Aishiteruze Baby And The Massive Lies I Believed About Motherhood

It’s 2017 and I'm sitting on the edge of the master bathroom tub at 3:14 AM wearing a pair of my husband’s gray sweatpants that have a highly suspicious yellow stain on the left knee. I'm holding a screaming, two-week-old Maya against my chest. My coffee from yesterday is sitting on the edge of the sink, totally cold and basically mocking me. Propped up against the foaming hand soap dispenser is my cracked iPad, playing a crunchy, heavily pixelated episode of aishiteruze baby.

If you missed this particular era of early-2000s Japanese media, the premise is wild. Kippei is this teenage playboy who suddenly gets handed his five-year-old cousin, Yuzuyu, because her mom has a total mental health crisis and just abandons her. He has literally zero idea what he’s doing. He doesn't know how to brush her hair or make her food or stop her from crying. He is a complete, unmitigated disaster of a caregiver.

And sitting there in the dark, smelling like sour milk and desperation, I realized something horrifying. I was Kippei. I was exactly like this clueless anime teenager.

That whole maternal instinct thing is a total scam

Before I had kids, I had this whole before-and-after fantasy built up in my head. I used to sit there staring at my phone watching these perfectly contoured women on Instagram making organic sourdough pancakes while their toddlers quietly did wooden puzzles, and I honestly believed that was what my life was going to look like.

I thought motherhood was this biological download that just happened in the delivery room. Like you push the baby out and the universe instantly uploads "How to soothe a colicky infant" into your frontal lobe. What a load of absolute crap.

My doctor, Dr. Aris, told me at our one-month checkup that the "maternal instinct" is mostly just a cultural myth that society invented to make women feel like massive failures when we don't magically understand why our baby is screaming. He said the only thing that actually matters is "serve and return"—basically just showing up, listening to them cry, and trying fifty different things until something works. You don't know them yet. They don't know you. You're both just strangers trapped in a house together trying to figure out how the physics of gas drops work. So yeah, Kippei didn't know how to be a parent either, he just kept showing up every single morning until he wasn't terrible at it anymore.

Separation anxiety will actually break your brain

I'm going to rant about this for a minute because nobody warned me how deeply physical it feels when your kid misses you. In the show, little Yuzuyu cries herself to sleep every night clutching a pair of old, ratty pajamas her mom made for her. It’s devastating to watch.

When Maya started daycare at six months old, the drop-offs were literal hell on earth. I thought kids just cried for like, three minutes after you left and then happily went to play with blocks. No. Maya would cling to my neck like a tiny, terrified spider monkey and scream until she threw up.

I read somewhere online about transitional objects, which are basically just things that smell like you that the kid can hold onto to feel safe. So I started doing this weird thing where I'd wear the Kianao Organic Cotton Baby Bodysuit under my own sweatshirt for like two hours every morning while I drank my coffee and panicked about my inbox. Once it smelled thoroughly like my sweat and anxiety, I’d put it on her before we left for daycare. And oh my god, it actually helped.

I honestly love those bodysuits so much because they don't shrink into a weird, stiff square after you wash them like the cheap multipack ones do, and they're soft enough that they didn't irritate the eczema Maya always got behind her knees. It gave her a little piece of me to take into that chaotic daycare room.

Please stop lying to your kids about the hard stuff

There's this recurring thing in the show where Kippei tries to hide the truth from Yuzuyu to "protect" her from the reality that her mom might not come back. It always backfires horribly. She just ends up confused and blaming herself.

I used to think my entire job as a mother was to be a human shield. To block every bad thing, every sad feeling, every bit of adult stress from ever touching Leo or Maya.

Anyway, Dr. Aris basically laughed at me when I told him this. He said kids are essentially highly sensitive emotional psychics. They don't understand the nuance of a mortgage rate hike or why grandma and grandpa aren't speaking, but they 100% feel the tension in your jaw when you're cutting their grapes. He told me that when we lie to them—even by omission—they just fill in the blanks with their own anxiety, and usually, they assume it's their fault. Just tell them the truth in simple words. "Mommy is crying because she had a really frustrating day at work, but it's not your fault and I'm going to be okay." Period. Moving on.

