I’m about two months into this journey of motherhood and I’m finally starting to feel like I’m getting my feet underneath me. (And getting dogs underneath my feet.) Of course, the nature of babies is such that the minute you start feeling like you know what you’re doing, they change.

Got a naptime routine down? Boom, suddenly naps are for losers.

Hit your stride feeding? Boom, now he wants to nurse for exactly seven and a half minutes at a precisely 37-degree incline while facing northwest and if these conditions aren’t met, God help you and your eardrums. The other day Sonny screamed so loud that my dog Karma put herself in her crate. (I guess she thought he was yelling at her.)

Still, I’m feeling more adaptable and more like a real mom, as opposed to just Victoria-who-had-been-handed-a-baby, which was the vibe for the first month. And as such I have a couple of new mom gripes.

Every object you have for using on, with or near your baby comes with huge terrifying warnings attached to it. His bassinet? It has a little billboard inside saying “WARNING: INFANTS HAVE DIED IN THESE.” His nursing pillow has a tag big enough to serve as a Coast Guard-approved signaling flag dangling off it reading “WARNING: CHILDREN HAVE DIED USING THIS PRODUCT.” You don’t even want to know about the labels on the baby bathtub. No wonder new mothers have such high levels of anxiety.

“Sleep when the baby sleeps” is one of those sayings that seems like common sense, and is
usually only uttered by people who haven’t experienced caring for a newborn. If I hear it again I may scream, except that it would wake up the baby (now the gravest sin in my household).

First of all, you have to reserve a minimum of 15 minutes to transfer the now-sleeping baby from your arms to their crib. (Good luck putting an awake newborn down for a nap in a crib.) This is a little bit like handling unexploded ordnance. One wrong move and BOOM! your newborn’s adorably big eyes are wide open and staring at you like it’s party time. Then you have to begin the going-to-sleep process all over.

Also, despite all the sleep deprivation, your adult human body will still cling uselessly to a
circadian rhythm. Baby’s down for three hours at high noon? Good luck convincing your central nervous system to fall asleep. And you can’t even take any sleep aids because you need to be prepared to be wide awake immediately if your baby wakes up and needs something.

Oh, and you’ve also developed superhuman hearing so every little noise activates your fight or flight instinct. Especially if you have a cat. Turns out cats do a great infant imitation (and vice versa). And even if you could conk out whenever your baby does and match schedules perfectly, baby’s still only going to sleep a few hours at a time.

Adult humans need consecutive sleep to function properly. It’s a bitter irony that newborns sleep an average of 15 hours a day, but structured in such a way that their caregiver gets absolutely no benefits from it.

I don’t understand why the phrase “like taking candy from a baby” is used to indicate a simple, easy task. To be fair, I haven’t given Sonny any candy yet — they aren’t supposed to have solids until they’re 6 months old — but he’s got a surprisingly strong grip on him. He hasn’t figured out reaching and grasping objects on purpose yet (he’s still figuring out he has arms) but if something hits his palm? Good luck getting it back. There’s ancient clingy monkey DNA somewhere in that reflex, and I don’t imagine it changing just because he’s holding candy.

You know what expression people should be using to indicate a high level of difficulty? “Like putting pants on a baby.” Babies don’t like wearing pants, as it turns out, or any part of the process of putting them on. But they also hate taking them off. And despite an alleged inability to control their legs at this stage, they show a knack for kicking you directly in the chest.

Everyone from Instagram influencers to my kid’s pediatrician tells me that my baby’s favorite thing in the world to look at is my face. This is categorically untrue. First of all, as a breastfed baby, Sonny’s favorite body part of mine is definitely not my face.

But his current favorite thing to gaze at is lamps. His favorite is the standing lamp in his nursery, but anything with a bulb will do, the brighter the better. I took him into the post office the other day and he may be the only person who’s ever loved those fluorescent ceiling lights. My pediatrician assures me this is normal and I have not given birth to a mothman.

On the bright side, I’ve discovered many new skills, including, vitally, being able to do things with one hand. Here is an incomplete list of activities that it turns out I can do with one hand: Prepare a cup of coffee. Eat, as long as it’s not a sandwich. Do a load of laundry (wash AND dry). Retrieve and open a can of seltzer. Feed dogs. Put dog in crate. Brush my hair. Write newspaper column. Clean up spills on kitchen floor. Play fetch with dog. Play tug of war with dog. Vacuum. Set up a swaddle (actual swaddling requires between two and five hands.)

I’m sure by next month, out of pure necessity, this list will have doubled.