Connection Over Convenience

The thing that scared me most about having a baby was not feeling connected to her. This feels weird to admit after nearly four years but I remember that fear. Viscerally. It felt impossible to imagine that there could be this other being that would matter so much to me. My entire pregnancy I kept going back to that intrusive thought. I'm her mother, but what if she doesn't love me? What if she likes other people more than me? What if I have no idea what to do with her? What if I don't love her!?

It felt strange, and my husband did his best to assuage my concern but it was top of mind all the way up to the day she was born. And then once she arrived, the feeling didn't go away all at once. I was still unsure when we took her home from the hospital. I was unsure while nursing. I was unsure even when it was clear that this separate living being needed me, but that uncertainty reduced every day. And then one day, it seemed like the most ridiculous thought I've ever had. Of course I'm going to love her. She needs me to love her.

Which is why every time I see an ad promising to 'give you your nights back,' I want to retort: From what!? From the connection I was afraid I'd never have? No thanks.

Key Performance Indicators

Look, the reality is that most companies are run by Key Performance Indicators. KPIs are set by each team and products are measured against them. The problem in my opinion is that the infant sleep industry seems obsessed with the "Hours of uninterrupted infant sleep" KPI. This, despite the fact that it's not clear that uninterrupted sleep is better for the baby. In fact, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends that babies should be in the same room as their parents for the first 6 months in large part to limit the hours of uninterrupted sleep. Babies at this stage are taking their cues from us. Our sleep cycles are driving the infants to regulate their own sleep cycles in a process termed co-regulation. "Hours spent not needing each other" is just a bad KPI. It seeks to sedate parents into thinking that with the right set of products, life can go back to the way it was before kids. But life has fundamentally changed. I believe the right thing to measure is closer to "time spent in synchronicity". There are hours, even days where I feel an undeniable connection to my baby. I understand them, and am able to respond to their needs quickly. It even feels like they understand where I'm at too! We need more tools to support that level of connection.

This all leads me to think that we're really in denial about the "Fourth Trimester". Those early days are when I felt my baby needed me most and where I developed the most as a mother. But all the product marketing tries to convince us that babies can sleep separately, independently even. If only we have the right gadget, our baby can sleep through the night. Not only that, they often make the claim that babies should sleep through the night. Parents needing a baby to sleep through the night is one thing (I've been there and I empathize!) but making the claim that a good baby can sleep through the night is plain wrong. Solitary sleeping is a recent phenomena for babies in the grand scheme of things. Babies from time immemorial co-slept alongside their parents, muddling through the Fourth Trimester, learning how to breathe with regularity, sleep soundly, and feed when needed. We can't just change all that in a few generations.

The worst case occurs when the harmonious mother-baby system is broken in favor of independence but then this thin facade comes crashing down when there's an adverse situation. Baby gets sick or gets his first tooth? Back to crying, no robot is able to calm them down and it's back to reactively co-sleeping. It all works, until it doesn't.

Integration over Isolation

Since I had my first child, I've noticed a shift. Some products get it right and enhance connection rather than replace it. I've loved using baby carriers that let me keep my child close while living my life. Sidecar cribs acknowledge that separation at night is the problem, not the solution. These products integrate the baby into our existing rhythms instead of demanding we create artificial boundaries. But for every product that brings us closer, there's another pushing us apart.

Baby monitors can turn every parent into a security guard, obsessively watching grainy footage of their baby instead of trusting their instincts. We've traded proximity for surveillance, intuition for anxiety. Sidecar cribs are still not the norm in America but they offer an option that integrates the baby into an existing sleep-space, without having to build out a separate crib in a nursery, isolating them at night. Convenience matters, but we need to go into decisions like this with eyes wide open.

The tradeoffs for convenience are usually peak life moments. I'm probably not the first to tell you that a baby sleeping on your chest, gently breathing at 3am after a night feed is a peak human experience. It's a source of connection, not disruption. Ideally, I'll be able to fall asleep quickly after and that's where I need support, not to avoid feeding the baby in the first place. When the baby is breathing in the C02 that I'm breathing out, gently regulating her system while we surround ourselves in a warm bubble of shared airspace, that's another peak experience. There's literally nothing like it. Do I need a little help with the anxiety around baby safety while co-sleeping? Sure. But that's where technology should support us, not by ripping us from that bubble in the first place.

As in many other areas, technology is not a fundamentally isolating force. I just think that in the neonatal space, it's deployed without care, favoring convenience over experience. We deserve better than products that treat our babies as problems to be solved and our instincts as inconveniences to be overridden. I'm surprisingly energized (or at least as energized as a new mom of two can be) to discover new ways where we can use novel technology to deepen our connections with new members of the family, creating better lives through stronger, more resilient parents. What would it look like to build with the right KPI in mind? In service of a connected family rather than an independent infant. Where helpless newborns are not a problem in need of a solution, but rather, a key piece to greater transformation. If you're interested in what we're building, feel free to follow along by subscribing.