If you're also just out here white-knuckling it through the morning routine while trying to undo your own generational trauma, maybe take a breath and explore our organic baby clothes collection for something soft that won't make you want to pull your hair out during diaper changes.

The absolute ridiculousness of preschool lunch politics

There's a whole plotline about Yuzuyu getting bullied at preschool because her lunch isn't pretty enough. So Kippei wakes up at the crack of dawn to learn how to make her traditional, aesthetic onigiri rice balls.

Here's a list of things I absolutely believed I'd do as a mom:

• Wake up at 5 AM to meditate and do yoga before anyone else was awake.
• Dress my kids in perfectly matched, stain-free, neutral outfits (you know, that cool e baby aesthetic that dominates TikTok).
• Hand-carve fruit into the shape of woodland creatures for their bento boxes.
• Never, ever serve frozen chicken nuggets for dinner.

Reality? Leo is lucky if he gets a turkey sandwich that isn't ninety percent crust. I bought the Kianao Gentle Baby Building Block Set thinking I was going to sit down and do focused, screen-free educational playtime for two hours every afternoon. They’re fine, I guess. The pastel colors are nice. But honestly, Leo mostly just throws the square one at our cat or leaves them at the bottom of the stairs for me to trip over in the dark. Don't expect a wooden toy to magically turn you into a Pinterest mom.

Pay attention to the quiet kids

The heaviest part of that entire anime is when Yuzuyu’s little friend Shouta is being abused at home, and the kids are the ones who notice something is wrong before the adults do.

I didn't think about this much before Maya started school. You get so wrapped up in your own kid's milestones—are they walking, are they talking, are they biting—that you forget they exist in a whole ecosystem of other tiny humans who are all carrying their own heavy stuff.

Your house kind of needs to be the safe house. You have to be the mom who notices when the kid on the playdate is hoarding snacks, or flinching, or just needs a quiet corner. Or maybe you just have a screaming infant of your own who's losing their mind over a new tooth. When Leo was teething, the only thing that kept us all from having a collective breakdown was the Kianao Panda Teether. I’m not even exaggerating, I kept it in the fridge right next to my emergency cold brew. The little textured bamboo-looking part was the only thing he would aggressively chew on instead of my literal collarbone.

Motherhood is entirely about adjusting your expectations downward until you hit bedrock and then building a really messy, beautiful life right there in the dirt. Instead of freaking out over every little milestone and trying to perfectly curate your kid's childhood just pour whatever cold coffee is left on the counter into a mug and grab some teething toys from our collection to survive the afternoon.

FAQ Because You're Probably Tired And Overthinking Everything

How the hell do I deal with daycare separation anxiety without feeling like a monster?

Honestly? You cry in your car. That's step one. But seriously, keep the goodbye super short. Don't linger by the door staring at them with sad eyes because they'll smell your guilt. Give them something that smells like you (a shirt, a little blanket) to keep in their cubby. And know that my doctor said they usually stop crying the second your car leaves the parking lot.

Is it really bad to hide family drama from my kid?

Yes and no. You don't need to tell your four-year-old the detailed financial breakdown of your impending bankruptcy, but you do need to explain why everybody is so grumpy. If you don't give them a simple, boring truth ("Mom and Dad are having a disagreement but we still love you"), they'll invent a terrifying truth in their own heads.

Do I really need to make aesthetic lunches for preschool so they don't get bullied?

Oh god, no. Please don't wake up at 5 AM to cut cheese into the shape of a star unless that brings you deep, personal joy. Kids will eat dirt if you let them. Just pack things they can seriously open with their own sticky little hands so the teacher doesn't hate you.

What if my kid's friend makes me uncomfortable?

Pay attention to that feeling. Sometimes a kid acts out because they're five and have no impulse control, but sometimes they're acting out because things at home are scary. Just be the house that always has safe snacks, totally clear boundaries, and an adult who genuinely listens when they talk. You don't have to save the world, just be a safe place on a Tuesday afternoon.