Why a Baby Wombat Video Ruined My Tuesday (And Other Lessons)

It's exactly 3:14 AM on a Tuesday, and I'm standing barefoot on the freezing kitchen tile wearing my husband Dave's oversized tech-conference t-shirt from 2016, trying to explain to my weeping four-year-old why I can't sew a pouch onto her stomach. Maya is entirely inconsolable, rubbing her snot-covered nose aggressively against my bare knee while holding my phone like it's a sacred relic. "But I need to be a baby wombat!" she wails at a volume that threatens to wake the entire neighborhood, let alone her seven-year-old brother Leo who sleeps exactly one room over.

This entire ridiculous situation is completely my fault because, like an idiot, I was desperate for a distraction. Have you ever tried to clip a four-year-old's toenails? It's a hostage negotiation where the hostage is screaming as if you're trying to amputate their foot with a rusty spoon. So yesterday afternoon, during the great toenail battle of our living room, I handed her my phone. I opened Instagram, expecting her to watch those satisfying videos of people icing cookies, but the algorithm—which clearly knows I'm weak and tired—fed her a reel of a ruggedly handsome Australian wildlife rescuer bottle-feeding an orphaned baby wombat in the dark.

And oh god, it was undeniably cute. The little guy was mostly bald and looked like a wrinkly potato wrapped in a knitted blanket. But now, twelve hours later, Maya is having an existential crisis because she's a human child and not a terrestrial marsupial, and I'm drinking yesterday's lukewarm French roast straight from a chipped mug because I'm too exhausted to push the button on the microwave.

The internet makes wild animals look like plush toys

thing is about those wildlife rescue videos—they make everything look so cozy and manageable. You see this tiny, dependent creature wrapped up in what looks like a very soft tea towel, and your brain immediately goes, aww, I want one. Maya watched this video on a loop for forty-five minutes. She learned that a baby wombat stays in its mother's pouch for up to eighteen or twenty-four months, which absolutely blew her mind.

My mind was blown for entirely different reasons, mainly because my back still hurts from babywearing Leo when he was eight months old, so the idea of carrying a rapidly growing animal in a stomach pocket for two entire years sounds like an absolute chiropractic nightmare. Dave slept through this entire realization, by the way. He was snoring upstairs while I was down a rabbit hole trying to figure out how wombat mothers manage the physical toll of toddler-wearing.

Anyway, the point is, these videos never show you the reality of the adult animal, which is basically an eighty-eight-pound muscle-bound boulder with giant rodent teeth that never stop growing and claws meant to rip through solid earth. I mean, they look like oversized hamsters, but if you actually approached one in the wild, it would probably bowl you over like a strike at a bowling alley and then bite your shin off.

Why I'm terrified of wildlife diseases now

Since I was already awake and spiraling, I obviously started Googling Australian wildlife safety facts, because what else are you supposed to do at four in the morning when your kid is finally asleep on the sofa clutching a throw pillow like it's her joey? That's when I found out about the skin diseases, which honestly sent my anxiety straight through the roof.

My pediatrician—who's an absolute saint and deserves a fruit basket because I constantly text her blurry photos of mysterious bumps at midnight—once told me that when we're out in nature, we should just assume every fuzzy wild animal is a walking petri dish of things that will make you itch. So I'm reading these articles from like, actual wildlife experts, and apparently, wild wombats frequently suffer from this horrific thing called sarcoptic mange. I guess the science says it's caused by this microscopic burrowing mite, which sounds deeply upsetting on its own, but the worst part is that it's basically scabies and it can jump to humans if you touch them.

I immediately flashed back to that time Leo got this weird, raised, incredibly itchy rash all over his arms after a camping trip, and I absolutely lost my mind thinking he had contracted some rare woodland parasite. I had him stripped down in the doctor's office in a total panic, sweating through my sweater, and Dr. Aris just calmly looked at it, sighed, and told me it was just a severe eczema flare-up from the cheap synthetic sleeping bag we bought. I had spent three days convinced my son had bugs under his skin, and it was just polyester.

So yeah, if Dave ever convinces me to take the family to Australia, we're admiring the wildlife from a very, very safe distance behind a thick pane of glass, because I simply can't handle international scabies.

Clothes for actual human children

That eczema incident with Leo actually completely changed how I buy clothes for the kids, which weirdly ties back to the wombat rescuers. In the videos, the rehabilitators are always swaddling the rescued orphans in natural, breathable fibers like pure cotton or wool because synthetic fabrics make the poor things overheat and get skin rashes. If pure cotton is the only thing gentle enough to simulate a mother's pouch for a traumatized wild animal, it makes sense that we probably shouldn't be wrapping our own human babies in plastic-based fabrics either.

When Maya was an infant, she had skin just as sensitive as Leo's, so I basically threw out half the hand-me-downs we got and started hunting for organic stuff. I stumbled onto the Organic Cotton Baby Bodysuit Sleeveless Infant Onesie from Kianao, and it honestly became the only thing I put her in for the first six months of her life. The undyed natural fabric was an absolute lifesaver for her angry little red patches.

It's made of ninety-five percent organic cotton with just a tiny bit of stretch, and it has these envelope shoulders that saved my life during those blowout diapers where you've to pull the onesie down over their legs instead of up over their head so you don't get poop in their hair. It washed beautifully, didn't shrink into a weird asymmetrical square like some of the other brands I tried, and just felt incredibly soft. I still buy them as shower gifts for literally everyone I know who gets pregnant because nobody tells you how angry baby skin can get until you're dealing with it at 2 AM.

