It was exactly 3:14 AM on a Tuesday in mid-November, and I was wearing my husband’s gray college sweatpants—the ones with the permanent, unidentifiable spit-up stain on the left knee that I absolutely refused to wash because doing laundry felt like climbing Mount Everest. Leo was exactly three weeks old. I was sitting in the corner of his nursery in that horribly squeaky rocking chair we bought off Facebook Marketplace, clutching my third cup of lukewarm coffee from the morning before, just staring at him.
Because he was making noises.
Not cute, little cooing baby noises. I'm talking about sounds that I can only describe as a dying barn owl mixed with a malfunctioning garbage disposal. He was grunting. He was snorting. He was doing this terrifying thing where he would breathe super fast for like, ten seconds, and then just... stop breathing. Entirely. For what felt like a whole minute but was probably only five seconds. I literally pulled up my phone, squinted through the blinding screen brightness, and fired off a manic text to my husband sleeping in the guest room: help he's grunting like a baby alien xxx — the 'xxx' being my sleep-deprived, passive-aggressive way of sending him kisses while simultaneously wanting to murder him for sleeping through the nightmare.
Nobody tells you this part. You spend nine months looking at these gorgeous, soft, plump Gerber babies on Instagram, fully expecting to bring home a tiny human. Instead, they hand you a purple, peeling, grunting, squirmy little extraterrestrial who rolls their eyes back into their head when they sleep.
Seriously.
Let me just tell you right now, if you're sitting in the dark at 3 AM terrified that your newborn is actually a tiny visitor from another planet who forgot how to operate human lungs, I see you. I've been you. I've panic-Googled some weird stuff in the middle of the night while Leo was shedding his skin like a lizard.
The night my child forgot how to breathe normally
I swear to god, the breathing is the worst part of the first month. With Maya, my first, I didn't sleep for the first three weeks because I was so convinced she was going to just... stop. And then Leo came along, and he was even louder. He sounded like a tiny pug running a marathon.
I took him to Dr. Miller on a Tuesday morning. I hadn't showered. I smelled like sour milk and desperation. I burst into tears the second she walked into the room and told her my baby was defective because he stopped breathing in his sleep. She handed me a tissue, probably trying not to laugh at my unhinged energy, and told me about something called periodic breathing.
Basically—and please don't quote me on this because I was running on zero hours of sleep and half a stale bagel—my pediatrician said that newborn nervous systems are just kind of... half-baked? Like, their little brain stems are still downloading the software required to breathe regularly, so they take these rapid, crazy breaths and then pause for a few seconds just to terrify their mothers before starting up again. It's totally normal, she said. Which, honestly, felt like a slap in the face because how is that normal?! But anyway, the point is, their weird little respiratory systems eventually figure it out.
I used to practically shove my whole hand under his nose to check for air, which obviously woke him up and ruined my life for the next three hours because then I had to soothe a screaming newborn, so if you can manage to just stare at the monitor instead of physically poking your kid every time they pause their breathing, you might actually survive the night without losing your mind.
What Dr. Miller told me about the weird peeling skin
Oh god, and the skin. Can we talk about the skin? I thought newborns were supposed to have that perfect, buttery soft baby skin. Leo looked like he had spent a month in a desert without moisturizer. His hands and feet were literally peeling off in sheets.
I was slathering him in every lotion I could find at Target, which of course just gave him a weird rash because he was sensitive to everything. I felt like the worst mother on the planet. I remember breaking down in the laundry room because every single onesie I put on him seemed to make the redness worse.
This is honestly why I threw out almost all of the cheap synthetic clothes we had saved from Maya's infancy and bought the Organic Cotton Baby Bodysuit Sleeveless Infant Onesie from Kianao. I'm not usually a fabric snob, I promise you. If it's cute and cheap, I'm usually all over it. But when your kid looks like a peeling sunburned alien, you get desperate.
This bodysuit was a lifesaver. Like, an actual game changer for us. It’s made of 95% organic cotton, which apparently means it isn't sprayed with all the crap that regular cotton is, and it doesn't have any harsh dyes. I just know that when I put Leo in this undyed, ridiculously soft onesie, his skin finally stopped looking so angry. It has these envelope shoulders that let me pull the whole thing down over his body instead of over his head, which is a massive win when you're dealing with a blowout that goes all the way up the back. Plus, the sleeveless design meant his weird little peeling arms could just air out. We practically lived in these for the first three months. I bought six of them and just rotated them constantly.
As for the umbilical cord stump? Just fold the diaper down and let it fall off on its own, it's gross but whatever.
Trying to distract a squirmy extraterrestrial
So once you get past the stage where they just sleep (loudly) and peel, they enter the stage where they're awake but still can't really do anything. They just lay there, staring at the ceiling, looking vaguely judgmental.
With Maya, I felt this intense pressure to constantly be entertaining her. I'd shake rattles in her face and sing songs until my throat hurt and read her black-and-white flashcards like we were cramming for the SATs. By the time Leo came around, I was way too exhausted for that level of performance art.
I needed a safe place to put him down so I could go microwave my coffee for the seventh time.
