Reality Check: What Love Is Blind's Megan Got Right About Postpartum

"Sleep when the infant sleeps," my grandmother told me at my baby shower, sipping her sweet tea. "Hire a postpartum doula for fifty dollars an hour to do your laundry," said a girl I went to college with who now lives in a high-rise in Austin. "Just put two tablespoons of rice cereal right in the bottle to knock him out," whispered the lady behind me in the HEB checkout line. Three different women, three completely different planets of advice for keeping a newborn alive.

I was thinking about this whole circus of unsolicited opinions last week when my group chat blew up over Megan Walerius. You know, "Sparkle Megan" from season nine of Love Is Blind? Well, she shocked the absolute pants off everyone by revealing she had secretly welcomed a little boy named Brooks back in July, right after that incredibly messy split from her single-dad castmate. But honestly, the reality TV drama wasn't what got me fired up while I was folding my fourth load of toddler laundry. It was her postpartum podcast interview. She looked straight into the microphone and casually told new moms that her top piece of advice was to "just get a night nanny" because it's a "literal game changer." Bless her heart.

The night nanny delusion versus actual human budgets

Y'all. A full-time night nanny costs roughly a hundred grand a year. One hundred thousand dollars. I’m just gonna be real with you—celebrity parenting advice is a wild ride, and hearing someone suggest a luxury staff member as a casual solution for sleep deprivation is enough to make any regular mom's eye twitch. When my oldest was born, he woke up every forty-five minutes for the first three months of his life, and I was so sleep-deprived I was having full-blown conversations with the hallway thermostat. We didn't have a night nanny. We had sheer panic and a lot of tears.

My pediatrician looked at my husband and me during our one-month checkup, saw that we were both vibrating with exhaustion, and told us that taking sleep shifts was pretty much the only way two-parent households survive the newborn phase without turning on each other. You literally just trade off chunks of the night so someone gets at least four hours of unbroken rest, because apparently, fragmented sleep is biologically totally normal for infants but acts like literal torture on adult brains. If you can't afford to pay someone the equivalent of a small mortgage to watch your kid sleep, you just have to piece together a strategy with whoever is living in your house and pray for dawn.

This is also exactly why I'm so ruthlessly picky about what my kids wear to bed, because if a scratchy tag wakes them up fifteen minutes into a sleep window, I'll lose my actual mind. That's why I'm mildly obsessed with the Organic Cotton Baby Bodysuit from Kianao. My oldest is a walking cautionary tale of what happens when you buy cheap synthetic clothes—his eczema flared up so bad he looked like a little tomato for weeks. These Kianao onesies are my absolute favorite thing we sell because they're just 95% organic cotton with a tiny bit of stretch, and they don't have those infuriating itchy tags that make babies thrash around all night. At around twenty-two bucks, it's a whole lot cheaper than a night nanny, and it actually helps control their body temperature so they don't wake up in a puddle of their own sweat.

When the magical birth center vision goes up in flames

Megan also opened up about her birth story, and honestly, this part made me feel for her. She had this whole beautiful plan for an unmedicated natural birth at a fancy birthing center, but after twenty grueling hours of labor, things went sideways and she ended up having an emergency C-section.

Honestly, you can just throw your perfectly typed birth plan straight into the hospital trash can on the way to triage and save yourself the emotional damage.

I think I read somewhere online that something like a third of all deliveries in this country end up on the operating table, and a lot of those are total surprises. My own doctor told me around week thirty-six to just mentally prepare for a surgical exit because babies do whatever they want, and she was so right. It's completely terrifying when the monitors start beeping and suddenly the room is full of scrub nurses rushing you down a bright hallway. I appreciate that Megan told her listeners not to beat themselves up when the plan changes, because the mom guilt over not having a "natural" experience is heavy and completely useless.

When you're packing your hospital bag, you really need to pack for both a standard delivery and a major abdominal surgery, which means throwing in those massive high-waisted recovery underwear that won't dig into a fresh incision and maybe a nursing pillow that can strap around you to keep the baby's weight off your stitches.

