ill, walking away for a few minutes to stop yourself from having a breakdown is actively good parenting. You can't keep stable their completely unhinged nervous systems if your own nervous system is vibrating like a faulty fridge.