At 7am one morning in early January, I found myself – during a working holiday with my partner Ruth – standing on the banks of the East River, in the shade of the Manhattan Bridge, trying to take a photo on my phone of the two of us.

Not Ruth and I, mind. Ruth was curled up in bed in the Holiday Inn. But Sadhbh, our four-month-old daughter, had long since lost interest in being in bed.

Bewildered by jet lag, or simply belligerent at her parents for dragging her 3,000 miles to a bigger, noisier city, she had decided, at 5am, that it was time to be up. We fought the inevitable for an hour or so, but eventually, I threw on some clothes, threw her in the sling, wrapped a blanket around her, and headed out into the New York winter dawn.

It's a paradox: New York with a baby is arduous, but New York is a fabulously baby-friendly city. The inevitable consequence of bringing our baby to New York was that her parents wouldn't get to "do" New York. And yet, a new New York opened up to us: perhaps not so obvious a tourist destination, but a revealing city by comparison with Dublin for its attitudes to family.

This is a city where the brand name of a baby sling has become an adjective. "Man, I loved those Bjorn days," said one person who spotted we had her in a "Baby Bjorn" sling, and recalled that stage with his own children. From our Holiday Inn to the late(ish) bistro to the Mac Shop to the bars of Brooklyn, this is a city where babies are welcomed, and which makes Dublin feel Victorian by comparison. Space is a big factor: most restaurants and cafés had ample space to park a buggy next to your table, and with tables less crowded in on each other, it's easier (or so it seemed) to breastfeed, and less hassle when things go wrong.

But so too is the attitude of people. The "have a nice day" culture is much maligned; we cynically assume people only say it because it's their job to. But even on the street, passers-by stopped to chat to the baby in the sling, or to compare notes with her parents.

The learning curve started at the airport. Apparently, booking a ticket for an infant (which cost about €70) does not indicate that you'd like to avail of facilities on the airplane – namely, a bassinet (basically, a cardboard box for a baby that gets strapped onto a fold-down table in the front row) – for that infant. So we faced seven hours with baby on lap. But she loved it. She sat, fed, slept, got changed, and was occasionally walked up and down the aisle, passing other parents and infants on the way. It was her normal day, but without ever being put down or away (into a buggy or, her nemesis, the car seat, for example).

The real difficulty when we arrived was sleep. Not only were her patterns thrown into disarray, but we were all cooped up in one over-heated room, so any restlessness quickly spread. But we coped, and three or so nights in, things were relatively normal.

Daytimes, I was working, and Ruth and the little one set out to explore New York City. They quickly came upon some difficulties. It was cold, but everywhere indoors was very warm. How do you dress a baby for that? They tried, but Ruth quickly realised (when the little one lost it while in the queue at Baby Gap, and an assistant had to usher frantic mother and daughter into a changing cubicle for a placatory feed) that shopping just wasn't going to happen.

Ruth was breastfeeding, and if you're going to feed in public, it's nice to do so somewhere comfortable. But in a city you don't know, it can be difficult to find somewhere appropriate in a hurry. So our daughter was fed near a lot of nice hotels and landmarks, but generally in some crummy coffee shop.

We'd pencilled in a few sights to see, and we made sure we got to see them. From the top of a bus. We thought a sightseeing bus trip would make for a good orientation – to locate all the iconic place names and landmarks in some sort of actual relation to each other, before setting out to visit them – but it turned out to be both the orientation and the sightseeing rolled into one. We did get to see the Museum of Modern Art though. But we didn't actually get any further than its restaurant, the Modern.

Ruth was glad to escape Manhattan once my work was done, and we fled to Brooklyn, where some friends put us up in a fine brownstone apartment in Park Slope. If we thought Manhattan was baby friendly, Park Slope was babytastic. It was almost disturbing. It felt as if you might get refused entry to a bar if you didn't arrive with a buggy. Every second shop was either a boutique for baby wear, or for pets.

For our last night, our friends gave us a special treat: a night out, sans the little one. We headed for Peter Luger's steakhouse, just off the Williamsburg Bridge, Brooklyn, reputedly the best in the Five Boroughs; our fine meal came to $200 – hefty by local standards, more reasonable by ours.

Forewarned is forearmed, and for the return flight, we'd made sure to specifically request our bassinet.

When Sadhbh woke at 5am the next morning, at least she was in her own room.

Ruth rolled over while I dragged myself in to pick her up. I contemplated taking a walk. It was pitch black, and raining. And for all its multiculturalism, Dorset Street just isn't Downtown. We got started on the laundry.