What Nobody Tells You About Having a Pitbull and a New Baby

I was sitting on the sticky laminate floor of our kitchen at 2:14 AM, wearing maternity leggings with a suspicious yogurt stain on the left knee, absolutely sobbing into a mug of decaf instant coffee. I was seven months pregnant with Leo. Our eighty-pound rescue pitbull, Bruno, was snoring on the rug, completely unaware that I was deep in a late-night Reddit hole convincing myself he was going to eat my unborn child.

The internet is a terrible, terrible place when you're pregnant and own a large dog. You basically get two camps of people screaming at you in ALL CAPS. One side tells you that your dog is a ticking time bomb and you're a negligent mother for even letting a pitbull look at a baby. The other side posts photos of newborns sleeping literally on top of a pitbull's head, insisting they're magical "nanny dogs" who will tuck your infant into their crib at night and gently kiss their forehead.

My husband Mark was firmly in the second camp. He had this incredibly annoying, blissful ignorance about the whole thing. He'd just pat Bruno's massive block head while we were watching Netflix and coo, "Hey baby pitbull, you're gonna be the best big brother, aren't you?" And I'd just stand there in my oversized t-shirt, hormonal and terrifying, wanting to throw my lukewarm mug at his head because I knew it couldn't possibly be that simple.

What do you even call a pitbull mixed with a newborn in a tiny three-bedroom house? A total baby p situation? I don't know, Mark called him his "baby p" for a while until I banned the nickname because it just sounded weird. Anyway, the point is, I was terrified, Mark was oblivious, and we were completely unprepared for the reality of bringing a fragile human into a house ruled by a very heavy, very needy animal.

My pediatrician's reality check

I finally broke down and asked Dr. Miller about it at my 36-week appointment. She’s seen me cry over everything from stretch marks to the fear of dropping the baby in the toilet, so she just handed me a tissue and gave it to me straight. And she didn't use any of that weird clinical jargon you read online.

Basically, she told me that all that stuff about pitbulls being natural "nanny dogs" is total crap. And the stuff about them being biologically wired to randomly attack is also crap. They're just dogs. Really strong dogs with a jaw grip of, like, 235 PSI or something terrifying. But the real issue wasn't the breed, it was the noise.

Apparently, newborns cry at this super high frequency—something insane like up to 67,000 Hertz, which means absolutely nothing to me except that it's basically a permanent dog whistle going off in your living room. When Leo eventually arrived and did his shrieking pterodactyl cry, Dr. Miller said it would spike Bruno’s cortisol levels and freak him out. It makes dogs anxious. And an anxious dog with a jaw the size of a toaster is a bad combination. We had to manage the stress, not just hope for a magical Disney movie bond.

The great baby gate incident of 2018

I need to talk about baby gates for a second. Oh god, the gates. If you think you've enough gates, you need three more. We bought so many gates that our hallway looked like the security checkpoint at JFK. Wood gates, metal gates, gates with little tiny cat doors in them that we tripped over constantly.

You can't just leave them in a room together. Ever. Not to pee. Not to grab a fresh coffee from the microwave where you abandoned it three hours ago. I spent the first four months of Leo's life doing this ridiculous physical dance where I'd put Leo in a bassinet, step over a gate, close the gate, let Bruno into the kitchen, step over another gate, and then collapse on the sofa. Exhausting. Truly.

It's not about punishing the dog, it's just about creating a physical boundary so that when the baby inevitably starts screaming because their sock fell off, the dog can't just run up and put their face in the baby's face to investigate. Because sleep deprivation makes you clumsy, and you'll eventually turn your back, and that's when things happen.

By the way, once they start walking? Just teach the kid not to pull the dog's ears and keep them separated when the dog is eating. It's really not that hard. Moving on.

Gear that actually stopped the pacing and whining

The single biggest trigger for Bruno's anxiety was when Leo was uncomfortable. If Leo was squirming and whining, Bruno would do this horrible pacing thing. Pace, pace, pace. Panting. Staring with that creepy "whale eye" where you can see the whites of their eyes. It stressed me out so badly my shoulders were permanently living around my earlobes.

I realized pretty quickly that keeping the baby calm was the only way to keep the dog calm. I went through my nursery drawers and threw out basically everything synthetic because Leo's skin was constantly breaking out in these little red rashes that made him absolutely miserable.

