The Great Toddler Empathy Crisis and My Stained Maternity Shirt

I was exactly thirty-four weeks pregnant with Maya, sweating profoundly through a mustard-yellow maternity top that had a coffee stain shaped exactly like Florida right on the collarbone. It was 3:14 PM on a Tuesday, which is universally the worst time of day when you've a toddler, and I was standing in the middle of our living room trying to desperately cling to the last warm sip of my dark roast. Leo, who was three at the time and completely, unapologetically feral, was standing on the vintage rug my mother-in-law gave us, holding a hard plastic toy by its leg and swinging it aggressively like a medieval mace. He was wearing Spider-Man pajamas. It was a Tuesday afternoon, like I said. Anyway, the point is, my husband Dave had gently suggested that morning that maybe we weren’t doing quite enough to prepare Leo for the impending arrival of his sister. Like, hell, Dave, what did you want me to do, present a PowerPoint presentation on sibling dynamics over breakfast?

I just stared at my son as he launched the plastic toy into the sofa cushions, wondering how in the world this tiny, destructive hurricane of a child was going to handle a fragile newborn. I was wearing this massive, flowing shirt because nothing else fit over my belly, and I remember just rubbing my stomach and thinking, oh god, we're so completely unprepared for this.

Why maternity fashion is basically just a tent conspiracy

Let's talk about the clothes for a second, because nobody really prepares you for the absolute aesthetic freefall that's the third trimester. If you search for tops designed for pregnant women, you inevitably end up with these empire-waist things that pinch right under your boobs and then flare out into a massive, billowing parachute. They're universally flattering on exactly zero people, but they're the only thing that actually works. I lived in these flowy baby doll tops for women for literally six months.

I hated them. I really did. I felt like a walking, exhausted bell every time a breeze hit me. I had this one floral one that made me look like an overstuffed armchair from a 1980s nursing home. Dave told me I looked "radiant" once when I was wearing it, and I honestly almost threw a shoe at his head because I knew I just looked like a bruised, sweating pear. But the thing is, they're incredibly practical. When you're heavily pregnant, you just need air circulation. You need something that isn't going to cling to the elastic band of your maternity leggings. And postpartum? Oh my god, postpartum. After Maya was born, those same tops were the only things that hid the terrifying reality of those mesh hospital underwear and the ice packs. You just throw on a flowy top, pretend you've your life together, and hope nobody notices you haven't washed your hair in four days.

I'll defend the empire waist silhouette to the death for that exact reason, even though I boxed all of mine up the second I stopped nursing and banished them to the darkest corner of the attic.

I completely refuse to put my kids in stiff denim overalls because babies shouldn't wear pants that require a belt, period.

Dr Klein and the magical empathy brain stuff

So back to the living room and the medieval mace incident. At our last checkup before Maya arrived, my pediatrician, Dr. Klein, had gently suggested that maybe we should get Leo a literal toy to practice with. Not a truck. Not a block. An actual soft, human-shaped toy. She said it helps build empathy. She actually drew a little diagram of a brain on the back of a paper towel in the exam room, mumbling something about the back of the brain—the posterior something sulcus, I think?—lighting up when kids roleplay with these kinds of toys.

I'm not a neuroscientist. My brain is roughly 80% dry shampoo and leftover goldfish crackers at this point. But the way I understood it, giving a kid a toy to care for somehow tricks their little empathy centers into turning on, so they realize that other people (and future sisters) actually have feelings and shouldn't be headbutted. It sounded vaguely like science fiction, but I was so deeply desperate for a solution that didn't involve me yelling "nice hands!" six hundred times a day that I immediately went online and bought one. We didn't get a hard plastic one with the creepy eyes that blink, because those are terrifying and mostly just become heavy projectiles in Leo's hands. We got a very soft, squishy one.

Leo named it Baby D. I've no idea why. His toddler mouth couldn't quite handle the double-L sound in the word, so it just became Baby D, and the name stuck.

Training a three year old not to be a monster

Introducing Baby D to Leo was a deeply messy process. If you can just try to thrust the toy at your kid and pray they don't immediately launch it at the dog while modeling some sort of gentle petting motions and aggressively whispering about how we use nice hands with the baby, you might eventually see some progress.

I tried to teach him how to be gentle by having him practice swaddling. I dug out the Bamboo Baby Blanket with the colorful leaves design—which, by the way, was wildly soft and didn't feel like that weird, scratchy synthetic fleece that always makes me break out in hives. It's like a mix of organic cotton and bamboo, and it breathes so well. Anyway, I gave it to Leo and tried to show him how to wrap Baby D like a little burrito. He mostly just threw the blanket over the toy's face and yelled "GHOST!", but eventually, he started tucking the toy in at night. He would lay the blanket out, put Baby D in the middle, and haphazardly fold the corners over. It was a start.

Then we moved on to soothing. Dr. Klein had said to let him mimic my routines. So when we were sorting through all the baby gear we'd hoarded, I gave Leo a teether and told him to give it to the toy when it was "crying." This is where I've to be completely honest about the gear you genuinely need. We had bought the Bear Teething Rattle Wooden Ring Sensory Toy from Kianao, and it was hands down the absolute best thing in our toy bin. It had this sweet, sleepy little crochet bear head attached to an untreated beechwood ring.

