Why Buying Lil Baby Concert Tickets For a Baby is a Bad Idea

It was 9:15 PM in section 204 of the arena. My phone was open to a decibel-reading app I had downloaded in a panic in the parking lot, and the screen was just flashing the word "DANGEROUS" in bright red letters. I was wearing a nursing bra that lost its elasticity sometime in 2018 and an oversized flannel, smelling intensely of stale sour milk and an iced Americano I had pounded at four that afternoon. Leo was strapped to my chest. He was one. The opening DJ had just screamed something about putting our hands up to the sky, and I was just trying to keep Leo's massive noise-canceling headphones from slipping over his eyes for the fiftieth time.

Mark was staring straight ahead, pretending this was totally fine and normal. We were at a rap show with a baby. An actual infant. Because obviously.

Mark wanted to prove we still had an edge

Let's back up. Mark had this total mid-life crisis moment a few months prior where he felt like we never did anything fun anymore. We just went to Target and bought bulk paper towels and watched Bluey until our eyes bled. So when the tour was announced, he sat at his laptop with like, four different browser tabs open, swearing at the digital queue line.

He was so proud when he snagged them. He kept saying it would be an epic family memory to take Leo to a Lil Baby concert. My mom had Maya for the weekend, so it was just us and the baby. I remember thinking, well, maybe he'll just sleep through it in the carrier? Babies sleep through noisy things all the time, right? I mean, he sleeps through the garbage truck backing up down our driveway every Tuesday morning.

Oh god. I'm so deeply naive. I look back at that version of myself and I just want to hand her a glass of wine and tell her to go to bed.

The great lie of the seven pm start time

Here's something you forget about live music when you haven't been to a show in five years. The time printed on the pass is a hilarious joke. It said 7:00 PM. In my exhausted mom brain, I calculated that we'd be in our seats by 6:45, the artist would play for maybe an hour and a half, and we'd be driving home by 8:30 PM. Just in time for a slightly late bedtime routine.

No. No, no, no. Seven o'clock is just when they unlock the arena doors so you can stand in line for forty-five minutes to buy an eighty-dollar hoodie. Then you go to your seat. And nothing happens.

At 8:00 PM, a hype man came out. Then a local opener. Then at 8:45 PM, a DJ came out and literally just played Spotify hits from the 2010s while occasionally yelling at us to get loud. By 9:30 PM, the main act still hadn't shown up. Do you've any idea what a one-year-old does at 9:30 PM in a flashing, vibrating stadium? He turns into a feral, thrashing badger. It's just biology. You can't fight the circadian rhythm of a toddler with flashing strobe lights, they just short-circuit completely.

Honestly just pay the thirty bucks for the premium attached parking garage across the street so you don't have to wait an hour for a shuttle while carrying a screaming child in the dark, period.

What Dr Miller told me about tiny eardrums

A week after this whole spectacular disaster, I had Leo at the doctor for his regular checkup. I casually mentioned to Dr. Miller that we took him to the show, like I was trying to sound like a cool, relaxed mom who doesn't let motherhood slow her down.

She stopped typing on her laptop. She just sighed, took off her glasses, and rubbed her temples. I instantly felt like I was in the principal's office.

She started explaining things to me, and I'm going to butcher the science here because I was barely functioning on three hours of sleep, but she basically said the safe noise limit for an infant is around 70 decibels. Which is, like, the volume of a normal dishwasher or a vacuum. These arena hip-hop shows are pushing 110 to 120 decibels easily. The bass physically moves the hair on your arms.

But the really terrifying part is that a baby's ear canal is physiologically different than ours. It's much smaller. So I guess when the sound waves enter their tiny ears, the smaller space actually amplifies the noise? Like an echo chamber of doom? I don't totally understand acoustic physics, but she made it sound like putting a megaphone directly against his little eardrum. She said it can cause permanent ringing or hearing loss even after just a few minutes. We had those massive industrial earmuffs on him, which she said was good, but even those don't block out the bone-conduction vibrations of a heavy bass drop.

Anyway, the point is, she gave me that sweet, judgmental doctor smile and basically told me to never do it again.

The outfit that actually survived the night

If there's one single thing I did right that night, it was what I dressed him in. Because arenas are a weird microclimate. It was freezing in the concourse and then absolute sweltering body-heat soup in the actual seating bowl.

I had him wearing the Organic Cotton Baby Bodysuit Sleeveless Infant Onesie from Kianao. Usually, if Leo gets overheated, he breaks out in this angry, red heat rash all over his chest and neck. And being strapped tightly to my chest in a baby carrier for three hours is basically a recipe for a heat rash explosion. But that little sleeveless onesie is a lifesaver.

The organic cotton is incredibly breathable. It's got this nice stretch to it without getting all saggy and gross, and it created this perfect little barrier between my sweaty flannel and his sensitive skin. He didn't get a single red bump. Plus, the envelope shoulders meant that when we had to do a desperate, acrobatic diaper change on a fold-down changing table in the arena bathroom while the bass was shaking the walls, I could just pull the whole thing down over his legs instead of over his head. I've washed that olive green bodysuit probably forty times since that night, and it still looks brand new. It's completely earned its keep.

