When I first gave birth and brought my baby girl home, I aspired to be the ultimate earth-mother-Gaia-worshipping-priestess from another dimension. Those first few weeks with my child I thought I had transcended all trivialities and was officially crowned the “New Age Queen of the Now.” I was so present in the moment, I put Buddhist monks to shame. Absolutely enthralled by my child, I watched her sleep for hours, finding peace in the sound of her breath. I avoided my phone and computer, and arrogantly decided everyone else was merely living a devastating life of distraction. The rest of humanity could be consumed with their technology and gadgets, but I had moved on.

A few weeks later, however, I discovered something no one ever warned me about: Babies are pretty freaking boring.

Despite my initial moral superiority, I looked longingly at my phone across the room, yearning to caress it. I was afraid that exposure to my phone’s evil waves would seep into my baby’s brain (even though men have them nestled in their pockets next to their precious packages all day), but the idea of interacting with my phone became more compelling by the day. There’s a whole universe inside there. Articles to read, seeing how many people liked my status update, friends to talk to, one more time with that status update, and Twitter feeds from celebrities to make me feel inadequate. Parenting can be isolating, and monotonous, and lonely, and monotonous. My phone is my connection to the outside world, and it was too hard to abandon.

Eventually I caved, and my relationship with my phone became a part of my relationship with my child. When breast-feeding the milk-sucking vampire indefinitely suctioned to my nipple for hours, I looked at pictures of my ex getting chubby and bald. After two jaded hours of pushing her on the stupid swing, and saying “yes, that is a plane” and “the birdies do fly,” I also listened to podcasts deluding me into feeling that I was part of an actual adult conversation. While endlessly rocking her to sleep, I could listen to Radiohead and drown out the gut-wrenching soulless rendition of “Wheels on the Bus” — the lullaby version. At any moment I could take 10,000 pictures of her and of course a few selfies of me because my hair has been looking good lately.