Leo used it to "feed" Baby D constantly. He would shove the wooden ring at the toy's fabric face and aggressively shush it. But the real magic happened later when Maya was born and immediately started teething at, like, four months old, which is entirely unfair. She chewed on that wooden ring like she was getting paid an hourly wage for it. The wood was the perfect hardness for her gums, the crochet part was soft enough that when she inevitably whacked herself in the forehead with it she didn't cry, and it was just... aesthetically pleasing? Like, it didn't look like a neon piece of plastic garbage lying on my living room rug. It survived both my kids and I'm probably going to save it in a memory box because I'm emotionally attached to a wooden bear. God help me.

We also had the Panda Teether Silicone Baby Bamboo Chew Toy. It was... fine. Honestly, it's just okay. My husband bought it because he liked the panda, and sure, the food-grade silicone was totally safe and didn't have any weird chemical smells. The biggest win was that you could literally just throw it in the top rack of the dishwasher when it got covered in dog hair and mystery carpet fuzz. But it just didn't have the same handcrafted soul as the bear rattle, you know? Maya would chew on it for three minutes, get bored, and then throw it out of the stroller. It was definitely the backup teether for when the bear was lost somewhere under the car seats.

If you're currently surviving the teething apocalypse, hiding your postpartum body in massive shirts, or just trying to get a feral toddler to understand empathy through play, check out Kianao's teething and soothing collection because honestly, we all need a little help just making it to bedtime.

The truth about dressing an actual newborn

So, fast forward a few weeks. Maya was born. The transition was chaotic, but Leo really didn't try to headbutt her, which I'm fully crediting to the Baby D training camp. He would run and get his blanket when she cried, which was incredibly sweet even if he usually dropped it directly on her face.

But the thing nobody warned me about was the clothing situation once she genuinely arrived. We decided to use cloth diapers, mostly because Dave watched one documentary about landfills and had an existential crisis, and partly because I thought the patterns were cute. Here's the unvarnished truth about cloth diapers: they make your baby's butt absolutely massive. It's like they're wearing a heavily padded sofa cushion on their bottom at all times.

So yeah, standard onesies are a nightmare. You know the ones—the cute little bodysuits that snap at the crotch? If your baby is wearing a cloth diaper, those snaps are going to be fighting for their lives. You either have to size up so much that the neck hole falls off their shoulders, leaving them looking like they're wearing an off-the-shoulder clubbing top from 2004, or the snaps just constantly pop open every time they bend their legs.

The solution? Tops with an empire waist for the baby. Yes. The exact same silhouette that I had just spent six months hating on my own body was suddenly the most brilliant piece of engineering ever invented for my infant. You buy these little flowy tops that are fitted across the chest and flare out over the stomach. They drape perfectly over the massive cloth diaper bulk without restricting their movement, there are no crotch snaps to violently wrestle with at 2 AM in the dark, and they honestly look incredibly cute paired with some stretchy organic cotton leggings.

It was this weird, full-circle moment. I spent my entire pregnancy complaining about the shape of my clothes, only to realize that the flared, roomy cut is genuinely the pinnacle of comfort when your midsection (or your diaper section) is rapidly expanding. We ended up buying a ton of organic cotton tops in that exact style for Maya. The natural fibers breathed so well, she never got those weird red heat rashes in the folds of her neck, and her giant, padded bottom was completely unhindered as she learned to crawl.

I guess the lesson is that whether you're a thirty-something woman trying to survive the third trimester, a toddler trying to learn how to care for a soft toy, or an infant just trying to fit a giant reusable diaper into an outfit, we all just need a little extra room to breathe. And maybe a really good wooden bear to chew on.

Before you completely lose your mind trying to dress a wiggling infant in rigid snaps or teach a toddler about gentle hands while running on zero sleep, take a deep breath and explore Kianao’s organic baby essentials to make this whole chaotic parenting journey just a little bit softer.

Frequently Asked Questions (Or Just Things I Googled At 3 AM)

Do I really need to buy a toy for my toddler before the new baby comes?
Look, need is a strong word. But if your toddler is currently treating the family pet like a wrestling opponent, yes, it really helps. Dr. Klein told me it’s all about the brain’s empathy centers lighting up. You don't need an expensive one that cries or pees. Just a soft, squishy one they can aggressively hug and occasionally swaddle.

Why do people hate onesies over cloth diapers?
Because the diaper is literally twice the size of a disposable one! If you try to stretch a standard crotch-snap onesie over a reusable diaper, the tension is ridiculous. You’re basically giving your infant a permanent wedgie. Flowy tops over stretchy pants are the only way to save your sanity.

How do I clean that wooden bear teether if my kid drops it outside?
Don't soak the wood! I made this mistake once with a wooden toy and it warped into a weird crescent moon shape. Just take a damp cloth with a little bit of mild soap, wipe the wooden ring down, and let it air dry. The crochet part can be gently hand-washed in the sink with warm water. It dries pretty fast.

Is bamboo really better than regular cotton for baby blankets?
In my chaotic experience, yes. Bamboo has this weirdly silky feel to it, and it breathes so much better. Maya ran hot—like a tiny furnace—and standard fleece would make her wake up drenched in sweat. The bamboo blend blanket kept her warm but not clammy, which meant she honestly slept, which meant I genuinely slept.