How To Make Your Baby Laugh Without Completely Losing Your Mind

It was a Tuesday. 4:15 PM, to be exact, and the afternoon light in our living room was doing that weird, aggressive glare thing that makes dust motes look like tiny judgment fairies. I was wearing leggings that hadn’t been washed since the Obama administration and a nursing tank that smelled vaguely of sour milk and desperation, standing over the playmat trying to do a tap dance while holding a stuffed badger. My husband Mark walked in from the kitchen, took one look at me sweating through my shirt while our four-month-old son Leo stared up at me with the blank, unblinking expression of a tiny IRS auditor, and just slowly backed out of the room without saying a word.

I was trying so hard. Like, embarrassingly hard.

I had read somewhere—probably at 3 AM while panic-scrolling—that he was supposed to be doing the whole baby laughing thing by now, and I was convinced my child was joyless. So I spent weeks doing these insane, hyper-stimulating comedy routines, getting all up in his face making twenty different animal noises while bouncing him like a basketball until my arms felt like wet noodles. Don't do this. Seriously, if you take one thing away from my sleep-deprived insanity, it's that babies hate desperate comedians. If you force it, they just get stressed out, and you look psychotic.

What finally worked was entirely accidental and deeply stupid.

I was trying to drink my third cup of lukewarm coffee, and I completely missed the edge of the coffee table. The mug shattered, brown sludge splashed all over my one good pair of socks, and I involuntarily whispered, "oh shit."

Leo let out this massive, rolling belly chuckle. He absolutely lost his mind. My pain was comedy gold.

The science of the giggle

I asked my pediatrician, Dr. Salem, about this at our next check-up because I was mildly concerned I was raising a tiny sadist. He laughed and said something about incongruity, which I guess means that babies are basically little scientists trying to figure out the rules of the universe. When something breaks a rule—like Mommy dropping her life-blood coffee instead of putting it safely on a table—their developing brain is like, ERROR, THIS IS HILARIOUS.

It's how they process the unexpected safely. And apparently, when you hear a baby laugh, it shoots a massive hit of oxytocin into your brain which literally turns off the fear and anxiety centers in your amygdala. Which perfectly explains why I completely forgot about the shards of ceramic on the floor and just started pretending to drop a book on my foot to see if he'd do it again. The biological manipulation is real.

Anyway, the point is, their humor is weird and you can't force it.

When it actually happens

The timeline for this stuff is wild and totally subjective, no matter what the milestone charts tell you. During those first two months, everyone is like, "oh look, a social smile!" and I'm just sitting there knowing full well that Maya (who's 7 now, god how did that happen) was absolutely just passing gas. It's not a smile, it's digestion.

But around three or four months, you get the giggles. These are usually accidental. Like, you blow a raspberry on their neck and they just sort of squeak out a chuckle because it tickles. By six months, you get the real deal. The deep, guttural belly laughs that make you want to record them on your phone and send them to literally everyone in your contacts until your friends block you.

By eight months they're just little hams anyway and they know how to work a room, so we don't even need to talk about that stage.

My favorite props for comedy

You don't need a lot of stuff to get a smile, but having the right environment helps. When Maya was a baby, we had this obnoxiously loud plastic activity center that sang off-key farm songs. It didn't make her laugh, it just gave me a migraine. With Leo, I completely changed my approach and got the Rainbow Play Gym Set from Kianao.

I genuinely love this thing. It's actually my favorite piece of baby gear we own, mainly because it's wooden and pretty and doesn't require batteries. The story of Leo's second real laugh involves this gym. There’s a little hanging wooden elephant on it, and one day he just reached up, swatted the elephant right in its wooden trunk, and it swung back and tapped him gently on the forehead. He paused, looked at me, and then burst into this roaring, gummy smile. We sat there for twenty minutes while he just battered this poor wooden elephant, laughing every time it swung back. It's the perfect setup because it lets them discover cause-and-effect humor on their own terms, without a screen or a robotic voice telling them what to do.

