Pretty Baby Full Movie Searchers: A Mom's Take on Screens

I was sitting on my living room floor at 10 PM last Tuesday, folding what felt like my four-thousandth load of tiny toddler socks, when I went down a massive Google rabbit hole. I had just finished watching that two-part Hulu documentary about Brooke Shields, and out of morbid curiosity, I typed the words "pretty baby full movie" into my search bar. If you're here right now because you typed that same exact phrase looking for a free stream of the controversial 1978 Louis Malle film, I'm just gonna be real with you: you're not going to find it on this page. But since you're already here on a parenting site, you might want to stick around, because seeing what passed for "entertainment" back then absolutely broke my brain and made me look at my own kids completely differently.

My mom always tells me I overthink this stuff. She loves to drop the classic "well, we didn't have all these rules in the seventies and you turned out fine" line whenever I get worked up about media and kids. I usually just roll my eyes and hand her a fussy toddler to distract her. She doesn't get that her generation wasn't walking around with a high-definition broadcasting studio in their back pocket, filming every single tantrum and milestone for an audience of strangers.

What I did entirely wrong with my oldest kid

I'm going to use my oldest son as a cautionary tale here, because when he was born five years ago, I completely lost my mind. I was so wrapped up in having this picture-perfect, beautiful infant that I basically documented his entire existence like I was filming my own pretty baby full movie for Facebook and Instagram. I posted the ultrasound. I posted his birth weight. I posted weekly updates with those little wooden blocks.

I wanted everyone to see my pretty baby. I was validating my own worth as a new, exhausted mom through the little red notification hearts on my phone. It took me two full years to realize that I wasn't just sharing memories with my aunt in Ohio—I was creating a permanent digital footprint for a human being who couldn't even speak yet. Every time I pulled my phone out, his little face would change. He started performing for the camera instead of just playing. It was a massive wake-up call, and I still feel guilty about it.

The mommy vlogger aesthetic is driving me insane

This is where I'm going to lose some people, but I can't stand the current trend of family vloggers and mom-fluencers monetizing their children's existence. You know exactly the type I'm talking about. The moms with the perfectly beige houses, dressing their kids in beige, filming their beige mornings for millions of followers. Bless their heart, I'm sure they love their kids, but setting up a ring light to film your three-year-old crying over a dropped waffle so you can get sponsor money is unhinged behavior.

We look back at child stars from the seventies and eighties and talk about how exploited they were by Hollywood producers. But what are we doing right now? We've got thousands of parents acting as unpaid producers, directors, and managers for their own toddlers, broadcasting their potty training struggles to the entire globe. It makes my stomach turn.

As for those talent agencies that promise to turn your cute infant into a baby model for commercials, they're literally just a scam to separate sleep-deprived parents from a $500 "photography fee."

Falling for the baby clothes trap

I'll be the first to admit I still fall for the aesthetic pressure sometimes, especially with shopping. When my daughter was born, I wanted her to look chic and put-together instead of covered in the mismatched, spit-up-stained hand-me-downs her brother wore. I spent real money on this Organic Cotton Baby Bodysuit thinking it would make her look like a minimalist angel for her six-month photos. I'm just going to shoot straight with y'all: it's a perfectly fine bodysuit. It's soft, and I do like that the organic cotton doesn't have all the weird chemical dyes in it, because her skin breaks out if you even look at it wrong. But it's just a shirt. She still managed to have a massive, catastrophic diaper blowout in it while we were standing in the checkout line at H-E-B. The envelope shoulders are nice for pulling it down over her body instead of over her head when that happens, but don't expect a premium onesie to magically make your baby act like a professional model.

How my doctor explained the screen time mess

Between trying not to film my kids constantly and trying to keep them off screens, I feel like I'm running a 1980s summer camp in my house. I asked my doctor about screen time at our last visit because my middle kid was having massive meltdowns every time I turned off the TV. The doctor drew this messy little chart on the exam table paper trying to explain how rapid-fire animations affect their frontal lobes. From what my sleep-deprived brain gathered, watching highly stimulating shows basically floods their little brains with cheap dopamine, and when you turn it off, they physically crash. I don't really know the exact science behind the neural pathways she was talking about, but I do know that if my kid watches more than thirty minutes of flashing cartoon dogs, he turns into a feral raccoon who bites his sister.

