Newborn “rules”

Now that I have a newborn baby again, many things are flooding back to me about being a new mom. And how stressful and confusing it was/is even still! And how the guilt seemed to pile on instantly as soon as in the blink of an eye, all of a sudden I went from being a person to being 100% in charge of another living human being also. The adjustment just from being single to married brought a lot of changes for an independent woman like myself. Coordinating every little thing with someone else has it’s own challenges, a blog for another day. But this was even more hardcore cause this new life I was tied to was completely helpless and i had to be responsible for him! Every single little thing I did or didn’t do mattered a heck of a lot more. Can you relate to similar thoughts when you first became a mom? So what do we do? We read books, blogs, podcasts, ask friends and family. Surely someone else knows all the answers that we are so clueless about. There had to be a right and a wrong way to do this mothering thing and I was determined to do it right. Boy was I in for a rude awakening! There was so much conflicting information and advice! One book said follow your baby’s lead on when to feed and the other said to follow the clock. Some people say cry it out and some say that’ll traumatize your baby forever. Don’t be a sleep prop. You can’t spoil a newborn. Nipple confusion. Self soothing. Co sleeping. Connection. Dependence. Independence. Interdependence. It all got very confusing. and overwhelming. And when I thought that there was a right and a wrong way, guess what i ended up doing? Even if it wasn’t quote unquote wrong, I always felt like it was wrong. There was literally no way to win. I was always doing it wrong according to someone. And if i was wrong, guess what i was feeling? yep. Mom Guilt! All the time!!

And it didn’t end with a newborn. Every stinkin phase of this kid’s life brought new challenges, new apparent rules that I had to discover and failed at following. Not until i found life coaching and learned to actually question things did I get my own power back to tap into my own intuition and trust myself. Who cares what the experts say? well, i still do, sometimes. if i decide to agree. but it really is a decision. that i can make for myself and for my family. We can do things our own way. It doesn’t have to look like any certain thing and we don’t have to follow any rules that we don’t want to. And we can believe anything we want to about how it’ll turn out. Cause that’s usually the fear behind the stress and guilt. Is a fear for the future which makes making decisions even harder. So let's dive into that a little bit more tomorrow. But for now, try on the thought that there are no newborn rules. It really helped me last night instead of stressing about what am i supposed to do? I just asked myself what my inner wisdom was leading me to do. No one knows better than me on how to take care of me and my own.