16 Pieces Of Really Good Parenting Advice That Have Actually Helped Me Become A Better Mom
Hi, I'm Hannah, and I have a nine-month-old daughter named Ellie. While I feel like at this point I've been doing this whole parenting thing for a while, I'm still a relatively new mom.
Since telling people that I was pregnant, I've received endless advice on how to raise a child. If you're a parent, I'm sure you can relate! Much of the advice I've gotten has been straight-up annoying or total garbage. But I've also received some words of wisdom that have really spoken to me and helped me become a better mom. So here is some of the best advice I've come across so far in the first almost-year of parenthood.
1.Stay calm, because your baby can read you like a book.
My husband and I were fortunate to have a baby nurse helping out for the first few weeks of our daughter's life. The baby nurse could often calm Ellie down when she was inconsolable to me, even when I mimicked her soothing methods. There were times when I simply couldn't understand how she could do it. Our nurse told me that babies are incredible at reading people. If you aren't calm, she won't be calm. And as a nervous and inexperienced first-time mother, of course I was having a hard time keeping myself calm and collected. But I took this advice to heart. When Ellie was crying, I'd take a deep breath, steady myself, and then pick her up. Seeing how much quicker she would settle when I was relaxed was amazing.
Now I apply this advice to many aspects of parenting. For example, when Ellie falls and bumps her knee, she looks to me for my reaction even before she reacts on her own. If I stay calm, so does she.
2.When things get tough, remind yourself that you'll miss these days.
When you're in the thick of newborn life, and you've been up from 2 a.m. to 4 a.m. trying to get your hungry-but-sleepy baby to stay awake through a feed, it's hard to remind yourself that you'll miss these moments. But it's all true, and so many mothers told me it would be. My daughter is nine months old now. I no longer rock her to sleep, and she sleeps through the night. But I already miss holding her as she sleeps with her tiny body nestled in mine.
It feels like yesterday that she was five minutes old and then five days old and five months old...and I know that in the blink of an eye, she will be five years old going off to Kindergarten and I'll be wondering where all the time went. There's no doubt that parenthood is full of challenging moments, and when you're in the thick of them it's hard to imagine that you'll ever miss these days. But if you could speak to yourself 10 years from now, "future you" would probably tell you that you will.
3.Every baby and mother is different, so don't compare your baby (or yourself!) to others.
There are a million different parenting styles, and something different works for everyone. I have friends who keep their babies on rigid schedules and others who just go with the flow. I know people who started solids at four months with purées and others who waited until around six with baby lead weening. I have spoken to women who co-sleep with the babies and others who moved their newborns straight into a crib in their own nursery.
This is all to say that every baby and every parent is different, and there's no one-size-fits-all approach to parenting. It may seem obvious, but it's always helpful to recall this insight. No, you're not a bad parent if you let your baby take all his naps in the carrier instead of the crib if that helps your baby sleep. You're doing amazing even if you are still feeding your baby to sleep and decide sleep training isn't for you! I love talking with others about my parenting decisions and the things that are working for me and Ellie, but I felt more confident and happier once I stopped comparing.
4.When people offer you help, take it.
I will admit that I'm not great at accepting help from people. I take pride in being independent and doing things for myself. So when people told me to accept help with the baby and/or household tasks whenever help was offered, I had a hard time feeling like this would apply to me.
But this advice is crucial, especially in the first few weeks when even the most basic tasks feel overwhelming. When you have a baby and help is offered, take it! Maybe it's a friend offering to drop off dinner so you don't have to cook or your mother-in-law offering to hold the baby so you can shower and blow dry your hair. Whatever it is, accept help. You don't have to be a superhero, and it's OK not to do it all. It doesn't make you any less of a fantastic mom to accept the help offered to you. In fact (and it took a bit of time for me to realize), focusing on myself occasionally made me a much happier and more patient mom to Ellie.
5.Don't buy a ton of baby gear in advance.
I'm a planner. I like to be prepared and organized. So even though people told me to wait on buying most baby items, I naturally bought a ton of gear and had my daughter's whole nursery organized and ready before we came home from the hospital. Turns out, I should have listened. Sure, it was essential to have a handful of things I'd use right away, but the truth is that I could have waited on most.
For example, I bought about 20 kinds of swaddle blankets and then realized we were only using one (the Ollie, if you're wondering). I bought all different kinds of bottles until a lactation consultant recommended one specific bottle (the Evenflo Balance + Baby Bottles) for combo feeding. Babies actually do have preferences — strong ones! — so waiting to see what worked best for Ellie before purchasing a ton of bulk items would have been a very good idea!