That squirrel teether that legitimately saved my sanity

So if we aren't using iPads as babysitters and we aren't filming them for TikTok, what are we actually doing all day? We're surviving the teething phase, mostly. When my youngest was born, she was so tiny and round she looked exactly like a vintage Ty baby plush toy from the nineties. Just a perfect, squishy little thing. But when those bottom teeth started pushing through last month, my sweet little Ty baby turned into a screaming banshee who refused to sleep.

We tried everything. Frozen washcloths made a huge wet mess. Those amber teething necklaces terrify me because they seem like a massive choking risk. Finally, out of sheer desperation at 2 AM, I ordered this Squirrel Teether Silicone Baby Gum Soother. Y'all, this weird little mint-green squirrel is the only reason I'm currently functioning. The ring shape is actually thin enough for her chunky little fists to grip on her own, and she just gnaws aggressively on the acorn part. Because it's solid food-grade silicone, I can just launch it into the top rack of the dishwasher without worrying about hidden mold growing inside it. For whatever it costs—like fifteen bucks or something—it's the single most useful thing in my diaper bag right now.

If you're drowning in baby gear that doesn't actually help you get through the day, you might want to dig through some better baby essentials that are really built for real, messy motherhood instead of just Instagram photos.

Creating a little offline bubble for us

I've realized that the best moments I've with my kids now are the ones where my phone is charging in the kitchen and the TV is completely off. We started this new routine after dinner where I just throw our Bamboo Baby Blanket down on the living room rug. I bought the colorful leaves pattern because I'm a total sucker for a woodland theme, but honestly, I reach for it because it's incredibly soft and breathable. My toddler runs hot and sweats through everything, but this bamboo blend seriously keeps him cool while we're all piled on top of each other looking at library books. There's no camera. No audience. No flashing screens. Just us, making weird animal noises and seriously connecting in the real world.

So yeah, you definitely didn't find the movie you were searching for today. But maybe you found a little solidarity from a mom who's also just trying to figure out this incredibly weird, over-exposed world we're raising our babies in. If you're ready to stop worrying about the aesthetic and just get back to the basics of keeping your kid comfortable and safe offline, you can find some of our favorite real-life tools right here.

Questions I usually get from other moms about this stuff

How do you really enforce no screen time when you need to make dinner?
I don't! I'm not a perfect unplugged pioneer woman. If I'm boiling pasta and the baby is screaming and the toddler is trying to scale the pantry shelves, I'll absolutely turn on a slow-paced, low-stimulation show like classic Mr. Rogers or a nature documentary. I just avoid the fast-paced, screaming YouTube videos that make them act manic afterward.

Is it too late to scrub my kid's digital footprint?
I ask myself this literally every day. It's tough because the internet is forever, but I went back and deleted all the public photos of my oldest from my social media. I made all my accounts private, removed followers I don't really know in real life, and I stopped using his real name online. You just have to start where you're today.

What's the big deal with silicone teethers versus the old water-filled ones?
Okay, remember those plastic rings filled with water that our moms used to put in the freezer for us? I had one pop in my oldest son's mouth once. I completely panicked because I've no idea what chemical liquid was seriously inside that thing. The solid silicone ones don't pop, you can boil them to sanitize them, and they don't freeze so hard that they damage your kid's gums.

How do you deal with grandparents who want to post pictures of your kids on Facebook?
This is the absolute worst fight to have, and I've had it three times. I finally just had to sit my mom down and be bluntly honest. I told her that there are weirdos on the internet, and her privacy settings aren't as locked down as she thinks they're. We use a private family photo-sharing app now. If she posts them on Facebook anyway, I make her take it down. It's awkward, but my kids' safety matters more than her bingo group seeing my baby.