Tim Urban | 10 Thoughts From the Fourth Trimester

Tim Urban, (Urban 2023)

Summary

• The baby may arrive earlier than planned; try to include Slack in your plans
• See headings

Thoughts

Notes

1. A newborn is not a baby

I thought it was gonna be like this:

But it’s actually like this:

4. Babies are incredibly overdramatic

When a normal person is hungry, or tired, or needs to burp, they’re a little annoyed. Babies are in Shakespearean agony. And then comes the burp and one second later they’re like “sup.” It’s insane behavior.

For a while, the range of baby emotion runs from Shakespearean agony to neutral, never entering the positive realm. Neutral is a newborn’s best-case scenario.

After six weeks or so, positive emotion begins to make an appearance, but then they still go apoplectic at the slightest inconvenience.

While we’re here, I know it’s bad but I can’t help it—crying babies are funny. My wife completely disagrees with me on this.

6. Babies shit all over your schedule

Obvious one, I know, but just check this out:

(jiuguangw 2019)

(jitney86 2017)

(Johnson 2012)

These are the sleep graphs of three different babies, but they all have one thing in common: there’s no rhyme or reason in the early months, because newborns are dicks.

Bibliography