What the Hell is a Wake Window?
An essay on Type B mothering.
You couldn’t pay me to keep a logbook of feeding times, diaper changes, and nap schedules. I’ve been a mom since 2015 and I still have not a vague understanding of what a wake window is. I can’t tell you how many times the baby nursed last night.
These are my hard, Type B Mom rules:
Any bag is a diaper bag if you put a diaper in it.
Co-sleeping and breastfeeding are just easier.
Baby food is a psyop.
Nobody needs the new baby thing.
I don’t buy sippy cups for my toddlers. They learn to hold tiny glass jam jars from the time they’re 9 months old. Broken glass? We have a broom and dustpan for that. Messes don’t scare me. I own a Dyson.
I won’t buy plastic plates or cups or utensils but I will use the same beat-to-hell Baby Jogger stroller for 10 years. Buying new things every pregnancy is a waste of money and space. I don’t care and neither does the baby.
Looking around at young moms with their curated sage green nurseries and overpriced organic cotton baby carriers, it dawns on me. I’m not a young mom anymore. I’m the seasoned mom. It sneaks up on you. One minute you’re asking your childhood best friend’s older-sister-who-had-a-kid-at-22 for advice on Ergo versus Boba, and the next minute, you are the older sister who had a kid at 22. By Arkansas standards, I’m right on track. By Rochester, New York, or Birmingham, Michigan standards? I’m a teen mom. Surely I’m not old enough to be the go-to for breastfeeding advice. But alas, I am. That’s me.
Young enough to ask my late 40s friends for parenting advice, but old enough that my hair stylist, who also just had her first baby at 22, asked me if she should be waking her 4 month old at night to nurse.
22 year old first time mom Emily would keel over and die if she found out we once ordered a can of Kendamil on DoorDash when the third baby was 10 months old. Not because we were in a true emergency, but because we were having a difficult night. The baby loved it, and it got us through a weird hump of stress-induced reduced milk supply. Consciously, I know that donated breastmilk is the superior choice, but you can’t order breastmilk on DoorDash. And we survived.
