After receiving a baby doll who just wouldn’t stop crying for Christmas, 3-year-old Summer Littleford lamented, “I don’t know why Santa did this to me.”
Summer’s mother, Ashley Littleford of Ontario, Canada, tells TODAY.com that her daughter is “a very motherly person” who tucks her babies in bed beside her at night. “We have to be quiet sometimes because they’re sleeping,” she shares. “And they’re always getting fed.”
But this particular baby doll, who Summer named Rose, seemed like a match for even the most patient of mothers.
Rose, a Baby Born doll, can suck water from a bottle and then “pee” into a diaper. That’s the easy part. The hard part is getting Rose to stop crying, which is supposed to happen when you pat her back, feed her the bottle or rock her. Summer’s doll seemed to be malfunctioning: it cried for a long time and then just “stopped.”
Or, as Summer’s 5-year-old brother Felix says in the video, “She used to breathe. Now she doesn’t.”
Littleford’s video of Summer caring for her colicky baby has gone viral … mostly because of the exhausted, utterly defeated and all-too-relatable look on Summer’s face.
In the video, Summer gently pats her doll’s back, swaddles her, cradles her and stares unblinking at the floor. She says things like, “I don’t know what to do,” and, “It’s hard having a baby like this,” and, “I can’t do all this stuff for my baby.”
In the comments, moms who had a similar experience caring for a newborn cheered in recognition and empathy. Comments ranged from spot-on to absolutely hilarious:
- “If you don’t recognize and empathize with the dazed glare into the abyss while holding a crying baby, you’ve never been a mother.”
- “Scared straight, toddler mom edition.”
- “Someone get this child a Capri Sun on the rocks ASAP.”
Prior to posting this video, Littleford’s Instagram account was private. She changed her profile to public specifically because she thought other mothers would relate to this video.
Littleford vividly remembers her own difficult early newborn days.
“Your first baby is so hard because you literally know nothing,” she says. “With my son, I just remember just sitting up at night and like, just staring. I would just stare into the abyss, just like Summer did.”
Reading all the funny, validating comments really resonated with Littleford because they demonstrated that “we’re all the same, even though we don’t always talk about it.”
In a follow–up video, Summer seems to have found her groove as a mother. After Littleford ordered a brand-new (working) baby doll, Summer changed her name from Rose to Cuckoo Kangaroof (the “f” is intentional), and now the proud mom is all smiles.
Summer has figured out how to survive the newborn phase: when the baby cries, she brings her to Felix, who soothes the baby … and soothes Summer, too.