6.Fed is best!!!
This is such a big one. These days, I feel like there's such a stigma around women who choose not to breastfeed. I am so grateful to all of the people who reminded me that fed — not breast — is best.
I did end up breastfeeding for six months because I found that it worked for me. Plus, my baby and I enjoyed it. That being said, I now realize how physically and emotionally demanding it is. There are so many reasons women choose not to (or are unable to) breastfeed. And no woman needs an excuse to simply choose to use formula.
There was a time before Ellie started sleeping through the night when I decided to supplement with some formula in order to keep up with her growing appetite and to give myself more sleep at night, and this worked great for us. I have friends who breastfed for a full year and others who went straight to formula. They all have happy, healthy, and thriving babies. Fed is best, no matter how you go about it!
7.Birth probably won't go according to your plan, and that is OK.
When I was nearing the end of my pregnancy, lots of people would ask about my birth plan and give me advice: things like eat lots of dates to induce labor (didn't work), pack these silky pajamas and this robe in your hospital bag (TBH, I think I was naked or almost naked the entire time), etc...but my favorite advice was that labor might not go how you picture it, so prepare to change your plans. Going into labor with this in mind helped prepare me for any possible outcome. My hospital was great about asking my preferences and taking them to heart, but I know that the childbirth process (like so many things as they relate to babies) is entirely beyond my control, and I put my complete trust in my OB to do what was best for both me and my baby.
8.Give yourself grace.
This one was so important for me, and it's something I'm still working on constantly. For the first few weeks after giving birth, I didn't feel like myself. I was hormonal and tired. My pregnancy clothes were too big, and my regular clothes were too small. I was bleeding, and my nipples hurt, and I didn't like the way my body looked or felt. But still, I felt this pressure from myself to get back into my regular routine.
But then I would remind myself of this advice to give myself grace and go easy on myself. I'd tell myself to wear pajamas until noon instead of squeezing into jeans, skip the morning exercise routine and relax on the couch, order take-out instead of cooking dinner, stay off the scale and stop thinking about how my stomach looked puffy because it just housed a child for nine months. These are the things I'd constantly remind myself of at the beginning. And this advice helped me to reframe my mindset: I wasn't being lazy...I was just allowing myself the time to recover and figure out this new life as a mom.
9.You don't need all the fancy, new, high-tech baby products.
When I told people I was pregnant, the first question I was asked was: When are you due? The second most common question was: Are you getting the Snoo? If you're not familiar with it, the Snoo is a smart (and quite expensive) basinett that claims to use science-based sounds and movement to help newborns sleep. This is just one example of the many high-tech, new, and trendy baby products that moms swear by. And sometimes it feels like these products are so hyped up that if you don't buy this or that one, you're doing your baby a disservice.
But the truth is, you don't need the newest smart baby monitor, the snazzy formula dispenser, or the digital changing pad. If you have the funds, try them out! But your baby will be just fine with the good, old-fashioned classics. Ellie has always preferred colorful, affordable Fisher Price toys over pricier, wooden Montesori-style toys that are so fashionable these days. And yes, I did end up renting a Snoo. And no, I'm not convinced it did anything to help my newborn sleep better.
10.Always pack multiple changes of clothes.
I'm not sure if this is just my daughter or every baby, but Ellie likes to poop in the most inconvenient of situations. Like, the first 10 minutes into a car ride when she's supposed to be napping, or the second we sit down at a restaurant. Moms always talk about the importance of packing a change of clothes (or two or three) in the diaper bag, and I learned the truth about this quite early on. Now, we never leave the house without a change of clothes for Ellie should a blowout occur. Because it only does when you're least prepared for it.
11.Never ignore your intuition as a parent.
I was at a friend's baby shower, talking to a woman around my mother's age. She heard that I recently had a baby, and she told me her biggest piece of advice is always to follow your gut as a mother. Mothers know their babies better than anyone, she said, so if you believe something with your gut, don't let it go. Now, when I first brought Ellie home from the hospital, I would have told you that I was skeptical of this advice. Her cries felt constant, and I couldn't decipher hungry cries from tired cries from gassy cries. I had no idea how to read my daughter, which was terrifying and overwhelming.
But after a few short weeks, I became an expert at reading her. There is something very instinctual now about my ability to understand exactly what she needs even though she can't communicate in words yet. Luckily, we haven't had a serious situation where I've needed to follow my gut regarding her health, but I feel confident that my mother's intuition would lead me in the right direction.
12.Don't be afraid of your baby crying in public.
