I used to be the mom who wanted to control — or “optimize” — every aspect of her child’s day. Like many other attentive millennial mothers, I learned the differences between my baby’s cries, the “perfect balance” of wake time and rest time, and the signs of an imminent bowel movement. I went through this education mostly on my own, tracking through apps and mentally logging the information in my exhausted brain. Meanwhile, my husband worked long hours remotely during the first year of our child’s life in a small apartment in New York City.