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Getting physical

Most of the time, getting that chuckle is just about physical connection. You just have to get down on the floor with them and figure out what weird sensory thing pushes their buttons.

Tickling is obviously the big one, but you've to actually pay attention to their face when you're doing it, because if they start looking away or stiffening up or seem overwhelmed, you need to back off immediately and let them breathe instead of pinning them down like an aggressively cheerful wrestler. Consent starts early, people.

For tummy tickles, I used to put Leo in this Sleeveless Organic Cotton Baby Bodysuit. It's honestly just okay—I mean, the organic cotton is genuinely great because it didn't give him those weird red, patchy rashes he got from synthetic stuff, and it holds up in the wash fine. But I really only used it because the sleeveless cut and the easy snaps at the bottom gave me super fast access to his belly for blowing raspberries. You kind of just need a reliable, basic layer that doesn't get in the way when you're going in for a tickle attack, and this did the job without being fussy.

The dropping things phase

Once they figure out that gravity exists, dropping things becomes the peak of comedy. This is exhausting for us but hilarious for them.

We had these Gentle Baby Building Block Sets kicking around the house. They're basically just soft rubber blocks, nothing mind-blowing, but they were the absolute best tool for the drop game. I'd balance one on my head, make a weird "whoop!" noise, and let it fall onto the floor. Leo would cackle. I'd pick it up, balance it on my head, and repeat. We did this for what felt like four consecutive years on a rainy Sunday. The soft rubber meant that when I inevitably missed catching it and it bounced off my shin, it didn't hurt. Which is nice, because I already sacrifice enough of my physical body to these children.

Honestly, getting a baby to laugh is just a masterclass in giving up your dignity. You have to forget what you look like. You have to let go of the idea that you're a cool, put-together adult who drinks hot coffee and reads books. You're now a prop comic. You're a clown whose only job is to drop blocks on your own head and pretend to sneeze so violently your hair flops over your eyes.

And it's, without a doubt, the best sound in the entire world. When you hear it, all the 3 AM wakeups, the blowout diapers, the endless mountains of laundry... none of it matters. You just want to hear it again.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go microwave my coffee for the fifth time today. Mark is currently trying to make Leo laugh by putting a clean diaper on his own head, and I need to go tell him he's doing it wrong.

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The messy questions everyone asks

Is it normal if my infant laughs in their sleep?

Oh god, yes. It's creepy as hell, right? The first time Maya did this she was like a month old, just lying in her bassinet in the pitch dark, and suddenly let out this weird little "heh heh" sound. I nearly called a priest. But Dr. Salem told me it’s totally normal. Their brains are just firing off neurons and making connections while they sleep. They aren't honestly dreaming about a joke, their nervous system is just doing a test run.

What if my baby isn't laughing yet?

Please don't panic. I spent weeks spiraling because Leo was a very serious newborn. Some babies are just observers. They sit there taking it all in, judging your outfit choices. If they're making eye contact, tracking you with their eyes, and occasionally giving you a little smirk, they're probably fine. My pediatrician said if there's absolutely no social smiling or vocalizing by six months, then we check in about it, just to rule out any hearing stuff.

Can I tickle them too much?

Yeah, you definitely can. Babies have really immature nervous systems, so what starts as fun can turn into sensory overload in about three seconds. If they start hiccuping, turning their head away, or stiffening their arms, they're done. You have to just stop and let them chill out for a minute. You don't want to be that person who keeps poking them when they're clearly over it.

Why do they only laugh for my partner and not me?

This is the ultimate betrayal and I hate it. You carry them for nine months, you ruin your pelvic floor, you feed them with your own body, and then they give their first belly laugh to your husband because he... blinked funny. Honestly, it's just because you're their safe space. You're an extension of them. Your partner is slightly more novel, so they get the laughs. It's unfair, it's crap, but it's totally normal. Just keep dropping things on your foot, eventually you'll win them over.