Like all newborns, Ellie cried a lot. And she was not the type of baby who would consistently fall asleep and stay asleep. Her naps were erratic, and a crying fit could erupt, without warning, at any time. As a result, my husband and I were terrified to do many things in public with her, like take her to a restaurant or a friend's apartment. We felt like we were constantly walking on eggshells, afraid she might make a scene.
But then, pretty early on in the game, a friend gave me some advice I took to heart. "Nobody is more bothered by a baby's crying than the parents," she said. "And if they are, that's their problem." When you think about it, this insight is really true. When a baby cries in public, I hardly even notice it. But when your own child is crying, it's literally all you can think about. So, I've since adjusted my mindset. I couldn't live in fear of a tantrum, so I stopped worrying about one occuring. This only improved with age as Ellie emerged from the newborn months as a happy, more predictable, and mostly smiley baby. The moral of the story: Babies cry, and that's OK! No one is going to judge you for being a neglectful or bad parent if your baby is crying in public.
13.Keep telling yourself that everything is just a phase.
It's just a phase... You hear this a lot when talking about babies and kids. And in the short nine months that I've been a mother, I've already seen that phases really do come and go. We've already experienced maybe 10,000 different phases, all of which feel like they will last forever in the moment, but then they disappear, and it's onto the next one.
For example, for three days, Ellie refuses to eat any solid food. Just when I start wondering if there's something wrong, she's suddenly gobbling up whatever I put on her plate. For a whole week, Ellie refuses to nap for more than 25 minutes at a time, and she wakes up at 4:30 a.m. crying. Just when I think we seriously can't go on like this, the following week, she's napping like a pro and sleeping through the night until 7 a.m. without a peep. When things get tough, I remind myself that this hurdle is likely just a phase, and it keeps me going. Who knows what next week will bring!?
14.Recognize that you will sleep again. Some day, they go to college.
There's a reason why the newborn weeks — a very short period of time in the scheme of things — feel more like a few years. It's because you're sleep-deprived, of course. And when you're dealing with night feeds and frequent wake-ups, it's easy to feel like you're never going to sleep again. Then comes the whole question of sleep training. You start to wonder: will my child ever learn how to sleep?
The subject of baby sleep is stressful. But, as I was reminded time and time again by friends, you will sleep again. They will become kids you'll need to rouse up for school; they will become teenagers desperate to sleep in on the weekends, and then they will become college students who leave the house altogether.
Sleep looks a bit different for me these days than it did pre-baby, but that's OK. My daughter is sleeping consistently through the night, which is the best I can hope for now. And I'll just keep telling myself that one day, not so long from now, we'll both be able to sleep past 7 a.m.
15.Remind yourself that by the time your kid goes to Kindergarten, he'll be walking.
Parents talk a lot about milestones, and as a new parent especially, it's easy to fixate on them. I remember when Ellie was about four months old, I was talking to a friend with two older children. I was concerned that Ellie wasn't showing any interest in rolling yet. My friend laughed at me and told me to stop overthinking the developmental milestones. Babies do things at their own pace, she said. Remind yourself that by the time Ellie goes to Kindergarten, she'll be walking just fine.
It's true, and I couldn't help but laugh at myself for wasting brain power on these concerns about Ellie's physical development. This advice may seem silly to say out loud, but it is a good reminder that there's no rush. Ellie will crawl and walk and run and talk when she's ready. And, after all, what's the rush? For now, I'll take advantage of the fact that she's still immobile, and I don't have to spend all waking hours chasing her.
16.And finally...take the advice that works for you, and leave the rest.
I know this is slightly ironic to put as the last piece of advice in a whole article about parenting advice, but it's also precisely the point. You will inevitably be inundated with other people's thoughts and opinions about parenting. Hopefully some of that advice helps, but you're bound to hear a whole lot of crap that just doesn't serve you. So forget it! Leave it and move on.
My daughter is weirdly obsessed with being outside. She always has been. Even in the cold winter months, there would come a point in the day when she would cry in our apartment until I took her out for a walk in the stroller. One day ,it was snowing, but Ellie was starting to fuss for fresh air. I bundled her up, put her in her winterized and extremely warm stroller, and went for a walk. It took about two minutes for some woman to approach me on the street and tell me to take my daughter inside. Go inside, it's inappropriate to be outdoors with a young baby in this weather, she told me. I almost got upset at this complete stranger judging me and giving me input into my parenting decisions, but then Ellie giggled as if on cue, and we continued our snowy walk. So, TLDR: take the advice that works for you and screw the rest.
So, what's the best parenting advice you've received? Tell me in the comments or drop it into this Google form.