26 December 2025 · Roshni Mahtani Cheung
Cofounder, Little Rei · Mother of one
10 Times to Trust Your Mama Intuition
Intuition is a slightly unhelpful word for what this is. A parent spends more hours observing one particular child than any professional ever will, and builds a detailed model of that child's normal, how they hold themselves, what their cry sounds like, how they feed when they're well, and the feeling that something is off is that model registering a difference before you can articulate it. It's data, gathered by the only person in a position to gather it.
1. When your child seems unwell and you can't say why
This is the most important one and the one most often talked out of. Clinical guidance on serious illness in children explicitly lists parental concern that the child isn't themselves as a warning sign in its own right, because it precedes measurable signs often enough to count. If your child is unusually floppy, drowsy, unresponsive, breathing differently, unusually pale or mottled, or simply not themselves in a way you can't pin down, seek medical advice. Say the words "this isn't how my child normally is". They're real to clinicians.
2. When feeding doesn't feel right
Pain that's dismissed as normal, a baby who feeds constantly and is never settled, or weight gain that has slowed. Many feeding problems have identifiable, fixable causes, and the strong instinct that something is wrong with feeding needs escalating to someone who will look, a lactation consultant or a doctor, and not another round of general reassurance.
When something feels wrong
3. When development feels stalled, and not merely slow
Charts are wide and being late to one thing is rarely real. A parent who feels that a child has stopped moving forward, or has lost something they had, is describing a pattern, which is exactly the distinction that counts clinically. Ask early, since the answer is usually reassurance.
4. When advice doesn't fit your child
General advice is written for a population and you have a specific child. A method that is supposedly universal and is clearly making your child worse over a sustained period isn't the right method for that child. Safety guidance is the exception, that isn't a preference, and almost everything else is.
5. When someone dismisses a concern without examining it
Not the same as disagreeing with you after looking, since if a concern is waved away without anyone checking, then asking again, or asking someone else, is reasonable. Persisting is uncomfortable and occasionally it's the thing that catches something.
6. When a person or situation feels wrong
A carer, a setting, an arrangement everyone else finds fine. You don't need to justify a discomfort you can't yet explain in order to act on it, and the cost of making a different arrangement is almost always lower than the cost of overriding yourself.
7. When your child tells you something without words
A sudden refusal to go somewhere, regression, a change in how they are around a particular person. Young children communicate the things they can't phrase through behaviour, and behaviour that changes sharply is a message to read, not a habit to correct. I may be wrong about how sharp the change has to be, though it's sharper than I'd have said before Shan.
8. When you know your child is capable of more than they are being given
Or less. You see the whole child across every setting. Anyone else sees a slice. Say that out loud to a teacher or a doctor, because the professional view is never the complete one.
9. When you are at the end of your capacity
The instinct that you can't keep going like this is also information, and it's the one parents ignore longest. Sustained exhaustion, dread, numbness or intrusive frightening thoughts need raising with a doctor, because perinatal mental health difficulties are common and treatable, and being able to name them isn't a weakness.
10. When everything is fine
The under-used version. If your child is thriving and you feel calm about it, you don't need to adopt a system because someone online is certain about it. A quiet conviction that things are going well is as much a signal as an alarm.
Ten years is a long time to sit on an observation
This is the part I have most to say about, and it doesn't reflect especially well on me. I knew something was going on with Shan for years before I could name it. Not a diagnosis, I didn't have one then and I'm not qualified to make one now, only a persistent sense that the sleep problem wasn't really about sleep, that she was reacting to something none of us could see. I didn't push it, because it's very easy, as a first-time mother, to hear a version of "she's just a fussy baby" often enough that you file your own observation under anxiety and get on with the week, which is what I did.
It took until she was ten, by which point the thing I'd been noticing since she was a few months old turned out to be the thing.
The lesson I'd draw isn't the usual one. It isn't "always trust yourself", because sometimes you're wrong, and the entire point of a doctor is that they're better at this than you are. It's narrower and duller than that: an observation you keep making, over months, about your own child, is information. Write it down. Take it to somebody. Don't let it become the thing you only understand ten years later.
And when to check it
Instinct is a signal, not a verdict, and it has known failure modes. Hold lightly when:
- It contradicts evidence-based safety guidance. Back-to-sleep, car seats, medicine doses and allergen introduction aren't areas where a feeling should win.
- You're exhausted. Sleep deprivation reliably amplifies threat perception, which is a reason to ask somebody, and never a reason to dismiss the feeling.
- It's anxiety with a broad target, where the good thing is an observation with a specific one. "Something is wrong with his breathing" and "something terrible might happen" are different signals.
- It arrived from an algorithm. A worry that started twenty minutes ago in a feed of frightening posts isn't the same thing as noticing your own child.
The practical resolution to all four is the same: instinct tells you to look, evidence tells you what you're looking at. Acting on the first by seeking the second isn't a lack of confidence, and it's the whole method.
Questions I had
Is mother's intuition real?
In the good sense, yes. A parent has more observation hours of one child than anyone, and the sense something is off is that model of normal registering a change before words arrive. Clinical guidance treats parental concern as a warning sign.
What should I say if a doctor dismisses my concern?
Describe the change and not the worry: what your child normally does, what they are doing now, and when it changed. "This isn't how my child normally is" carries clinical weight. If a concern is dismissed without anyone examining the child, asking again or asking someone else is reasonable.
When should I not trust my instinct?
When it conflicts with evidence-based safety guidance, safe sleep, car seats, medicine dosing, allergen introduction. Also treat it carefully when you're severely sleep-deprived or when the worry is broad and free-floating, with no specific observation about your own child underneath it.
This guide is general information, written to help you understand a topic and ask better questions. It is not medical advice and does not replace your own doctor, midwife or paediatrician. Anything that worries you about your baby belongs with them.