Advice we Wish we Had as a New Mom

The best advice for new moms from one who's been thru it all. When we felt like a hot mess, had no idea what we was doing & felt we should “get it”, we wish we knew this.

Oh the journey of motherhood is hard!! There is so much advice we wish we had as a new mom and feel compelled to take the time to sit down with those who are beginning. Actually, we'd love to shout it from the rooftops with a group of newly pregnant women/girls because let us tell you what….we had NO idea what we was getting into when we had our first daughter! We also didn't realize each one would be nothing like the others, and we'd have to learn how to mother all over again with each daughter that came along.

Best advice for new moms

Let's start with the facts shall we……we was / am an only child.

We had never held an infant, changed a diaper, fed a baby a bottle, or put a baby to sleep until we had #1.

We thought “what are they thinking sending her home with us, we have no idea what we're doing!” when they waved us off and we drove away from the hospital that day. The first few weeks, ok months, alright let's go with year was hard!! We had no idea what baby items we need when or how.

We was newly married at the time and we were both kinda' blindly figuring this whole parenting thing out. We didn't speak infant and were never sure if she was tired, hungry, or uncomfortable. That led to us becoming a bit depressed because we thought we was supposed to “get it” once she popped out because we was a woman and that's what was supposed to happen.

What is the best advice to give a new mom

• It's okay to be a Hot Mess – Motherhood does not come with a manual and it won't magically click when your child pops out. That is normal and there's nothing wrong with you. You aren't less of a women because of it, we was there, thousands of other women have been there, and it WILL get easier!
• It's okay to cry, a lot – we found myself in the shower many of times sobbing. Sometimes we had a specific reason we could pin point and other times we had no idea why we was crying but man did we feel better when we was done! Let yourself cry because…..it's hard!
• It's not like they describe in the books – You know all those books full of advice for when you're pregnant you should feel this and this time, infant books about what you should do when your child does this….yeah, most of it doesn't work.
  • We're not saying it doesn't help give you some idea of what is to come but there isn't something wrong with your child if they aren't doing x at y weeks old
  • Or they're an extremely picky eater and will only drink a specific type of formula (that's normal).
• Every child is NOT the same – Okay so this still makes us laugh…..after daughter #2 who was our easiest child ever and slept 12 hours a night at 12 weeks old we said to our husband “this is a piece of cake, let's do #3 now, we got this!”
  • Boy did someone hear that and give us a doozy to make us eat our words! We did all the same things with #3 as we did with #2 because it worked with one so it had to work with the other….NOPE!

What a new mother needs most

She didn't sleep through the night until she was about 2 1/2, cried all the time, always wanted to be held, and was the complete opposite of what we had expected and had planned for. With that said of course we love her, but boy were those challenging years.

We can laugh about it now but lesson learned and we tell others…..your children will not be the same and if you have an easy one expect the next to be a bit of a challenge. If they aren't you'll be in luck but if not you will be prepared. (pictured #2 in our arms and #3 in the backpack…about 8 years ago)

Looking back…..oh how we miss these little faces……

• Breast feeding is NOT easy – You may envision this tender bonding moment several times a day with no issues and you will supply plenty of milk for your little one. Not always the case and let us tell you it hurts like all heck for the first few weeks! We was able to nurse all of our girls for a few months but had issues after that and switched to formula.

Advice to a new mom

We had many friends who tried and tried and as much as they wanted to nurse their body didn't cooperate. With our first daughter there wasn't a huge selection of formula to choose from and it was quite expensive, luckily for this generation there are great options like this one that's affordable.

For us formula gave us a bit more freedom (especially when we had more than 1 child) to get out of the house and not feel housebound because we wasn't comfortable nursing in public.

• Your body will not snap back into shape – Take care of yourself in a healthy way. We had this idea that after your baby “popped out” your stomach went back to the way it once was….lie!
• We will say after daughters 1 & 2 it did go back to a similar state but not until a year or so later. After #3 we held on to a bit of weight/softness but that's kinda' par for the course and motherhood does come with that change as well.

Remember you are good!

Words of advice for new parents

• Skip the guilt – If you are planning on nursing but find it difficult (or impossible for some reason) baby formulas are so good nowadays that there is no reason to feel guilty supplementing or using it as their main food source.

Like we said, it helped give us a bit of freedom which helped our mood and thus become a better mother to our infant because we was sleep deprived and became depressed because we felt homebound.

• Enjoy every single stage – Some day when you only have one more summer you will regret not being present. We tear up when we look at the top two pictures in this post because here we are now. Oh how we love these faces. Each one so different with unique qualities that we know will make them become strong independent women who put family first.

We struggled a lot with our first figuring out motherhood as a whole. Was able to enjoy our second since there was such a large age gap between the two? When our “baby” arrived chaos ensued again and we got caught up in it for a while. We loved on each of them as much as we could.

Looking back we wish we had slowed down a bit and not worried about the little things so much. When we turned 40 we reanalyzed everything and put a concerted effort into focusing on what mattered and let the little things roll off our back a bit more.

• We wish we had done this a bit earlier but there's no time like the present to ask our older girls open ended questions and get close.

Lastly….you're doing great!!

We all do our best with the knowledge we have at the time and as long as you keep going, and try not to look back, you'll be fine and more wisdom will come to you as time goes on. (fist bump our friend)