Vol. 20 - The Postnatal Playlist

On avoiding the endless scroll

As my wife's belly grew more and more noticeable with our first child, the advice, solicited or otherwise, came fast and furious.

Some of it was helpful, most of it wasn't.

But none of it was more useful, more real-world friendly, and more applicable to a modern relationship and early parenthood than the Postnatal Playlist. 

“You're going to be exhausted,” my pal Matty B, himself a father of two, told me. “And you'll have no idea how much time you'll have together before the baby wakes up again.” 

The last thing we’ll want to do is waste those precious minutes together, he said, even if it's fifteen or twenty at a clip, scrolling through Netflix or Hulu, repeating, ‘I don't care. What do you want to watch?’ until the baby starts to whimper in the other room.

He instructed us to make a playlist, long before the baby arrived, of all the shows and movies we might want to watch. It was just one other element of the nesting process, at the ready for those unpredictable and invaluable bouts of alone time my wife and I might have in the wake of our son's birth.

Keep it simple, he instructed, as mindless and easily digestible as possible. 

Make sure it’s something you can walk away from. Nothing with a cliffhanger. Nothing you’ll need to rewind when you inevitably fall asleep. Avoid anything that requires too much unpacking. Save the sweeping dramas and period pieces for later.

Soon, our Postnatal Playlist filled with delightful episodes of The Great British Baking Show, Night on Earth, and The Big Flower Fight.

Knowing we’d be stuck at home a while, we even added a bit of travel and food porn with shows like Italy from Above, The World’s Most Extraordinary Homes, Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, and plenty of Bourdain.

And for quick, fifteen-minute bursts of laughter, we queued Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.

Whatever exhaustion we felt, however mushy our minds and emotions were rendered by our new baby, we were placated when my wife and I jumped on the couch together, knowing the Postnatal Playlist await, not asking to use an ounce of our barely-functioning brains.