Check out the rest of the organic clothing collection if your kid also gets weird mysterious rashes from synthetic fabrics.

Sticky floors and dropped pandas

While we were trapped in our seats during the endless DJ set, I was desperately trying to keep Leo entertained. He was squirming. He was whining. The earmuffs were making him sweaty.

I reached into my bag of tricks and pulled out the Panda Teether Silicone Baby Bamboo Chew Toy. Now, at home in our living room? This teether is fine. It's cute, the silicone is soft, and he likes chewing on the little panda ears when his gums are bothering him. It does the job.

But in a crowded, dark arena? It was a nightmare. Because babies drop things. Repeatedly. He would chew on it for thirty seconds, get distracted by a flashing light, and just open his hand. The panda would plummet down past my knees and land directly on the sticky, mystery-liquid-coated concrete floor of the stadium.

So then I was *that* mom. Trying to blindly fish a silicone panda out from under the seats, balancing a squirming infant, and scrubbing this toy with a baby wipe in the dark while hoping I got all the arena floor bacteria off it. The guy next to us had already spilled half a beer near my shoes. I wiped that panda down like four times before I finally just shoved it back into my diaper bag and gave up. It's a perfectly okay teether, but it definitely needs a clip if you're going to take it out in public.

Knowing when to wave the white flag

So, 9:45 PM finally rolls around. The lights go completely black. The crowd loses its collective mind. The actual Lil Baby concert is finally starting.

The bass hit so hard my teeth rattled. Leo instantly stiffened in the carrier and let out a muffled wail that I couldn't even hear over the screaming crowd, but I could feel his chest heaving against mine. Mark looked at me. I looked at Mark. We didn't even have to say anything.

We grabbed the diaper bag and practically sprinted up the concrete stairs.

We made it exactly three songs into the set. All that money, all that hype, all that stress in the digital waiting room, and we spent the majority of the night listening to a local DJ and then left before the main artist even finished his opening medley.

The walk back to the car was so quiet. My ears were ringing. My back was killing me from the carrier. Leo passed out the second we hit the cool night air, completely exhausted from the sensory overload.

The next morning, the sun was shining in our living room. Maya was still at my mom's. Mark was nursing a massive coffee on the sofa, looking deeply defeated. Leo was sitting on his playmat in his pajamas, totally happy, playing with his Gentle Baby Building Block Set. He was just quietly stacking those little squishy macaron-colored blocks and knocking them over. Clapping his hands.

I sat on the floor with him and squeezed one of the rubber blocks. No flashing lights. No deafening bass. No crowd surges. Just a baby happily chewing on a soft block in complete, beautiful silence. I loved those blocks in that moment more than I've ever loved anything in my life. They were so beautifully boring.

We had literally set a few hundred dollars on fire to stand in a dark room and stress sweat for three hours. If you're currently trying to figure out if you can swing bringing your infant to a massive arena tour, just save your money, stay home on the couch in your sweatpants, and listen to the album on your phone while your kid sleeps peacefully in their own bed.

Before you plan your next wildly ambitious outing, make sure you're stocked up on the quiet, calming essentials in our toy collection.

Messy Questions I Keep Getting About This

Should I buy hearing protection for my infant?
Oh my god, yes, absolutely. If you're taking them anywhere louder than a busy restaurant, you need those massive over-ear muffs. Don't try to use those little foam earplugs because they're a massive choking hazard and they just fall out anyway. But also, understand that earmuffs don't magically make a rap concert safe for a baby. They just take it from "immediate permanent damage" down to "still really, really bad."

Can a baby sleep through an arena show?
I mean, maybe? If your baby is a literal rock? I thought Leo would sleep because he sleeps through our dog barking, but arena bass is a physical sensation. It vibrates your skeleton. They can't sleep through their own ribs vibrating, plus the strobe lights flash right through their closed eyelids. It's sensory hell for them.

Is floor seating safe for a stroller?
Absolutely not, don't even attempt this. Floor seating at these shows turns into a massive, surging crowd of adults who are drinking and jumping. You can't see over them, people will trip over your stroller, and there's nowhere to escape if the crowd pushes forward. If you absolutely have to go, get an aisle seat in the seated sections near an exit.

What if I really want to share live music with my baby?
Look, I get it. We want to be cool parents. But take them to an outdoor afternoon jazz festival in the park where you can sit on a blanket a hundred yards from the speakers. Arena hip-hop tours are just not built for the safety of tiny humans. Save the big shows for when you can afford a babysitter.

Do venues even allow babies inside?
You'd be surprised, but yeah, most stadiums don't actually stop you at the door. Some might require you to buy a lap ticket, which is incredibly annoying. Just because the venue security guard lets you walk in with a baby carrier doesn't mean it's really a good idea to be there. Learn from my very expensive mistake.