Let me begin by saying I am no "expert" nor what worked for my child can be guaranteed to work for yours. As well as EVERY baby is different, and every mama has their right way of raising their little one. NO judgment here if something different works for you. Let start off by all mama's supporting other mama's no matter how that looks.
Now I am 8.5 months deep into raising my second baby. This is important for me to state, since I feel like every first time mom goes through that "first time mom clueless and learning phase" as you have to, I know I did. You have to have a first baby, you have to have that trial and error baby, you have to figure out what you're doing and what works best with that first child regardless of what you read on the internet and what others try to tell you to do. Even if your one and done, you just have to go through it. If you go on to have more than one, you sometimes wish you had known what you know now when you were a first time mom. Then again, I am grateful to have the opportunity to go through all of these phases again with so much more confidence of how I wish to do things. But I am still human and learning everyday.
With my first born my anxiety was at an all time high- already a little more anxiety prone maybe compared to others. You might be able to relate. My google searches were insane, I panicked over the small stuff, and I thought I had control over everything (haha silly me). And a difficult part about parenting is, once you feel like you got it down, they change, they grow up, or they hit a different phase. Boy do they keep us on our toes at all times. So when looking back, I realized even though I had no idea what I was doing (do I still?) I was learning not only what worked best for my son but worked best for me.
Fast forward to today, my oldest son is almost 3. And again, still figuring things out as he grows. But those first few years of his life taught me to simply not sweat the small stuff anymore. With my second son, I am 1000000000000x chiller (is that a word) than I ever was. Of course be careful- Mama Bear is still at an all time high and I would do anything for my babies. There is so much out of my control but I have learned to let 90% of that control go. Sorry still hanging on to the other 10%.
Some examples of where I feel I learned and improvement the most:
Meal time- okay I know some of you are going to think I am crazy but maybe some of you will be like dang, I'm not alone. I have done baby led weaning with now both my boys- not for everyone and that's okay. If you know anything about baby led weaning, this is where your baby essentially feeds themselves whole food from the beginning. (We can go more into depths on BLW another day) This is messy, fun, and great in many developmental aspects for your baby. And this has worked GREAT for US. I just couldn't standdddd the idea of my oldest child getting messy and staining his clothes to the point where every meal time would give me a teeny bit of stress alongside already being stressed about potentially choking on foods. Looking back, being obsessive over him getting messy is insane. I learned to adapt over time, like stripping him down a diaper to eat, rinse him in the sink after, and let the dogs clean the mess on the floor. But I had to learn this. Now with my second son, we have been doing BLW for 3ish months and from the start I just do not care about the messes. Stain the clothes kid, throw the noodles, let the dog lick your hand. Life is beautiful and the messy moments are what it is ALL about. Boom, that's it.
Public outings- I almost wish I could get those that don't have children to understand what we go through... but we can't. Every outing will be different. Every kid has a different personality. Every day they wake up in a different mood. I could go on but you get the point of how unpredictable parenting is. We are all doing our best here and sometimes we still have to go places and do things with our children even if they are not in the mood. Back to anxiety.... I wouldn't go anywhere alone for quite some time when my first son was born. If you are one of my friends reading this, you might say I had no idea especially considering I will go anywhere and do anything now with my two kids if that says how much I have changed. Of course I was fearful of somebody harming/taking myself or my baby (still a fear but working through it- aren't we all) but a lot of my fear was judgment from others. WTF why did I care so much. Is this me getting older or is this the second time mom confidence??? I have no idea but sure glad we made it here. My first son would barely make a peep and I would immediately start sweating and wonder who was staring. I have seen that some other areas of the world are much more accepting of children in public places and I wish we too could get to that point. Why does it seem to me that people just don't want children to be seen or heard sometimes? Those are the people that should simply never leave their house :) But really, children are the future and they have to learn to be in public. I still feel the need to make sure to "raise my children right" and behave as best as possible in public places, but that's not to say we're going to have our moments and not everything can I control. Now I have grown a tremendously large "pair", that today if somebody were to stare or say something to me inappropriate.. I will speak my peace. Whoops, there's the confidence. I will go where I need to go with my 50 kids by my side.
