I’m a proud mother of five who is obsessed with keeping her monkeys healthy. Some people think it’s crazy how much time I spend making sure everything in their environment is safe, nutritious, and natural. Those same people probably think I’m a bad mom for letting my little monkeys jump on the bed just because they keep falling off and hitting their heads every time. But this is a choice we have made as a family, and I will not let a bunch of judgmental strangers or any of the many doctors I have called shame me into changing my mind.
I’ll admit, when my first monkey fell off the bed and bumped her head, I was concerned. I immediately called the doctor, and the doctor said—and this is a direct quote—“No more monkeys jumping on the bed.”
I couldn’t believe it. “But this is our choice,” I told him. “And by the way, monkeys have been jumping on the bed for millennia. Even before there were beds. In the Paleolithic era, they would jump on rock slabs jutting out from the walls of their caves.”
“That sounds really dangerous,” he replied. Furious, I hung up.
The next time one of my monkeys fell off and bumped his head (about five minutes later), I decided to get a second opinion. But this other doctor was just as arrogant.
“No more monkeys jumping on the bed,” he told me. It was like they were reading from a script!
“I’m surprised you don’t know this, since you’re a doctor,” I said, “But NOT letting your monkeys jump on the bed actually has far worse consequences. I saw a twenty-seven-part TikTok about it.”
“I think I just heard another one fall off the bed,” the doctor said. But he was wrong. It was actually the sound of two of my monkeys bumping heads with each other. After comforting them, I sent that doctor a strongly worded email with links to several videos that I hoped would open his eyes.
That night, my youngest monkey fell off the bed and bumped her head pretty badly. Because it was so late, the only person I could get on the phone was a nurse practitioner on the night shift. I expected her to be more open-minded because she was probably a mom like me, but it seemed she had also been brainwashed. “No more monkeys jumping on the bed,” she said.
I felt totally alone.
Desperate, I spent the rest of the night searching the internet for a solution. I was surprised to find there were tons of other monkey mommys having this exact problem. One mother from Ohio said her monkeys were falling off the bed and bumping their heads ten to fifteen times a day. “Sometimes, I think it would be easier to just stop them from jumping on the bed she posted.”
“Noooo!” responded one of the other moms. “Don’t let them get to you!” another mom wrote. “Only moms know what’s right for their monkeys!! Bumping your head is actually GOOD for you!!! Why is no one talking about this???”
Reassured, I went to sleep. But almost immediately, I was awoken by the sound of two more monkeys falling off the bed.
They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. So this time, I called my cousin Kayleigh. Kayleigh is not a doctor, but she knows more about health care than anyone I know. Ten years ago, she cured her lactose intolerance by mommy-blogging, and now she and her husband have a podcast about it.
I told Kayleigh that, despite what everyone was telling me, I still had a powerful maternal instinct that jumping on the bed was the right thing for my monkeys to do.
“I totally get it,” she said. “It’s like Derek and I always say on the podcast, ‘Whatever you think is true is probably right.’”
“Thank you—that’s so validating,” I said.
“Still,” she said, “I’m not sure you’re legally allowed to own that many monkeys.”
Wow. Even my own family had abandoned me.
After all these bad experiences, I finally let go of the need for outside affirmation. Whatever “Western medicine” or “animal control” tells me, I’m the one who knows what’s best for my monkeys. And when I see them happily jumping on the bed or swinging from the ceiling fan on their long furry tails, I know I’m doing the right thing.
Looking in my monkeys’ eyes, I can tell they know it too—even when their eyes are glazed over from having bumped their heads too many times.
