Welcome to Weekly Reads, where we share things we’ve found around the web.
When my daughter was three weeks old I met up with a friend who was expecting her baby in a few weeks time and told her “Ignore everyone’s advice, absolutely no one remembers what having a newborn is like.” I still stand by this – the newborn days are so fleeting, I get why everyone kept on giving me advice relevant to a 4 month old when my little girl was still a blob of sleepy baby – and I sometimes feel like this could apply to 90% of the baby advice I’ve received.
Everyone’s experience is so different. Babies develop at their own pace, sleep or don’t sleep, and parents have their own expectations and plans. A lot of other people’s advice or experiences can seem irrelevant or make you question what you’re doing. But, with that said, I’ve continued to listen to and read about other people’s experiences. I have gotten better and better at taking away the things that are useful and ignoring the bits that aren’t or don’t fit me and my baby.
I recently read Anabela of Fieldguided’s post about what she’s learned in her first year as a mom. It’s one of the only articles about motherhood that I’ve immediately wanted to share with other moms or soon-to-be moms. A few things really resonated with my experience (her brief mention of wrist pain made me say ‘ah, not just me!!!” it maybe sounds trivial, but is really bothersome) but I think the best part was “Everyone is different. Everyone is different. Everyone is different.”
I hope you enjoy it as much as I did and can take away just the bits that you need.
Have a lovely weekend,
Christina