Mom's No-Cost Hack Helps Postpartum Parents Squeeze in a Shower

During those first few weeks with baby, it can feel nearly impossible to carve out any “me time.” Even something as simple as taking a shower suddenly seems out of reach when your partner is at work and your baby wants to be held around the clock. And if you do manage to get baby down for a nap, the anxiety that they might wake up crying at any moment can make self-care feel more stressful than soothing. The good news? Moms—the world’s greatest innovators—have a knack for finding solutions.

Mom of two Kailey Davis (@kaileygdavis) recently went viral on TikTok after sharing her own clever hack for sneaking in a shower. “I made the mental health decision to not wait until my husband came home from work to take a shower, because I simply stink so bad that it’s making my mental health plummet,” she confessed while holding her newborn. “So I’m gonna do this little TikTok trick that I saw another mom do.”

Her trick? Davis brings her BabyBjörn bouncer into the bathroom and uses the waist tie from her robe as a makeshift lifeline. With her newborn strapped securely in, she threads the robe tie through the top of the bouncer and extends it into the shower. That way, while she shampoos and conditions, she can give the tie a gentle tug to bounce her baby whenever he fusses, keeping him content while she finally gets in her mental health shower.

Davis brings her Baby Bjorn bouncer into the bathroom and takes the waist strap off her robe to pull double duty. She then ties it onto her Baby Bjorn with her newborn strapped in and takes the bathroom tie over to her shower. The tie just reaches and Davis is in business showering with the rope in reach so she can bounce her baby anytime he starts to cry. As she deep conditions she can also bounce a content baby.

“They tell you that women can do it all. They can do it all. Men, I don’t wanna hear from you today that I couldn’t get it done. I had the baby because we’re over here figuring it out,” Davis joked. “We’re tying up the bathrobe onto the Baby Bjorn, and we’re rocking the baby while we’re washing her hair and scrub-a-dubbing away, okay. I love TikTok. Thank you to the moms looking out for other moms.”

Parents flooded the comments with praise and solidarity. “Get it girl, you smell good, you solve problems, you can do hard things. Good job mama,” wrote one. “Women in STEM,” joked another. A third added, “And THIS is why it takes a village—because this is LIFE-SAVING/SANITY-SAVING advice from one mom to another.”

Some questioned why Davis didn’t just “let the baby cry it out,” to which she and others quickly responded. “I know it’s okay for the baby to cry, I just didn’t feel like listening to him while I got a shower in, so I tried out a hack for the bouncer I do have,” she explained. Another mom chimed in: “‘Baby will survive crying for 5 minutes.’ Yeah, well I won’t, thank yeww.” One commenter summed things up: “Why can’t the baby just cry for a minute? I’m not even a parent and hearing a baby cry is like nails on a chalkboard. I can’t imagine how it must feel to an overtired, emotional, hormonal postpartum mom. If she has a plan to keep the crying to a minimum for her own mental health, why are we questioning it?”

Find more ways to squeeze in a little me-time with these 60-second self-care rituals.