If you're currently in the nesting phase and trying to figure out what you actually need to survive those first few months, you might want to take a breather and just browse through some of our organic baby clothes that won't irritate fresh newborn skin while you figure everything else out.

Buying the stuff that actually works instead of hiring a staff

Since most of us are operating on regular human budgets, we've to rely on gear to do the heavy lifting that a wealthy person's staff might do. I'm not going to sit here and tell you that a blanket is going to solve your life, but having the right ones definitely cuts down on the screaming.

Take the Colorful Dinosaur Bamboo Baby Blanket, for example. My middle kid is completely obsessed with dinosaurs and he drags this specific blanket through the dirt, leaves it in the dog bed, and generally treats it like a rag. I've washed it at least eighty times. I assumed the bamboo fabric would pill or fall apart, but it's honestly held up better than my own sanity, and it stays cool enough in the suffocating Texas heat that he doesn't overheat during stroller naps. It’s a solid, hard-working piece of fabric.

Now, on the flip side, people are always asking me about teething toys, especially our Bunny Teething Rattle. I'll just be straight with you—it's incredibly cute, the untreated beechwood is super safe for them to gnaw on, and it looks absolutely beautiful sitting in a baby shower gift basket. But when my youngest is cutting a molar and screaming like a banshee in the Target parking lot, she doesn't want the aesthetic wooden bunny, she wants to chew on my germ-covered car keys or a frozen waffle. It's a nice toy, and it's great for sensory development or whatever, but don't expect it to magically cure the misery of teething all by itself.

Figuring out your village when you live out in the sticks

The last thing Megan harped on was leaning on your strong support system, which sounds lovely, but a lot of us don't have a ready-made village sitting around waiting to hold our infants. Out here in rural Texas, my closest neighbor is a mile down a dirt road and my mom still works full time, so "leaning on my village" usually just looked like me crying alone in the shower while the baby bounced in a plastic chair on the bathmat.

My doctor warned me that trying to do everything completely isolated is basically a fast track to postpartum depression, which I definitely flirted with after my second kid. The trick isn't having a massive group of people hovering around your house; it's figuring out how to give the three people who honestly do care incredibly specific, annoying tasks. I had to learn to ask my mother-in-law to drop off a tray of baked ziti on her porch without ringing the doorbell, and I had to tell my best friend to come over and fold the mountain of laundry on my couch while I slept face-down for forty minutes. People genuinely want to be helpful but they're generally clueless about what you really need, so you've to boss them around a little bit to survive the newborn trenches.

Look, whether you're recovering from an unexpected C-section or just trying to get your kid to sleep for more than two hours at a time without spending your life savings on a night nanny, comfort is pretty much the only thing you can control right now. If you're exhausted, just grab your lukewarm coffee and wander over to our collection of sustainable baby blankets to find something soft for those endless night shifts.

My totally unfiltered answers to your postpartum questions

Why is my newborn waking up every single hour?

Honestly, my pediatrician told me it's mostly because their little stomachs are the size of a walnut and they process milk so ridiculously fast, but I'm pretty sure they also just possess a sixth sense for exactly when our heads hit the pillow. It’s exhausting, it’s biology, and no, you aren't doing anything wrong.

How do you honestly survive a C-section recovery with a baby?

They tell you it takes six weeks, but I swear I read somewhere that the deep tissue takes months to heal, and it definitely took me a solid six months to not feel weird when I coughed. You survive by refusing to lift anything heavier than your baby, taking the pain meds on a strict schedule even if you feel fine, and letting your house get completely filthy.

Are expensive baby sleep consultants and night nannies worth it?

If you've the money falling out of your pockets, sure, pay someone to suffer through the 3 AM wakeups for you. But for the rest of us, trading sleep shifts with your partner and buying decent, breathable organic pajamas that don't make your kid sweat works just fine.

What's the best way to handle visitors after giving birth?

Lie to them. Tell them your doctor said no visitors for two weeks so you've a built-in excuse to turn people away, and if they insist on coming over, hand them a broom or a crying baby the second they walk through the door. If they're just there to hold a sleeping infant and drink your coffee, they aren't part of your village.