First of all, Sister Cui is a very easy person to communicate with. From the very beginning—planning postpartum meals, setting up the baby’s sleeping space, discussing feeding methods, and daily routines—every conversation with her went very smoothly. She would calmly and clearly explain her recommendations and the reasons behind them, while also fully listening to and respecting our opinions and considerations, ultimately following our decision. She communicates very logically, which made us feel very reassured and made discussions and execution much more efficient.
Sister Cui is also extremely calm. Our baby was born a little earlier than the due date, and as first-time parents, we were still far from having enough knowledge at the time. Every time the baby cried, spit up, sneezed, coughed, or developed a rash, we got nervous. After Sister Cui arrived, it often felt like she gave us a “reassurance pill.” She could always assess the situation in an organized way and help us handle the immediate problem. More importantly, she didn’t just solve the issue in the moment—she would also teach us, based on the specific situation, how to judge and handle similar problems in the future, and what the underlying principles were.
For example, when it came to soothing the baby, she taught us to respond promptly, but not to over-soothe; not to let the baby cry harder and harder, but also not to interfere so much that it disrupted her gradual development of her own rhythm. For things that easily make first-time parents nervous—like bathing, trimming nails, and suctioning mucus from the nose—Sister Cui would guide us step by step, hands-on. She would patiently observe and remind us what to pay attention to with each movement and how to transition between steps.
Sister Cui also patiently talked with us about what challenges the baby might face over the next few months and even longer in terms of sleep, feeding, and developmental changes; what decisions we would still need to make; which principles we should stick to; which “pitfalls” to avoid; and which good habits and routines were worth establishing and maintaining early. This experience was incredibly valuable to us.
Now that there are AI chatbots, like many new parents, we naturally also turn to AI for parenting questions. But we quickly realized that AI needs a lot of background information repeated over and over: the baby’s age in months, birth history, feeding method, sleep habits, home environment, what happened before, and what methods we had already tried. Many times we also had to confirm whether the AI really understood our baby’s specific situation. For Sister Cui, though, this came almost naturally. She observed the baby every day and understood our home environment and caregiving style, so her judgment was naturally built on complete, continuous context.
AI parenting videos or advice on social media are often fragmented, and it’s hard to tell whether they truly fit our baby, and they also lack a real-time feedback mechanism. Sister Cui was different—she is experienced and observant. She could keenly notice many small details, such as the extent of the baby’s twisting, the timing of lip-smacking, and changes in crying and alertness, and use those observations to verify or adjust the care plan.
Sister Cui also taught us to ignore many false alarms. She didn’t just simply say, “It’s fine”; instead, she summarized her experience into patterns and taught them to us. For example, babies at certain ages naturally grunt; if the baby is grunting in the early morning but hasn’t opened their eyes, many times they are not fully awake. She taught us how to distinguish which signals need a response and which are just normal phenomena, which greatly reduced our anxiety and overreaction.
In short, Sister Cui’s arrival and her hard work every day first gave us and the elders in our family some very precious rest; more importantly, she cared for the baby’s healthy growth together with us, and also gave us more confidence that after she leaves to care for another newborn family, we will be able to take on the responsibility of caring for our child more calmly and enjoy the joy of watching our baby grow. We feel very fortunate that during the most hectic stage of becoming parents for the first time, we were able to receive Sister Cui’s care and guidance.