Why "Love You Like A Love Song" Saved My Sanity (A Letter)

Dear Jess from last November. You're currently sitting on the peeling linoleum in the hallway, hiding from a four-month-old who's screaming like a tiny banshee because you put him on his stomach. The Texas heat is absolutely brutal outside, our sad little AC window unit is struggling to keep the living room below eighty degrees, and you've thirty-two Etsy orders for personalized birth announcement signs you haven't even started cutting the wood for yet.

You hate tummy time. He hates tummy time. And Grandma keeps texting you asking if little g baby has rolled over yet, and honestly, you want to throw your phone directly into the toilet.

Actually, you know what? Let's make this an open letter to any mom sitting on the bathroom floor right now. If y'all are out there sweating through your postpartum leggings and wondering why you can't seem to get this parenting thing right, this is for you, too. I'm just gonna be real with you: the baby books are making it harder than it needs to be.

Letting go of the classical music fantasy

Let's talk about your oldest, Jackson, for a second. With him, you were so incredibly neurotic about good brain development that you played him nothing but classical piano. You bought a forty-dollar classical infant CD, put him on a rigid schedule, and forced yourselves to sit in total silence while he stared blankly at the ceiling absorbing the genius of Bach. And look how that turned out—he’s four years old now, terrified of moths, and currently trying to eat a blue crayon while watching a ten-minute YouTube video of a stranger unboxing a vacuum cleaner. The Mozart did absolutely nothing, babe. You stressed yourself out for literally zero return on investment.

So listen to me carefully. Tomorrow afternoon, out of pure sleep-deprived desperation, you're going to accidentally start humming Selena Gomez. You’re gonna look down at his red, furious little face on the floor and just belt out the first thing that comes to your tired brain.

I love you like a love song baby, you’ll sing, completely off-key, while waving a burp cloth like a surrender flag.

And he’s going to stop crying. I swear to you, it’s going to be the most magical three minutes of your entire week.

Why I'm permanently done with traditional lullabies

Can we just talk about how messed up traditional nursery rhymes are anyway? My mom, bless her heart, is always trying to get me to sing "Rock-a-bye Baby" to him when he's fussy. Have you ever actually stopped and listened to those words? We're literally singing our children to sleep with a story about a baby falling out of a tree. A tree! Who puts an infant in a tree in the middle of a windstorm? It's a massive safety hazard, and honestly, it sets off my postpartum anxiety just thinking about the physics of a wooden cradle plummeting from an oak branch.

And don't even get me started on "Ring Around the Rosie." Oh sure, let's just do a little musical number about the bubonic plague and everyone dropping dead in the street, because that seems totally appropriate for a newborn's developing brain.

Then there's "You Are My Sunshine." Let's dissect that one for a quick second. Please don't take my sunshine away. It's a song about crippling codependency and abandonment! I'm trying to raise an independent human who will eventually move out of my house and do his own laundry, not a tiny emotional hostage. No thank you. I'll take a club banger over a Victorian tragedy any day of the week.

The weird science of pop music for infants

I don't know the exact science behind why this works, but our pediatrician, Dr. Miller, kinda shrugged at his last checkup and mumbled something about how babies just crave rhythmic repetition. She threw out some big words about spatial reasoning and vestibular development and brain pathways when they hear a heavy, predictable beat, but all I took away from that expensive appointment was that when Selena goes "repeat-peat-peat-peat-peat-peat," the baby's eyes get huge. He literally forgets he's doing the horrible, awful work of holding up his own giant head because he's trying to figure out where the sound is coming from. I guess those catchy pop baby lyrics just hit different when you're four months old and your entire worldview is the living room rug.

The gear that actually buys me seven minutes of peace

Now, while we're talking about that tummy time setup on the living room floor, you're going to finally cave and buy that Nature Play Gym Set you've had sitting in your cart for three weeks. I know it's eighty bucks, which makes you wince when you're calculating exactly how many wooden Etsy signs you've to paint to pay for it, but Jess, listen to me: it's worth every single penny.

