Five Things I’d Tell My New Mom Self
Five years into motherhood, I still don’t really know what I’m doing. But I feel more confident than I did that blur of a joyous day I brought my baby boy home from the hospital in my loose maternity pants and baggy t-shirt with unwashed hair and swollen feet. If you were to ask me about those first weeks, I wouldn’t recall many specifics. The pain meds and sleep deprivation had me in a daze.
I remember relief when I first saw my tiny human’s face. I remember feeling like I had two days to learn how to swaddle, breastfeed, get to know him and allow my body to heal while dealing with wild hormones and trying to sleep when he slept without crying for no reason. What a whirlwind. It was a stressful, blissful time.
Just when you think you are finally nailing mom life, catching up on sleep, perfecting a routine, a new stage throws you off your game. That’s when you learn the big secret: There is no right way to navigate motherhood. If I could go back in time and give myself any advice, I would probably share these five little nuggets of wisdom.
Join the cliché mom’s group. You’ll need more support than you think. You won’t feel like being social or putting on pants, but force yourself. First-time motherhood can be lonely. You may need kindred spirits to help you navigate postpartum depression or weeks of sleep deprivation. And you can compare baby poop horror stories looking like a pack of zombies and laughing over glasses of water since you can’t drink alcohol while breastfeeding.
Enjoy the time with your baby. Co-sleep to your heart’s content. Don’t worry about doing the dishes (unless you’ve got an ant problem), hold your baby while he sleeps instead of folding each load of laundry, wear him in the Ergo baby carrier as much as you want, go ahead and snap those 500 photos of him sleeping. You won’t regret any of this later.
If enjoying that time means you want to breastfeed until Baby’s a year old, go for it. If it means you decide to exclusively pump and bottle feed, that’s great. If you choose to use formula, that’s fine, too.
Schedule, schedule, schedule. Get yourself into a routine of nursing (or bottle feeding), pumping, cleaning, taking a walk, a 20-minute yoga session, making yourself a smoothie, going for a drive, etc., so you can create even a little organized chaos. Any slight predictability will help your sanity.
Plan a once-a-week coffee date with close friends. Schedule a date night with your partner while the grandparents babysit. After particularly tough nights that all blur together, you’ll have these outings to look forward to.
Accept help. Don’t try to prove to yourself you can do it all. Don’t feel guilty about your mom visiting at 8:00 in the evening just to hold the baby after his feeding so you can sleep for three whole uninterrupted hours (really, she’ll love it, I promise). Let your parents-in-law, sisters, friends, extended relatives, anyone you trust, babysit for a couple hours. Your baby may cry, she’ll miss you, and you’ll hate that, but you also need the break to recharge.
Figure out the best way you want to spend that time recharging. Is it scrolling through your phone (probably not), taking a bubble bath or writing in your journal? Do you just need a nap? Maybe read a book with your coffee. Knowing what I know now, I would have used my quality self-care minutes to meditate and practice yoga after a good cup of coffee. And I would be extra mindful during that time, soaking up every minute. (The next night, your baby might be awake all hours teething.)
Buy diapers, wipes and onesies, not the latest, fanciest gadgets. At 3:00 in the morning, you won’t be worried about which brand of swaddle blankets you bought for your baby, you’ll just need stuff to clean the poop and spit-up covering him. You won’t care about a $20 teething giraffe or the latest bassinet model. Moms literally are in survival mode those first few weeks. You change diapers, nurse (or bottle feed), burp, rock to sleep, pump, repeat. Showering is optional, and sleep is only occasional.
Don’t be so hard on yourself. No matter how you navigate each stage, the most important piece of wisdom I would share is that you’re never doing it wrong, it’s just really that hard. You’ll probably drive your sleeping baby around in the car a lot and grab yourself coffees to stay awake (choose those coffee runs wisely, though, because if you’re breastfeeding, caffeine goes straight to your milk and then to your baby’s stomach, which isn’t fun. Good luck—you can do it!
Emily Morrison is a freelance writer, former copy editor, full-time mommy and Disney fanatic who lives in Independence with her husband, 4-year-old son and two dogs.