Magic Suits, Suction Cup Plates, and the Messy Sanctification of Parenting

A fellow young mother hurried over to me after church — we’d been comparing notes on our nighttime sleep successes (and failures) with our babies, who were only a few weeks apart. “We put her in the Merlin Magic Suit last night and she slept for nine hours straight!” she exclaimed.

I feigned celebration while internally seething with jealousy. While this well-rested new mom shared her news, I held onto my fussy two-month-old who had woken up several times in the night. I had been trying for a few weeks to get her to sleep longer stretches at night, with mixed success, but we were coming off of a few nights in a row of several middle-of-the-night interruptions. I was tired, grumpy, and at this point, I was desperate for a full night’s sleep. I wanted to buy that magic suit. 

For those unfamiliar with the current products available in the baby-sleep world, the Baby Merlin’s Magic Sleepsuit is basically a puffy straight jacket for infants designed to prevent them from rolling over at night. Supposedly it helps babies transition from a swaddle and sleep better through the night. The alluring promise of good sleep for your baby (and you!) is nearly impossible to resist. I was tempted to give in. 

And yet, something told me that putting my baby in a straight jacket would not be a great long-term solution. That something was my husband. 

“There’s no way that’s good for her developmentally,” he argued. Sure, I agreed, but…nine hours of sleep?! That sounded glorious. Couldn’t her development be sacrificed just a bit? 

The magic suit is one of many items of baby gear that moms say you must have, like the Hatch sound machine, the Snoo bassinet, the Frida snot-sucker, those magnetic-closure onesies, and the Baby Brezza automatic formula bottle maker. I don’t fault anyone for purchasing products that make life as a parent easier—we’re all just trying to keep it together, and anything that seems to promise ease, efficiency, and effortless care for your baby seems worth it, even despite a hefty price tag. But the promise of efficiency comes with unforeseen costs. 

Parenting, I’ve learned so far, is full of messes. Messy diapers, messy spit-up, messy feelings, messy schedules. Nothing about having an infant is clean-cut or efficient, no matter how much I try to make it so. The mess is inevitable, but the baby-gear industry offers parents the false promise of a mess-free life, selling products and methods that magically eliminate the mess. We fall for it, and unintentionally, we lose the opportunity for connection.

Our baby was the first grandchild on my side, so naturally my parents were excited. They bought us baby clothes and toys and trinkets before we had even set up a registry. My husband and I love to cook, especially pancakes on Saturdays, so my mom thoughtfully bought us a silicone baby plate emblazoned with “Love You A Brunch.” It had suction cups on the bottom, so strong that it took me quite the effort to remove it from the table—rendering it impossible for a baby to cast onto the floor. 

But as I examined it more thoughtfully, I wondered aloud to my husband: “Shouldn’t we just teach her not to throw her plate on the floor?” 

Sure, suction cups keep the plate on the table for a meal, and save me from cleaning up the mess. But can suction cups teach my child how to sit politely at a table and eat with other people, to respectfully eat what she’s been given, and to take care of her home by keeping the floors clean? 

The suction cups might provide a solution for the mess we want to avoid, but they cannot shape our children into responsible, respectful adults who can eat with others around a table. The magic suit might be a shortcut to a good night’s sleep, but it cannot replace the night-after-night’s work of teaching our baby to self-soothe, to fall asleep on her own, and to respect the others sleeping in our house. 

These products, and many others, tempt me and many other sleep-deprived, exhausted parents away from the difficult, sanctifying work of raising our children, teaching them, and nurturing them. Suction-cup plates teach us that our children are messy inconveniences that need to be optimized and streamlined so we can get back to our lives. When we opt for the suction-cup plates, we may be depriving our children of the parenting they need—and ourselves of becoming the parents they need, because it’s actually the messiness of food on the floor and interrupted sleep that transform me into the mom that my daughter needs me to be. 

The suction cup plate might save me the work of getting on my hands and knees to clean the mess off the floor, but that’s where I learn to serve one who is smaller and weaker than me. The magic suit might save me from an interrupted night’s sleep, but I lose out on the chance to climb out of bed and comfort my young child. It takes away the opportunity to look at that child and tell her I love her, tell her she’s safe, and teach her how to manage her little body as she learns how to sleep. 

Holding my baby girl one night around 3 a.m., I realized that there is a finite number of these late night interruptions—which means there’s a finite number of times I get to hold her in my arms. She won’t always be this small and helpless. One day she will walk upstairs and get herself ready for bed. One day she will tuck herself into bed on her own. One day she will wake up in the middle of the night and roll over to go back to sleep. But I hope by then, she will have learned that there is always someone there she can call out to when she feels afraid and alone in the night. 

Though she’s not yet eating at the table with us, one day she will—and I am sure she will make plenty of messes. When that day comes, I hope I delight in getting on the floor and picking up her mess, and then talking to her gently, teaching her how to eat with us at the table, inviting her to connect with us at our meal. In that, my prayer is that she will not only learn how to not make a mess; but more importantly, she will learn that when she makes a mess of things, she won’t be left alone to clean it up. And there’s grace for all the plates she will spill on the floor. 

I hope I can be the first one to show her what Grace looks like, so she can meet Him one day and feel like she already knows Him.