The day I thought a rap star was a Scandinavian stroller

Tuesday, 4:15 PM. The rain is violently attacking our living room windows and I'm wearing a pair of black maternity leggings that haven't seen the inside of a washing machine since the Obama administration. I'm holding my third lukewarm coffee of the day, standing entirely too close to the front door, and paying our 16-year-old babysitter, Chloe. Chloe is lovely. She wears wide-leg jeans and middle parts and possesses this effortless, terrifying Gen-Z aura that makes me feel like a walking, talking fossil who still uses the laughing-crying emoji.

She's casually telling me about her weekend plans and drops the name Baby Keem into the conversation like it's a totally normal thing to say to a 38-year-old mother of two. I immediately nod. Like, oh yes, of course. I know what that's.

In my sleep-deprived, constantly-bombarded-by-Instagram-ads brain, the name sounded exactly like one of those aggressively minimalist, beige-on-beige European infant brands that haunt my social media. Like, maybe a high-end silicone breast pump? Or a $1,200 woven bassinet made of ethically harvested kelp from the fjords? "Oh, Baby Keem," I say to her, taking a deeply unconfident sip of my sad coffee. "I've heard the waitlist for that's insane. Are you guys getting one for your sister?"

Chloe just stares at me. A long, devastating stare.

The moment my pop culture relevance officially died

She politely explains to me that he's a rapper. A person. An adult human man who makes music. Not a high-end Scandinavian sleep sack. After she leaves, I'm so deeply embarrassed that I literally sit on my hallway floor, ignoring the pile of junk mail I was supposed to sort, and pull out my phone. I try searching for the Baby Keem age bracket, thinking maybe he was, like, a literal child prodigy? A toddler DJ? No. He is a grown adult in his twenties.

I guess his fans sometimes call him Baby K, which honestly just sounds like a boutique organic vitamin drop to me, but whatever. Dave, my husband, walks in right as I'm deep in the trenches of Wikipedia. He is wearing his hideous faded college fleece and eating a handful of dry Cheerios straight from the box because we're a glamorous household.

I tell Dave what happened and he actually snorts. "Sarah, how out of touch are you?" he asks, which is incredibly rich coming from a man who recently asked me what a Dua Lipa was. I decide to prove that I can get into this music. I tell Dave I'm going to listen to it. I pull up the 16 Baby Keem lyrics on my screen, thinking, okay, maybe this is a sweet song about being a teenager. Maybe it's a soft, introspective ballad.

It's not a soft, introspective ballad.

Then I find this whole thing about the Family Ties Baby Keem collaboration with Kendrick Lamar, who's apparently his actual cousin, which is a fun fact I now know and will literally never need to use in my daily life of wiping yogurt off the walls. I try playing a few seconds of a track and Maya, my seven-year-old, yells from the other room that the music is "too spicy," which is her catch-all term for anything that has a heavy bass drop or swearing. So I shut it off. Crap. My algorithms are going to be so confused now. For the next three months, my phone is going to serve me hip-hop tour dates instead of targeted ads for nipple cream and chew toys.

What we actually need to know about little ones

Anyway, the whole absolutely humiliating experience got me thinking about how much of our brain space is occupied by completely useless information, and how hard it's to actually find real, actionable advice about keeping a tiny human alive when you first bring them home. When Leo was born four years ago, I spent hours desperately searching the internet for answers at 3:00 AM, crying because every single website contradicted the other.

If you're a new parent reading this, please take a breath. Ignore the pop culture for a minute. Let's talk about what seriously matters in those early, messy, chaotic months, filtered entirely through my own imperfect, highly caffeinated understanding of what the doctors told me.

Take sleep, for example. My doctor, Dr. Miller, who always looks like he needs a three-day nap himself, told me during our first visit that newborns sleep like 16 hours a day. Which sounded like a massive, hilarious lie when Leo was waking up every forty-five minutes screaming like a tiny banshee. But Dr. Miller explained the whole back-to-sleep thing, and how to lower the risk of SIDS, which is terrifying to even think about. I guess the science says something about keeping their airways clear and preventing them from getting tangled, so they told me to completely empty the crib. No pillows, no cute stuffed animals, no vintage quilts your mother-in-law knitted. Just a firm mattress and a baby.

Which brings me to the swaddle phase. Since you can't use loose blankets, you've to turn your child into a tight little burrito. The doctor mumbled something about neurological pathways and the startle reflex waking them up, but honestly, all I heard was "wrap them tight so their own flailing arms don't punch them in the face while they sleep." And it worked, mostly. Until they start rolling over, and then you've to transition to a sleep sack, which is a whole other layer of fresh hell.

If you want to look at things that really soothe a child instead of giving them a bass drop, browse Kianao's baby gear collection because it's much more peaceful than my search history right now.

The absolute horror of teething

But nothing—and I mean nothing—compares to the sheer, unadulterated nightmare that's teething. Oh god.

With Maya, I didn't even realize she was teething at first. I just thought she hated me. She was about five months old and suddenly turned into a feral, drooling creature who gnawed on literally everything in our house. She tried to eat the TV remote. She chewed on the leg of our coffee table, leaving actual tiny dent marks in the wood that are still there today. Dave was like, "Is she part beaver?"

