New parents receive a lot of advice. Not only is the amount of advice we receive overwhelming, but a lot of it sounds like this:
“Follow a strict schedule, that worked for us!”
“Just go with the flow, we had no issues!”
“Let your baby cry it out! It saved our sanity!”
“It’s okay to rock your baby to sleep every night, we did!”
Notice a theme?
Everyone’s advice is different! As a new parent, or even a seasoned parent going through new trials, the conflicting (and sometimes unsolicited) advice can feel immense.
While I often heard that different things work for different families, the weight of this didn’t really hit me until I had my second baby. My son and I struggled the first few months of his life. If he was awake, he was crying, which after awhile meant I was crying. He was always upset and uncomfortable, and nothing I seemed to do would help. He never slept for more than 30 minutes.
I felt desperate and defeated, and for support I often turned to advice both online and from other moms. I received all of the advice and tried every single idea I read. Nothing helped. Hearing what worked for other families when it wasn’t working for ours, intensified the loneliness and helplessness I was feeling as a struggling postpartum mom.
As I reflect on those times, now on the other side of it, I feel strongly about sharing my own advice with new moms. Specifically, there is one piece of encouragement that I feel compelled to share, and it is the only thing that is guaranteed to work for every family.
My Advice?
The best – and dare I say only – advice new parents need is to not listen to anyone’s parenting advice.
You cannot go into parenthood with expectations of how your experience will be. There are so many factors that influence what you “should” do. Every baby has a different temperament. Every parent has a different temperament. We all have different needs, triggers and feelings. You will never know what you should or shouldn’t do, what your baby will or won’t like and how you will or will not react to the plethora of parenting obstacles until you experience them.
Parenting is filled with beautiful joys and inevitable struggles. With whatever life brings, each family will have to go through their own trials to find what works best for them and their children.
I hope to inspire moms to help each other on a deeper level beyond stock parenting tips. A great way to help a new mom is to offer support rather than advice!
 advice can feel overwhelming. ){kind=link}