Why adopting a rabbit baby is a truly terrible idea for your home

My mate Marcus texted me at half-past eleven on a Tuesday night, which is universally acknowledged as the hour when parents of toddlers make their absolute worst life decisions. "Mate," the message read, glowing aggressively in the dark while I was trying to silently rock Twin B back to sleep without letting my knee joints crack. "Thinking of getting a rabbit baby for little Leo's third birthday. Good idea?"

I stared at my phone for a solid minute, mostly just blinking. Little Leo is a child who recently tried to swallow a handful of decorative gravel from my front garden because he thought it was hard candy. Leo operates at a constant, vibrating frequency of chaos that makes my own twin girls look like sedated librarians. And now, his father wanted to introduce a highly fragile, clinically anxious prey animal into this deeply unstable environment. I briefly considered throwing my phone out the window, but instead, I started typing a response so long it basically turned into a novella.

There's this collective, shared delusion among modern parents that bringing a tiny, trembling woodland creature into a house dominated by screaming toddlers is somehow going to look like a Beatrix Potter book. We have this romanticised vision of our children gently stroking a fluffy bunny on a sunlit rug, learning deep lessons about empathy and nature. The reality, which I learned from a deeply traumatised bloke at my local pub who made this exact mistake, is far closer to a hostage situation involving expensive veterinary bills and an amount of faeces you simply can't comprehend.

The petting zoo delusion

thing is about rabbits, which I only know because I fell down a massive internet rabbit hole (pardon the pun) when I was desperately trying to talk Marcus out of ruining his life. They're prey animals. Their entire evolutionary purpose for the last few million years has been to panic and run away from things that want to eat them. So, when a sticky-fingered toddler lunges at them while screaming with joy, their tiny little hearts basically prepare for the end of days.

They don't want to be picked up. Being scooped into the air by a three-year-old mimics the exact sensation of being snatched by a hawk. I read somewhere—though my sleep-deprived brain might be mangling the science here—that if they kick out in sheer terror while being held awkwardly, they can literally break their own spines. And if that doesn't happen, they'll absolutely unleash a fury of scratching and biting that will land you in the A&E waiting room at four in the morning, trying to explain to an overworked NHS nurse why your kid looks like he lost a fight with a bramble bush.

Our local GP, who always looks so tired I occasionally want to tuck him into a bed and read him a story, once mentioned to me that toddlers shouldn't be anywhere near delicate pets anyway, mostly because children under five carry a terrifying array of bacteria and possess zero impulse control. You wouldn't hand a Ming vase to a child who still occasionally licks the television screen, so why would you hand them a nervous mammal?

Throwing a cabbage-themed party instead

If you genuinely want to scratch that specific, nostalgic itch for floppy ears and country gardens, there's a vastly superior option that involves zero risk of spinal injuries and absolutely no trips to the vet. The peter rabbit baby shower.

My wife dragged me to one of these for her friend Sarah in Richmond last spring, and I've to admit, it was a masterclass in aesthetic parenting flex. It's the only socially acceptable way to channel your urge for a rabbit baby without actually adopting a live creature. The whole thing was draped in soft sage greens and oatmeal tones, with these tiny vintage wooden wheelbarrows scattered around holding what I think were artisanal organic carrots. It was brilliant because it evoked all the calm, soothing vibes of a countryside childhood while keeping everything entirely sanitary and inanimate.

I distinctly remember trying to dress the twins for this specific event, which is always a diplomatic nightmare. We ended up wrestling them into the Flutter Sleeve Organic Cotton Baby Bodysuit we’d bought from Kianao a few weeks prior. Honestly, I bought them purely because my wife liked the little ruffled sleeves, but they turned out to be a massive victory for my own sanity. The organic cotton actually stretches enough that you can yank it over a thrashing two-year-old’s head without fearing you're going to tear the fabric or dislocate a shoulder.

More importantly, Twin A managed to drop an entire dollop of mashed carrot directly onto her chest within four minutes of arriving at the shower, and the bodysuit somehow survived the subsequent aggressive scrubbing I gave it in the venue's bathroom sink. It’s genuinely a lovely piece of clothing, soft enough that it doesn’t trigger the mysterious red skin blotches my girls seem to get whenever they wear cheap synthetic materials from the high street. Plus, they looked undeniably adorable running around screaming among the pastel decorations.

They literally die of fright

Let’s circle back to the biological reality of live bunnies for a moment, because it gets worse. A bloke who breeds them told me that they've a digestive system so complicated it makes human infant reflux look like a mild inconvenience. Apparently, baby rabbits have to eat their mother's specific night droppings just to build up the bacteria needed to survive, a terrifying concept if you really think about it while eating your breakfast.

And if they get stressed—say, by a toddler repeatedly banging a plastic hammer against their cage—their gut just stops working. The bloke called it something like GI stasis, which roughly translates to 'the rabbit gets anxious, forgets how to digest food, and rapidly expires'. I can barely figure out how to get my own children to digest a piece of broccoli without a tantrum, so the idea of monitoring the complex gastrointestinal transit times of a pet is completely beyond my mental capacity.