I was desperate. I bought every plastic, water-filled, bumpy contraption I could find at the big box store down the street, and most of them were entirely useless or she'd drop them on the floor in three seconds. Then I finally found the Panda Teether Silicone Baby Bamboo Chew Toy from Kianao and it honestly saved my sanity. It's this super soft, food-grade silicone thing shaped like a little panda, and Maya became obsessed with it. It’s flat enough that her weird, uncoordinated little baby hands could genuinely hold onto it without dropping it every five seconds, which meant I didn't have to keep washing it in the sink fifty times an hour.

The texture on the "bamboo" part seemed to really get right into those swollen gums, and I loved that it wasn't made of some sketchy plastic that I couldn't pronounce. I used to throw it in the fridge for ten minutes while I made myself a piece of toast, and the cold silicone would calm her down almost instantly. I bought three of them so I could always have one in the diaper bag, one in the fridge, and one inevitably lost under the passenger seat of my car.

Bathing and dressing and all that jazz

with honestly keeping them clean, I was terrified of the bath at first. They hand you this slippery, angry little potato at the hospital and expect you to know how to wash it. Dr. Miller told us not to even put Leo in a real tub until his gross little umbilical cord stump dried up and fell off, which took like two weeks of me giving him sad, awkward sponge baths on the living room rug while sweating profusely.

And their skin is so weird and sensitive. Leo broke out in this scaly, red rash whenever I put him in anything that wasn't cotton. We tried the Organic Cotton Baby Bodysuit Sleeveless from Kianao. It’s fine. It's soft and the organic cotton is definitely great for not irritating the skin, but honestly, one time Leo had a diaper blowout so catastrophic that it breached the leg holes and ruined the bodysuit instantly, and I had to throw the whole thing in the outdoor trash can. But for normal days, yeah, the stretchy neck is easy to pull over their massive, wobbly heads without them screaming.

Why plastic light-up toys are the enemy

Here's something nobody tells you: once you've a kid, your house will slowly be invaded by plastic toys that make noise. It starts with one innocent gift from an aunt, and suddenly your living room looks like a neon plastic factory exploded, and every time you accidentally step on something in the dark, it sings a tinny, off-key song about a cow.

I hate them. I hate them with a fiery passion.

With Leo, I begged our family to stop buying the electronic stuff and started looking for things that wouldn't make me want to rip my hair out. I ended up getting the Wooden Baby Gym with Animal Toys and it was such a relief. It's just a simple, beautiful wooden A-frame with these quiet, tactile hanging toys. No batteries. No flashing lights.

I'd lay Leo under it on his back, and he would just stare at the little wooden elephant for like twenty minutes straight, batting at it with his chubby fists. The doctor mentioned something about how this kind of simple contrast and reaching helps their depth perception and motor skills develop naturally without overstimulating their nervous system, which made sense to me. Plus, it didn't look like a circus tent in my living room, which was a massive bonus for my mental health.

Parenting is basically just stumbling in the dark, trying to figure out if your kid is crying because they're hungry, tired, or because their gums hurt. You don't need a million gadgets. You just need a few good, safe things that work, a massive supply of coffee, and the ability to laugh at yourself when you mistake a Grammy-winning rap artist for a high-end baby brand.

Before you go down a rabbit hole of hip-hop family trees or try to decode rap lyrics on Wikipedia, grab something your actual baby will use to stop crying. Shop the full Kianao store to find sustainable, beautiful things that will seriously make your life easier.

My messy answers to your baby questions

Wait, so who's Baby Keem really?
He is a rapper. He is Kendrick Lamar's cousin. He is absolutely not a brand of organic bamboo swaddles from Sweden. Please don't make my mistake and ask a teenager if they're putting their newborn in a Baby Keem. They will judge you forever.

When do babies genuinely start teething?
Every kid is different, but for Maya, it started around five months. You'll know because they'll start drooling enough to fill a swimming pool and they'll try to gnaw on your actual face. Seriously, just get the Kianao Panda Teether and put it in the fridge. It's the only way we survived.

Can I use blankets in the crib yet?
Not if they're newborns! My doctor terrified me about this. No loose blankets, no pillows, no stuffed animals. Just a bare crib and a swaddle or a sleep sack. I guess you can introduce a light blanket when they're a toddler, but honestly, Leo is four and he still kicks his off every night anyway.

What do I do about the umbilical cord thing?
Mostly, you just try not to look at it because it's gross. Just do sponge baths with a warm washcloth and keep the area dry until it falls off on its own. It takes a couple of weeks. If it smells weird or looks red, definitely call your doctor, but otherwise, just let it do its crusty little thing.

How do I clean silicone teethers without ruining them?
I literally just washed our panda teether in the sink with warm water and normal dish soap. If it fell on the floor at the grocery store—which happened constantly—I'd sometimes throw it in the top rack of the dishwasher just to be safe. Since it's 100% silicone, it doesn't melt or get weird and sticky like some of the cheap plastic ones do.