I bought this Organic Cotton Baby Bodysuit online during a 4 AM feeding, and I swear to you, it changed the entire vibe of our house. It’s sleeveless, which was perfect because our upstairs gets ridiculously hot, and the fabric is stupidly soft. I vividly remember standing by the changing table wearing the same nursing bra for the third day in a row, snapping up this onesie, and Leo just... settled. It didn't chafe his little eczema patches. He stopped fussing. Which meant Bruno stopped pacing. Honestly, this bodysuit basically saved my marriage and my dog's sanity. It's my absolute favorite thing we bought that first year.

You can actually browse Kianao's whole collection of organic stuff here if your kid has sensitive skin like mine did—it really makes a difference when you're just trying to keep the crying to a minimum.

Teething was another nightmare for dog stress. When Maya (my second kid) came along four years later, we did the whole dog-introduction dance again. When she started cutting her first tooth, the whining was incessant. Just a constant, low-grade siren of misery. I tried tossing Maya the Panda Teether one afternoon when she was drooling all over the rug and Bruno was giving me his stressed-out side-eye from across the room. It’s this cute silicone thing shaped like a panda, and it's super easy to clean—which is vital because I drop everything on the floor where the dog has been walking. It worked, thank god. She chewed on the little bamboo textured parts, stopped making the siren noise, and Bruno went to sleep.

I'll say, not every baby product is a miracle worker. I also got this beautiful Wooden Baby Gym to keep Maya occupied in her gated "safe zone" in the living room. Honestly? It's just okay. Maya sort of stared at the wooden elephant for like five minutes and then tried to roll over and lick the carpet instead. But it looks really beautiful and earthy in our living room, way better than that neon plastic junk, and it meant I could put her down on her back and drink my coffee while knowing there was a physical gate between her and the dog. So, a win is a win, even if she wasn't exactly becoming a Montessori genius under it.

The anti-climactic first meeting

People always ask me how we introduced them. They want some beautiful story about Bruno gently sniffing the car seat and accepting Leo as his own. Yeah, no.

Before we brought Leo home from the hospital, Mark drove home with a little striped receiving blanket that Leo had worn. He let Bruno sniff it from a few feet away. Bruno sniffed it for two seconds, sneezed, and walked away to look for a tennis ball. It was deeply anti-climactic.

When we finally walked in the door, I held Leo tight against my chest while Mark held Bruno tightly on a short leash in the entryway. My palms were sweating. I think I spilled some of my iced coffee on my own shoe. We just stood there. We didn't force them together. Instead of trying to force a magical bond by shoving a tiny infant in the dog's face, we just ignored Bruno and let him get used to the fact that there was a new noisy lump in the house. We praised him when he laid down. We tossed him a treat when he looked away from the baby.

It takes time. It takes so much time and so much coffee and so many gates. But eventually, the dog stops caring. The baby becomes just another piece of furniture that occasionally drops Cheerios.

If you're in the thick of preparing for a new baby, grab a giant coffee, breathe, and make sure your home is set up to keep everyone comfortable and separated. Check out Kianao’s thoughtful, organic baby essentials to help keep your little one calm—because a calm baby means a calm dog.

Questions I frantically googled at 3 AM

Should I rehome my dog before the baby comes?
Oh god, please don't let Facebook mom groups make this decision for you. Unless your dog has a severe bite history or extreme resource guarding that a professional trainer has said is unmanageable, you don't need to jump to worst-case scenarios. Just manage the environment. Gates, gates, and more gates.

What does a stressed dog look like?
It's not always growling! Bruno would do this lip-licking thing when he was anxious. Yawning when they aren't tired, stiffening up like a board, or showing the whites of their eyes (whale eye) are huge red flags. If you see that, remove the dog from the room immediately. Don't wait for a growl.

Is the whole "nanny dog" thing real?
No. I mean, my dog is sweet as pie and loves to sleep under my covers, but dogs are animals, not babysitters. They don't understand human fragility. Never leave them alone together. Seriously, not even for ten seconds while you grab a wipe.

How do I stop the dog from jumping when I'm holding the baby?
We worked on this for weeks before Leo was born. Carry around a doll wrapped in a blanket. If the dog jumps, turn your back completely and ignore them. Mark felt ridiculous walking around our living room talking to a plastic doll, but it worked.

When can my kid play with the dog?
Define "play." Maya is four now and she can throw a ball for Bruno in the yard. But she's not allowed to hug him, climb on him, or touch him when he's sleeping. It's my job to protect the dog from the toddler just as much as protecting the toddler from the dog.