They also can't vomit, which means if they swallow too much of their own fur while grooming, it just sits in their stomach and creates a lethal blockage. You have to brush them constantly.

If you're currently hovering over the 'adopt now' button on a pet rescue website while your toddler is chewing on a table leg, maybe take a deep breath and browse a nice organic baby clothing collection instead, because a nice cotton jumper has never once required an emergency trip to the vet at midnight.

How to actually satisfy the gnawing urge

The irony of all this is that toddlers and rabbits really share one major characteristic: they both desperately want to chew on every single piece of wooden furniture you own. When the twins hit the teething phase, our coffee table started to look like it had been attacked by a family of feral beavers.

Instead of getting a pet for them to terrorise, we just leaned heavily into providing them with things they were legally allowed to gnaw on. This brings me to the Panda Teether Silicone Baby Bamboo Chew Toy. I'm fully aware that a panda is not a rabbit, and if you're strictly adhering to a woodland creature aesthetic, this might offend your sensibilities. But when it's three in the morning, and your child is crying with the intensity of a thousand suns because a microscopic tooth is pushing through their gums, you don't care about geographical zoology.

We acquired this teether out of sheer desperation, and it was a revelation. It’s made of this slightly squishy, food-grade silicone that feels incredibly resilient. The flat shape meant the girls could genuinely grip it themselves, rather than screaming for me to hold it for them. The best part, which I discovered entirely by accident after leaving it on the kitchen counter near an open window in November, is that if you make it cold, it works ten times better. We started aggressively cycling these through the fridge. I'd just hand them a freezing cold panda and watch them aggressively gum it into submission while I drank my lukewarm coffee in peace.

A quick note on letting go of the farmhouse fantasy

I eventually talked Marcus out of the pet. I sent him a deeply unhinged voice note explaining the mechanics of rabbit digestion, and he replied the next morning saying he had bought Leo a plastic fire engine instead. A massive win for animal welfare, and for Marcus’s bank account.

We all have these moments where we want to curate a perfect, rustic, nature-filled life for our kids. We want the wooden toys and the gentle pets and the clothes that look like they were spun by forest nymphs. But the reality of parenthood is loud, sticky, and incredibly messy.

Take the Wooden Rainbow Play Gym Set we had when the girls were tiny. It’s a perfectly decent piece of equipment. It has this little hanging wooden elephant (again, not a rabbit, but close enough to a zoo animal), and it’s made of nice, natural materials that don't assault the eyes like those garish plastic activity mats that light up in neon colours. Did it magically turn my living room into a serene Montessori wonderland? No. But it did keep them occupied for precisely twelve minutes at a stretch, which was exactly enough time for me to load the dishwasher and question my life choices. It’s just okay, honestly, but it looks quite nice sitting in the corner, and crucially, it doesn't need to be fed.

We have to stop putting this immense pressure on ourselves to create a storybook childhood. You don't need a live animal to teach your kid about nature, just like you don't need to live on a farm to appreciate a good vegetable print on a bodysuit. Let the kids pretend to be the animals. Let them wear the bunny ears and chew on the silicone pandas and destroy the living room in their own time.

Before you dive into the frantic Google searches about how to genuinely throw a decent nature-themed party for your mates without going bankrupt, you might want to look at some genuinely helpful gear in the baby toys collection to keep your little ones distracted while you plan it.

The messy bits nobody tells you (FAQ)

• Q: My kid is begging for a bunny, what do I really tell them?
  A: Blame the space, blame the doctor, blame me. I usually tell my twins that our flat is too small for a rabbit to do its special jumping exercises, and then immediately distract them with a biscuit. Page 47 of some parenting book probably suggests you validate their feelings, but honestly, just pivot to snacks. It works 90 percent of the time.
• Q: Is the Peter Rabbit baby shower theme just a bit basic now?
  A: Look, it’s popular for a reason. Yes, your Instagram feed will be full of people doing it, but it’s genuinely hard to mess up. It’s just beige and green and some vegetables. It’s vastly superior to those terrifying themes where everything is neon pink and involves aggressive balloon arches that pop and wake the baby.
• Q: Do the Kianao organic cotton bodysuits really survive a blowout, or are they just for show?
  A: I've subjected these bodysuits to biological disasters that would make a hazmat team weep. If you get them in the wash quickly enough, they survive. The fabric is surprisingly robust for something that feels so soft, and the elastane means it doesn't instantly lose its shape when you aggressively scrub the neckline in a panic.
• Q: How long do you leave that panda teether in the fridge?
  A: About 15 minutes usually does the trick. Never put it in the actual freezer, though. I made that mistake once in a sleep-deprived haze, and it turned into a solid block of ice that Twin B immediately lobbed at my forehead. Just the fridge. It gets nicely chilled without becoming a blunt weapon.
• Q: Are wooden play gyms honestly better, or am I just being a snob?
  A: You're probably being a bit of a snob, but that's fine—we all are. They don't necessarily make your baby a genius, but they do preserve your own sanity because they don't play a tinny, electronic version of 'Wheels on the Bus' every time your child kicks it. You have to stare at this thing in your living room for six months; you might as well pick one that doesn't make your eyes bleed.