Sleep- Maybe sleep isn't a topic I should cover but here I am. So many factors play into sleep, I get that. Resort back to my first paragraph- we're not here to judge each other but here's a few things I learned to improve my second son's sleep patterns. For starters, my oldest son came out of the womb a terrible sleeper. (I say terrible, but this is normal) From day one home from the hospital, he was up every hour on the hour and I might have been a walking zombie the first 6 months of his life. I 100% contest that sleep deprivation is real. It was rough, we chose to sleep train him at about 7.5/8 months which worked wonders and quite literally since then has been a great sleeper. I am not sure what or if I had done something in the beginning of my second son's life for him to sleep great. So I have no answers there-just a different baby. Buuuuut when it came time to start implementing a daily sleep routine to help him sleep better- hard to remember but maybe around 4 months was it? The few things I did feel like made a world of a difference. At that 4 month sleep regression he was waking often and that's how I personally knew it was time to introduce a few things. Crib naps in the dark with a sound machine and a sleep sack, I started during nap time only to get him familiar with his room and the crib until I was ready to move him in there at night fully around 6 months. He still sleeps on the go when we need to with a portable sound machine on his carseat, this almost became his cue for it's time to sleep. I also bathe both my kids every night. (90% of the time) We implemented a night time routine, which they say can help even small babies recognize the difference of nap time and bed time. I also chose to go a different route as a busy mom of two who still has to tend to a toddlers needs- to not rock my baby to sleep. My oldest HAD to be rocked in order for him to fall asleep and it became a hard transition later in his life when we tried to stop this. Snuggle your baby, rock them, co-sleep, something different maybe works for you. I practiced laying my baby awake or mostly awake in the crib and allow him to fall asleep on his own. I personally attended to cries of course and times where he did need a few moments of snuggles here and there. That's what I'm here for. Lastly, not every mom might agree with this but the only time he gets "fed to sleep" is the last feed of the evening during our bed time routine. Through the rest of the day, we actually feed at awakenings. This has allowed him to not rely on needing a FULL tummy to sleep. And not every day works out this way, but 90% of the time it does. (Absolutely not in the beginning of his life of course- duh. Listened to baby cue's for a long time and fed on demand whenever he wanted. This wasn't until later.) But these few differences I made with my youngest, has allowed him to sleep through the night (7:30pm-7am) by 8 months. Now listen to your mama heart, and do what's best for your child. We are all just figuring it out here without an instruction manual.
Teaching vs not teaching lessons- This one might be hard for me to admit, but I'm all about honesty. I feel like we as parents genuinely rely on having role models to also show us "better ways" in parenting. Most of my friends and family within close proximity of me, all we're having babies around the same time- what a blessing. We all bounced off of each other as we were taking on every day as moms. When it came to those early toddler years, I just remember thinking where did my perfect little baby go lol. Still perfect of course in his mama's eyes, but just a little terrier now. And I honestly didn't know how to properly handle the fits, pushing and hitting of other kids, not sharing, etc. I still don't always handle it perfectly, and still have my breaking moments as we all do. But I look up to all my mom friends in many ways, and learned to adapt to some of their ways as well as my own. I learned to get to my son's level and teach him what needed to be taught versus just getting mad and never teaching him how to properly do something. It takes time, but this changed our day to day drastically. I felt more calm in frustrating moments, it took some realization for me to also think and know what goes through his little head. (Almost just deleted this whole paragraph, I don't wish to come across as a bad mom. Just wish to show I am a mom learning here.) My job as mama, their bestie, and the parent naturally around more as dad has to work, is to teach them and guide them in the right direction of this crazy world. I was able to figure out a better way about this to help set them up for success. That's a big reason I will forever encourage us all to not judge each other and be more kind as parents. We all face different battles.
Now I thank you, if you took the time out of your day to read this. We're all just trying to make it in this world, but my #1 goal is to be the best wife, mother, and friend I can be. And forever working on this! A lot of you inspire me and I look up to many other woman/mama's. To thank you for being here and supporting my dream. Enjoy 20% off our entire site excluding the sale section with code "MOMS20" valid until 11:59pm on Sunday February 18th.
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