Like most new moms, the first postpartum year was consumed almost exclusively with round-the-clock care for the newborn. And while there were many facets of parenting that we appreciated with our first kid, there were also many things that we looked forward to changing once we were pregnant with our second.
Here are five things you can avoid on your second child:
Adorable baby clothes
We all imagine how cute a newborn would look in a set of rainbow overalls with a matching blouse and socks, so we rush out to buy them. When it came time to put the outfit on the infant, we discovered that the more adorable it was, the more difficult it was to take off. When you’re a new mom and changing up to ten diapers a day, you might decide you never want to wear anything but sleepers again.
They’re adorable on Instagram, but they’re impractical and expensive.
Strict schedule of naps
For your first child, you may have followed a rigid naptime pattern in the hopes that it would help him or her sleep better. I used a phone app and a timer to schedule two daily naps for him in his crib. While it’s true that naps can help you sleep better at night, our second nap may need us to abandon this rule altogether.
First, maintaining a regular nap time is extremely difficult when juggling daycare pick-up and drop-off, and second, our mental health has greatly benefited by our freedom from “nap jail” so that we can participate in activities and socialize with others. Your newborn baby will have little trouble getting used to sleeping in a variety of environments, including the car seat, stroller, cot, train, boat, and more.
Keeping everything clean
We may have been obsessed with keeping everything clean with our first, including sterilizing everything from pacifiers and toys to bottles and dishes. We became so accustomed to sterilizing things that it’s possible we may have melted a teething toy in the microwave at one point. While we do our best to maintain a tidy home for us and our new baby, at some point or another we must admit that daily sanitizing for a baby who frequently discovers and chews on our dog’s toys has fallen far down our list of priorities.
Getting totally preoccupied with the new baby
We might not have all the time for ourselves when we’re in love with this little bundle of happiness. It seems like, uh, pretty much every parent does. We wanted to spend as much time as possible with the baby at first, so we proudly took him or her everywhere we went. The truth is that we may not trust anyone else with him either.
With your second child, on the other hand, you may realize the value of re-establishing your separate identity from that of a mother. Taking some time for yourself will help you recharge, which in turn may make you a better mom.
Monitoring progress
When we have our first child, we tend to monitor their development closely. Rolling? Check. Sitting? Check. Crawling? Nope. Day and night, we worried about why our child was “behind.” Now that we’ve been through this process twice, we realize that milestones aren’t hard deadlines but rather broad, guiding principles.
This time around, we have completely forgotten the milestones and are counting on our doctor to remind us during our regular visits. It’s a great weight off our shoulders to stop worrying about something that’s out of our hands.
You may have learned a lot as a mother since having your second child, but the most important thing you learn is woven within each of these five things we can do differently: to have more faith and admiration for yourself as a mother. Motherhood can be more rewarding than you ever thought if you let go of comparison, comparing to others, and societal pressures and expectations.