At Home with Your Newborn

For when the vibe is dreamy, delirious, and bright.

At Home with Your Newborn -- The Vibe Triangulation

Nouvelle parentalité is a beautiful, delicate, challenging, exciting, sometimes desperate, tear-drenched, hope-filled, frightening, joyous, dreamy, sensational, personal, universal experience. This playlist steps through a day and night in the life of a brand new mother and is, as a new mother is, all over the map.

There is this private elation that a mother wants to keep for herself and share with the world all at once. This feeling is defined by gratitude, disbelief, and a crazed sense of attachment. Sky and Sand, which coasts above the clouds on waves of electronic beats and understated vocals and Wildest Dreams, the ethereal, poppy classic that explores the idea of ‘pre-nostalgia’ offer this sensibility. Meanwhile, Hold On, We’re Going Home, is dominated by obsessive occupation is wrapped in a chill beat and carried by soft vocals: ‘I got my eye on you,’ Drake says, ‘you’re everything that I see.’

There is a wild sense of upheaval in coming home with a newborn for the first time – making sure you have all of your possessions, that you have your documentation in order, that the baby is dressed and fed, that the car seat is secure, that a million other little things are in order all while you are sleep deprived and more than a little frantic. This feeling is anchored by the quirky, chaotic, upbeat, and somewhat nonsensical, Heart It Races. Dominated by percussion, this song is a wild, kaleidoscope of sound whose message isn’t immediately clear.

There is a sense of delirium driven by sleep deprivation and intense emotions. There are moments when you think you’re getting the hang of the mom thing and then something new and exciting (or sometimes horrifying) happens, which are made manifest in Feels Like We Only Go Backwards. Musically, the song feels like thick honey dripping off a picnic table on a hot summer day. Then there are moments filled with a kind of wild and desperate love which has to be beyond the comprehension of anyone else. In Sweet Dreams, TN, Alex Turner belts out, ‘I just don’t recognize this fool that you have made me’ accompanied by the big band sound of strings and guitar, and the whole thing sounds like its coming from the middle of a big, dark, empty room.

There is a longing and desperation which creeps up in the tired moments of the night. In, Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want, Morrissey, like all new parents, laments, ‘I haven’t had a dream in a long time.’  With tongue very much in cheek, an exhausted new mother might plead into the void: ‘For once in my life let me get what I want, Lord knows it would be the first time.’

There is a senseless, hormone induced sobbing, for which Heart Like a Truck is the perfect backdrop. It is important to, on occasion, recognize the struggles that pepper the victories of new motherhood. Against a backdrop of fiddles, electric guitar, and a beautiful bassline, Lainie Wilson belts out that she’s got a heart like a truck, and boy does it take one to deal with the dramatic emotional swings brought on by childbirth. This is a track for the moments when you’re simultaneously mopping your floors and crying so hard that you can’t see.

There are the endless soothing lullabies: Farmhouse, upbeat, somewhat somber, and definitively jammy; Tangled up in You, a slow dance, a warm hug, a rock-a-bye, baby; Gravity, calming bluesy, and hopeful; This Feeling, sweet, minimal, acceptance – of situation and of self.

Then, there is the bonus track. Miracle Aligner is another rich, dreamy track. It sounds like chasing after your lover through the hedgerow maze outside of a wealthy lord’s estate under a brisk, clear, stary sky. I had to include it because it seems to be my newborn’s favorite song.

Listen to the Vibe