With Jackson, you bought that horrific, flashing plastic musical farm thing. You remember it. The one where the plastic cow mooed aggressively every time you accidentally bumped it in the dark? We threw it away after three weeks because it was giving us all migraines. This wooden one from Kianao honestly looks nice in our chaotic house, and when he's on his back looking up at those little wooden leaves and crochet moons, he's totally mesmerized. Because it's not made of loud, screaming neon plastic, it doesn't overstimulate him right before naptime. It's my absolute favorite thing we bought for baby number three, mostly because it buys me exactly enough time to drink half a cup of hot coffee while he bats at a wooden ring.

If you're tired of your house looking like a primary-colored plastic factory exploded in it, just go browse Kianao's organic play gym collection when you get a second.

Not everything is a massive winner

Of course, we still fall for the cute stuff that doesn't quite hit the mark, and I'm not gonna lie to you about that. Remember that Bunny Teething Rattle you thought would be the ultimate magical solution to his fussy gums? It cost about twenty dollars, and honestly? It's just okay in reality. It looks absolutely adorable sitting on the nursery shelf, and I definitely appreciate that the beechwood is safe and untreated so I don't have to worry about toxic chemicals, but when push comes to shove, he'd still rather chew on the TV remote or my actual collarbone. Buy it if you want the cute aesthetic nursery photos, but don't expect it to cure a teething meltdown.

How to transition from the dance party to naptime

Anyway, back to the music strategy. When you're transitioning him from tummy time to a nap, you don't have to stop the song, you just slow down the tempo. I usually wrap him up in that Colorful Hedgehog Bamboo Baby Blanket—which, by the way, has held up amazingly through a billion trips through the washing machine and is so ridiculously breathable that he doesn't wake up a sweaty mess in this Texas heat. Once he's swaddled up, I just sing the exact same pop song acoustic-style. Soft, slow, a little breathy. I love you like a love song baby... Just over and over while swaying in the dark hallway until his eyes get heavy.

So hang in there. Six months from now, he’s crawling, you’re sleeping slightly more, and you’ll know every word to Selena’s entire 2011 discography by heart. Quit trying to be the perfect Instagram mom who only hums Mozart and just embrace the chaotic pop-concert living room vibes, because when you finally give up on doing it perfectly, the whole surviving-a-baby thing gets so much more fun.

Before you dive into the endless late-night Google spiral about why your baby won't sleep, go check out Kianao's full collection of sustainable, seriously-beautiful baby gear so you can at least stare at nice things while you're exhausted.

Messy questions you're probably googling at 2 AM

Are pop songs too stimulating for a baby right before sleep?

Look, I'm not a sleep consultant, but in my deeply tired experience, it's all about how you sing it. If you're blasting the actual club track from your phone speakers while waving a flashlight around, yeah, they're probably not going to sleep anytime soon. But if you take a song you already know all the words to and just hum it slowly while pacing the hallway, it works perfectly. It's way better than trying to remember the third verse of some old lullaby you haven't heard since 1996 while you're running on two hours of sleep.

How long is tummy time really supposed to be anyway?

Dr. Miller told me something like fifteen to thirty minutes a day total, broken up into small chunks throughout the afternoon, but honestly? Some days we get three minutes of screaming, and I just call it a wash. I figure as long as he's not strapped into a car seat all day long, his neck muscles will figure it out eventually. My oldest spent half his infancy strapped to my chest in a carrier while I ran the shop, and his neck works just fine now. Try not to stress the stopwatch too much.

Is it weird if I absolutely hate playing traditional nursery rhymes in my house?

If it's weird, then I'm the weirdest mom in Texas. Nursery rhymes are creepy, repetitive in a bad way, and usually sung by a haunting choir of children on Spotify that makes me feel like I'm trapped in a horror movie. You're the one who has to listen to it all day long, so pick music that doesn't make you want to rip your hair out. Your baby just wants to hear your voice, they really don't care if it's Mother Goose or top 40 radio.

Do I need to have a good singing voice for this to work?

Bless your heart, absolutely not. I sound like a dying crow when I hit the high notes, and my baby still looks at me like I just won a Grammy. They literally don't know what good singing sounds like yet. Their little brains are just happy you're paying attention to them and making eye contact. So just belt it out loudly while you're folding the laundry—they're a captive audience anyway.