In the first few days after their baby is born, new parents are at war for a little precious sleep.
After hours of labor or surgery, nurses and doctors coming and going and excited friends and family making unexpected appearances, it can be difficult to find the time.
But one mom came up with a hilarious solution that may or may not help new moms catch a few extra winks.
Amidst all the exhaustion, it's reasonable for parents to bicker a little bit about who needs to stay up with the baby while in the hospital. But for one veteran mom of three, she decided after going through the hard hours of labor, the least her husband could do was answer to the baby during the night.
But 30-year-old Samantha Miller learned the hard way with her second child, it may not always be so easy to wake her husband, 39-year-old Chad Miller, when she needs his help in the middle of the night.
Samantha explained:
"When I had my son Chase, I lost my voice from being on oxygen for so long. In the middle of the night, I needed help feeding him, but the baby's cries never woke up Chad."
"Without having a voice, I couldn't yell to wake Chad, so I had to throw an empty water bottle. This time, I thought I'd have much better aim with a Nerf gun!"
You read that correctly.
Samantha hilariously included in her hospital bag a Nerf gun for just those occasions when she needed to wake her husband for help.
Samantha later shared her ingenious plan on Facebook, including a photo of the Nerf gun she had included in the bag the Miller family had brought to the hospital.
The post went viral, shared more than 18,000 times, as moms everywhere took delight in Samantha's idea.
It seems many of these moms may have tried something similar in the past, throwing a wide array of items at their significant others.
They all seem to agree the Nerf gun is the better option.
Samantha later shared how she, somewhat unfortunately, forgot she had brought the Nerf gun with her to the hospital, mostly because she didn't need to use it. Chad proved to be quite attentive and didn't need to be awoken with a surprise attack from a kids' toy.
Just the same, when Samantha shared her plan with her husband and the nurses, they all had a good laugh about it.
There are suggestions all over the internet, listing for moms the items they most need to include in their grab-and-go hospital bags, and what they can reasonably leave at home. After seeing this new hack, expectant moms-to-be inevitably will be reevaluating what they need to include for their hospital stay!
Try not to follow the bad advice given here, because you don't want to get the results that these guys did.
U/Duckerton375 asked: What's the worst advice someone ever gave you, but you still followed?
The workplace can bring a cornucopia of terrible advice. Don’t follow these unless you want to get fired.
​Bad jobs are usually not worth it.
Stick with a job no matter how bad it is. I stayed with a terrible job working retail, dealing with horrible customers and sexual harassment. I was told I wouldn't find anything better.
"No, no, you misunderstand. I said you wouldn't find anything better at making you feel like complete garbage."
This gets really creepy really fast.
frustrated workplace GIFGiphy"After you put in a job application, you need to call them at least once a day every day until they hire you."
Note: this did not get me hired. It got me called out by the HR person I was calling and forbidden to ever contact their facility again.
I work for a law firm that employees over 1500 people in the home office alone. Once I received a call from the building security saying, "Insert Name is here to speak with the owner." Well we are run by a committee so that's odd. Found out they just applied for a job and wanted to talk directly to the person that would potentially hire them. Told him the firm will contact them to schedule an interview. They refused to leave without "talking to the owner." Had security escort them out of the building.
​This is absolutely not true.
"Sleep is for people who do not want success" great words from my uncle, it almost killed me.
Now I may be oversleeping.
​Interpersonal relationships are also a big breeding ground for terrible advice. Don’t listen to any of these.
Heartbreaking.
My father always tought me and my brother that "having friends is bad and in the end they will never be there for you" so everytime I told my father about my friends he would get kinda mad and give me the advice to stop talking to them.
Now I am afraid of people and have several trust issues, thanks dad.
​This won’t end well.
A Christmas Story GIF by filmeditorGiphyIn the fifth grade my teacher was talking about bullying, then she said "if anyone tries to bully you just agree with them." So the next time I got bullied I agreed with the bully and they bullied me more.
Dude one time I saw an anti bullying video that told the victims to just BE NICE TO THE BULLY. Like the bully was hurling insults and the victim was smiling and complimenting him. My first thought was about how much I hated the mere thought that this would work. My second thought was of how the people who came up with that method had clearly never been bullied.
​Oof.
When I met my now wife at the age of 19, one of my coworkers said that it's very important to start at the bottom with presents and work your way up, she still has the socks I gave her on our first anniversary on the wall over our bed as a reminder...
I'm still trying to teach my boyfriend about good presents and bad presents. Biscuits from the supermarket = bad present. Cheap unbranded laptop battery from China as my only present = bad present (and only lasted 2 months). Anything off my 7-page wishlist = good present. It's literally a list of things I want to receive as presents.
​Can tell you from experience that this is a bad idea.
Had a falling out with some friends. My husband recommended I reach out to an old friend who ghosted me suddenly in a manner that induced some pretty severe abandonment trauma. Went for it anyways because "it's been so long, surely they changed". Am now experiencing the same things as last time.
When you follow bad advice, it can lead to mistakes that you just can’t come back from.​
Buying a house is tricky.
for sale dancing GIF by Lisa VertudachesGiphy"Buy a home now before the prices go up!" -my FIL in 2006.
We bought in 2007 and paid $259,500 for our 1,300 sq ft house (we really couldn't afford it and had an 80/20 so we had 8% interest for one loan and 6% on the other) and in 2008 it was worth $97,000 so refinancing wasn't even an option. We watched all of our neighbors walk away or get foreclosed on but we kept paying our bills and as of this very moment our house is worth $462,000. I'm so happy we stuck it out, we both worked our @sses off and the house will be paid off in 2 years.
It worked out for us, it's a horrible idea. Especially since 1300 sq ft houses are $460+k
My heartbreaks for future generations, I honestly don't know how people are going to afford housing in the future.
It’s there for a reason.
"Never apply for any government assistance."
Cue years of suffering trying to work full-time with a painful disability. Quit a particularly terrible job, and wanted to apply for food aid until I could find another gig; a friend with lots of DHS experience recommended I apply for Social Security "just to get in the system." Turns out my disability was bad enough to get accepted the first time, which I wasn't expecting. Really could've used that support, oh, the 30+ previous years of my life.
Credit is important to have.
I was told to not get a credit card until after college. I was super fortunate to have my college paid for so I had no loans, car paid in cash, no credit card or anything to start building credit. Found myself out in the world at 22 years old with a credit score of 0.
So while a lot of this bad advice came from trusted people, oftentimes they were too misinformed to give that advice in the first place. Don't trust the word of one person--do your research, and make decisions for yourself.
It'll be way better in the long run