Our story

Nobody warns you about the fourth week.

The casseroles from the neighbors stop coming. The grandparents fly home. And you're standing in a dark nursery in Sheridan, Wyoming, at 3:40 in the morning, swaying a baby who was asleep deeply, peacefully asleep right up until the second her back touched the mattress.

That was us. Every night. For months.

We started measuring our lives in forty-five-minute stretches. Sarah fell asleep once in the pediatrician's waiting room, sitting up, holding the diaper bag like a pillow. I put the car keys in the fridge and looked for them for an hour. We stopped finishing sentences because neither of us could remember how they started. And somewhere in that fog, we had the same fight every couple has at 4 a.m. the one that isn't really about anything, because you're not really people anymore. You're just tired.

The worst part wasn't the exhaustion. It was the doubt. Everyone had advice, and all of it contradicted. And underneath it all sat this quiet, awful question: Is it us? Are we doing this wrong?

One night I remember it was snowing, because everything important that year happened while it was snowing I was holding our daughter for the third hour straight, afraid to even shift my weight, and I thought: she doesn't want the crib to be different. She wants it to feel like this. Like being held.

I didn't sleep that night either. But for the first time in months, it was because I couldn't stop thinking.

We spent the next year chasing that thought. In the garage, at the kitchen table, through versions we'd be embarrassed to show you now. Sarah's mother sewed the first one. It looked terrible. It worked.

The night our daughter slept four straight hours, we both woke up in a panic and stood over her crib, watching her breathe. Then we looked at each other and started laughing that unhinged, teary laugh of people who'd forgotten what rest felt like.

That's where BabyHug comes from. Not from a boardroom. From a dark nursery, a snowy winter, and two parents who refused to believe that this was just how it had to be.

If you're reading this at 3:40 in the morning, one arm asleep, afraid to move we wrote this for you. It gets better. We promise.

— The family behind CradleCuties, Sheridan, Wyoming