If you've a kid with skin that reacts to everything or you just want something super soft, you should honestly just browse around some of the organic collections on Kianao's site and see if natural fibers help calm things down.

Toys that look nice but hurt my feet

When I finally got Maya to stop crying about the pouch situation around 4:30 AM, I tried to distract her by pulling out the bin of baby toys we're supposed to be donating to my cousin. Maya loves digging through her old stuff, and she pulled out the Wooden Baby Gym | Rainbow Play Gym Set with Animal Toys that we used when she was tiny.

Look, I'm going to be completely honest with you about this play gym. It's aesthetically gorgeous. It looks like it belongs in a minimalist Scandinavian home magazine, and the little wooden elephant hanging from it's precious. Maya used to lie under it for twenty solid minutes batting at the rings, which gave me exactly enough time to drink hot coffee and stare blankly at a wall.

But I've also violently stubbed my toe on the bottom of the wooden A-frame in the dark more times than I care to admit. It's sturdy, which is great for safety, but terrible for tired mothers dragging laundry baskets through the living room at midnight. Still, it never made those awful electronic beeping noises that drill into your skull, and it didn't light up like a Vegas casino, so I consider it a win overall. Just, you know, wear slippers if you leave it out.

Let's talk about the cube poop

Okay, I can't write about my deep dive into marsupial biology without bringing up the absolute most insane fact I learned while sitting on my kitchen floor waiting for the sun to come up. Did you know wombats poop cubes?

I'm not making this up. Literal, six-sided, geometric cubes. I spent an unreasonable amount of time trying to conceptualize the internal physics required to produce a square stool from a round opening. It completely breaks my brain. As a woman who has birthed two ten-pound children and whose pelvic floor is currently held together by thoughts and prayers, the sheer muscular gymnastics required to shape waste into dice is baffling to me.

Apparently, they do it so their poop doesn't roll away off rocks because they use it to mark their territory. Which, sure, evolution is amazing, but imagine the plumbing. Imagine the cramps. I complain when I eat too much cheese, but these little fuzzy tanks are out here extruding building blocks on a daily basis. It makes me feel like my own bodily complaints are incredibly trivial.

If you ever find yourself in a situation where you've an orphaned marsupial, please don't feed it cow's milk from your fridge because they'll literally die from the lactose, just call a wildlife center immediately.

Transitioning back to human clothes

By the time Dave finally stumbled downstairs at 6:45 AM, looking refreshed and asking if we were out of oat milk, Maya had abandoned the idea of being a naked wombat in a pouch and decided she wanted to be a "fancy lady" instead. Toddler whiplash is real, folks.

She demanded to wear her "twirly sleeves," which is what she calls the Flutter Sleeve Organic Cotton Baby Bodysuit Ruffled Infant Romper. I bought this in a toddler size months ago because I'm a sucker for earth tones, and the little ruffled sleeves add just enough drama to satisfy her current obsession with being fancy while still being practical enough that she can climb the playground equipment without getting tangled up.

It's made from the same soft organic cotton as the basic bodysuits, so it doesn't irritate her skin, but it looks a bit more put together. Plus, it has the snaps at the bottom, which she hates because she thinks they're for babies, but I love because it means her shirt doesn't ride up and expose her stomach to the cold air when she hangs upside down from the monkey bars like a bat.

Anyway, if you're tired of wrestling your kid into stiff clothes that make them whine about being itchy, you should grab some of these organic basics from Kianao so you can at least check one argument off your massive parental to-do list for the day.

I'm going to go make a fresh pot of coffee now. Maybe four cups will be enough to erase the image of cube-shaped poop from my memory.

Questions I asked myself at 4 AM

Can I touch a wild wombat if I see one?
God, no. Absolutely not. Listen, my late-night anxiety spiral taught me that these guys carry nasty skin mites that cause mange, which can basically give you human scabies. Plus, they weigh as much as a middle schooler and have claws meant to dig through bedrock. If you see one, take a blurry photo from very far away and leave it alone.

Why do baby wombats stay in the pouch for so long?
They literally stay in there for up to two years! Two years! From what I barely understand, they're born super premature and blind, so the pouch acts like an external womb. It's honestly amazing, but my lower back aches in sympathy for the mother wombats carrying around a two-year-old in a stomach hammock.

Are organic cotton bodysuits actually better or just expensive?
From my messy, sleep-deprived experience, they're absolutely better if your kid has weird skin stuff going on. When Leo was a baby, cheap synthetics made him break out in these awful, itchy red rashes that caused me immense mental distress. Switching to breathable, organic cotton honestly cleared it up. It's worth it just to avoid the 2 AM crying fits about being itchy.

What do I do if my toddler demands to be a wild animal?
You drink yesterday's coffee, validate their extremely irrational feelings, and try to redirect them with a snack. Don't attempt to reason with them using logic, because logic doesn't exist in the mind of a four-year-old who wants a biological pouch. Just ride out the storm and wait for them to decide they want to be a dinosaur instead.

Will the wooden play gym ruin my living room?
Visually? No, it looks really pretty and won't clash with your sofa. Physically? It might ruin your pinky toe if you aren't looking where you're walking in the dark. But honestly, I vastly prefer it over those giant plastic activity centers that play a tinny version of "Old MacDonald" until you want to throw them into the ocean.