Explore Kianao's full collection of sustainable, sanity-saving baby gear here.
I ended up getting the Wooden Baby Gym | Rainbow Play Gym Set with Animal Toys and it actually made a huge difference. I used to think wooden toys were just for those minimalist Instagram moms whose houses are entirely beige and who never yell at their kids. I'm definitely not that mom. There's usually a stray Lego under my foot and a smear of peanut butter on my jeans at any given moment.
But the wooden gym is great because it doesn't have flashing lights or awful electronic music that makes you want to rip your ears off. It just has these gentle, earthy-colored hanging toys. I'd slide Leo under it on a blanket, and he would just stare at the little hanging elephant. Sometimes he would accidentally bat at the wooden rings and surprise himself. It gave me a solid twenty minutes of peace to drink my coffee and text my husband about what we were ordering for dinner. It's sturdy, too—Maya definitely tripped over it a few times and it held up.
Surviving the sleep sounds (and the weird eye rolling)
I really need to circle back to the eye-rolling thing, because nobody warned me about that either. You finally get them to sleep, you gently lower them into the bassinet like you're disarming a bomb, you step back... and their eyes pop halfway open, showing just the whites, rolling back into their skull.
Terrifying.
It literally looks like a scene from an exorcism movie. I remember the first time Maya did it, I grabbed my phone to film it because I was convinced I needed to show the doctor. My pediatrician just laughed and said babies have a lot of active REM sleep and their eyelids are thin and sometimes they don't close them all the way. Which, sure, science, but it still freaked me out every single time.
And the active sleep! Oh my god. The thrashing. The grunting. They lift their little legs up and slam them down on the mattress. WHAM. WHAM. WHAM. How are they even asleep while doing that?! I spent weeks staring at the ceiling, listening to Leo sound like he was fighting an invisible ghost in his bassinet. You kind of just have to learn to tune it out, which sounds impossible, but eventually, the sheer exhaustion takes over and you learn to sleep through the minor grunts and only wake up for the actual crying.
Eventually, the alien phase ends. Their skin clears up. They figure out how to breathe without long, terrifying pauses. They start closing their eyes all the way when they sleep. And just when you think you've got it all figured out, they start teething.
That's a whole different nightmare. When Leo started teething, he was chewing on his own hands so much I thought he was going to eat his own fingers. We got the Panda Teether Silicone Baby Bamboo Chew Toy from Kianao. It's fine. Honestly, it's a perfectly good teether. The silicone is nice and safe, which I care about because he puts everything in his mouth, but I'll say Leo mostly just liked to throw it at our dog. Maya, on the other hand, would have loved this thing when she was a baby because it has all these different textures. It’s super easy to throw in the dishwasher, which is a big win for me because I refuse to hand-wash anything if I don't have to. It works, it's cute, it's safe.
The light at the end of the mothership
If you're in the thick of the newborn alien phase right now, feeling completely unhinged and wondering if your baby is normal, take a deep breath. Drink some water. Microwave that coffee.
They're weird. They're so, so weird. They don't act like humans because they barely are humans yet—they're little larval potatoes adjusting to gravity and air and digestion. Everything is brand new to them, and everything about them is brand new to you. It's messy and loud and scary, but I promise you, one day you're going to wake up, look in the crib, and realize that the grunting, peeling little alien has turned into a smiling, babbling baby.
And then they'll become a toddler who screams because you cut their sandwich wrong, but that's a story for another day.
FAQ: All the weird newborn things you're too tired to Google
Why does my newborn grunt so much in their sleep?
Because they're basically tiny farm animals. No, seriously, Dr. Miller told me it's because their digestive systems are brand new and they're learning how to pass gas and poop. Plus, their airways are super tiny, so every breath sounds loud. It’s totally normal, even if it keeps you awake all night staring at the ceiling.
Is it normal for my baby's skin to peel off?
Yes! I panicked so hard over this. They spend nine months floating in amniotic fluid, and then suddenly they're in the dry, harsh air. Their outer layer of skin just peels off like a bad sunburn. Don't pick at it (even though it's satisfying, I know). Put them in super soft organic cotton like the Kianao onesies and just wait it out.
What's periodic breathing and why is it terrifying?
It's when your baby breathes really fast for a few seconds and then completely stops breathing for up to 10 seconds. It's the absolute worst. My pediatrician assured me it's just their nervous system figuring out how to keep stable breathing. Obviously, if they turn blue or the pause is super long, go to the doctor, but mostly it's just them testing our sanity.
Why do my baby's eyes roll back when they sleep?
Because they're trying to haunt you. Kidding! It's because they spend a ton of time in REM (active) sleep, and their eyelids are really thin and sometimes don't shut all the way. It looks horrifying, but it just means they're dreaming about... whatever babies dream about. Milk, probably.
How do I dress my baby when their skin is flaking and sensitive?
Stick to natural, breathable fabrics. I made the mistake of using cheap polyester blends and Leo was so red and angry. Pure organic cotton was the only thing that helped us. Keep it loose, wash everything in gentle detergent before they wear it, and try not to over-layer them so they don't sweat and get a rash on top of the peeling.
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