8 Things To NOT Stress About During The First Year Of Motherhood

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The first year of motherhood left me feeling crazy. While I feel like I barely survived, I also learned a lot about myself and my limits. Looking back, I wish I could tell my new-mom self to just chill the freak out and stop worrying about every tiny thing. For the new moms out there, I’m gonna do you a favor and share 8 things to NOT stress about during the first year of motherhood. Hopefully, you’ll end the first year with a bit more sanity than I did.

Here’s what you’ll find in this guide:

So Much Freaking Pressure On New Moms
8 Things To NOT Stress About During The First Year Of Motherhood
How To Maintain Your New Found Mama Zen

So Much Freaking Pressure On New Moms

Becoming a mom was the biggest change I’ve ever gone through in my life. That holds a lot of weight coming from someone who’s moved to China without knowing anyone and without even knowing how to say hello. I can now say that having a baby was definitely more intense than changing countries.

The pressure I felt as a new mom was sometimes unbearable. I blame most of this pressure on the unrealistic expectations set by society, social media, etc. It felt like I was supposed to know what I was doing from the start and get back to my normal life in just 6 weeks. That 6-week check-up was a joke, btw.

From day one, I felt like I was supposed to accomplish the following points in a very short time:

Get baby sleeping through the night asap
Fit back into my pre-baby jeans asap
Work out how to maintain a social life with a newborn
Make the whole process appear flawless, beautiful, and FUN

It was just too much pressure for my newly deconstructed brain to work out, and I often felt like I was on the verge of a breakdown.

If I could go back to those days, while knowing what I know now, I’d definitely try to talk some sense into myself. I needed to chill the freak out and let go of the expectations I had allowed society place on me. Overall, I learned 8 things to NOT stress out about during the first year of motherhood.

There’s nothing I can do about it now, but I’m hoping I can help some new moms out there who are struggling to keep their sanity while keeping their newborn baby alive. We’re all just trying to survive out here, right?

8 Things To NOT Stress About During The First Year Of Motherhood

Wake Windows

A wake window is the amount of time your baby will stay awake until they need the next nap. The Internet provided me a very rigid wake window schedule, and Isaiah rarely fell within the appropriate wake window for his age. He has never been a high-sleep needs baby.

When my husband and I took a birthing class, wake windows were a big topic of discussion and we were given a very tidy, predictable schedule for our coming baby. Apparently, my little baby was going to sleep two hours, spend one hour awake (pee, poo, tummy time, etc.), and then go to sleep for another two hours. What a nice and tidy three-hour-cycle.

It NEVER happened that way, and to be honest with you, I was stressed out by this three-hour-cycle before Isaiah was even born. The midwife made me believe that it was VERY important to stick with this schedule to ensure baby was getting enough sleep, but it never played out that way.

Let me tell you how it really went.

Isaiah didn’t give a rip about that stupid three-hour-cycle. He never slept two hours at a time and was always awake for more than an hour at a time. I was literally losing my mind trying to make him fall asleep because newborns are supposed to sleep all the time. He just didn’t seem to want to sleep as much as he was supposed to, and I was so frustrated by that.

Surely, I was doing something wrong. Babies always follow the age appropriate wake windows from the internet, right?

In fact, they do not. They don’t care. All babies are different, and all babies are going to sleep when they need to sleep. If they don’t need to sleep, they won’t sleep.

I wish someone told me the truth about wake windows because I stressed way too much about them. It felt like I was doing it all wrong because my baby wasn’t doing what he was supposed to do. In reality, I wasn’t doing anything wrong, and my baby was being a very normal baby.

Do yourself a favor and throw out the wake window schedule. You can thank me later.

Baby’s Naps

Sleep begets sleep.

How many times did I read that on the internet? Maybe a million? Two million? It was a lot. Baby’s are supposed to nap all the time. Or at least that’s what I thought before Isaiah was born.

Isaiah taught me a lot about what normal babies do. They most certainly do not follow rules.

When looked up the amount of time a baby was supposed to sleep in a day, the range was pretty wide. Isaiah barely reached the minimum amount most days.

I bought into the stupid lie that “sleep begets sleep” and had convinced myself that the very reason he wasn’t sleeping well at night was because he wasn’t sleeping enough during the day. Actually, he wasn’t sleeping well at night because I was making him sleep too much during the day.

As a result of the pressure to make him sleep, nap times were incredibly stressful for me. I stressed when he was awake, and when he finally fell asleep, I stressed about how long he slept and about how I was going to make him fall asleep for his next nap when he woke up.

I was a mess.

Take it from me: during the first year of motherhood, do NOT stress about your baby’s naps. If your baby is tired, they will sleep. If they are not tired, they won’t sleep. And it’s ok. It’s all ok.

Don’t get me wrong, baby’s can have medical stuff keeping them awake. In general, however, your baby is probably absolutely normal if they aren’t taking super long and frequent naps. While I had convinced myself there was something wrong with Isaiah because he wasn’t sleeping a ton, he was actually totally fine. And your baby probably is, too. If you do have concerns, have them checked out by a medical professional. If anything, it will only ease your very normal mama worries.

Night Wake-Ups

As you’ve likely picked up by now, most of my stress as a first-time mom came as a result of unrealistic expectations concerning baby sleep. It took some time, but I’ve finally chilled out dramatically in the sleep area and have learned that sleep is one of the top things to NOT stress about in the first year of motherhood.

At the beginning of my mommy journey, I had this idea that babies just kind of eventually slept through the night. Wow, I could not have been more misinformed.

For the first couple of weeks, my boy slept pretty well, but I’m thinking that was only because he didn’t quite know he was no longer inside the womb. When he figured out things had changed, his “pretty good” sleep went out the window.

The thing is, babies that sleep poorly are far more the norm than the unicorn babies who sleep through the night straight away. In fact, waking up at night is a protection mechanism and protects against SIDS. Yet, we are continually brainwashed to believe that our baby should be sleeping through the night by a certain age or weight. If they aren’t, then mama is obviously doing something wrong.

But, mama, it’s lies!!! Babies wake up A LOT. That’s ok.

From the start, I knew I didn’t want to sleep train, so I chose co-sleeping as a means of getting some decent sleep. He still wakes up when he’s in bed with me, but I’m 100% certain he’d wake up even more and take longer to put back to sleep if he wasn’t in the same space as me. To be honest, I quite like having him in the same bed. He’ll be pushing me away in no time, so I treasure the sweet closeness.

For the first few months, I really stressed a lot about the number of night wake-ups. Eventually, I got tired of feeling stressed all the time and trying to get him to sleep magically through the night.

So I chose acceptance as opposed to stress, and I’ve not looked back. Would I love to get great sleep? Frick yeah. But I also know my baby needs me at night, and it’s my job as his mom to comfort him. I know he’s not ready to be in his own space, and I’m willing to make this sacrifice for him.

In my heart, I know the hard nights will pay off in the long run. I truly believe I am laying a foundation of trust, confidence and attachment as I respond to his needs at night. I will never regret what I’m doing, and I know it won’t last forever.

Developmental Milestones

Most moms that I know, myself included, felt a lot of stress when it came to developmental milestones. Babies experience the most rapid rate of growth and development during the first year than any other time in life. There’s so much to keep track of and make sure baby is doing, not doing, mastering, etc. Even though it can be incredibly stressful, developmental milestones are yet another thing to not stress about during the first year of motherhood.

Isaiah was always a bit on the quick side when it came to developmental milestones. He was crawling at 5 months, walking at 10 1/2 months, and running as soon as his little legs could keep up with his upper body. While I knew other mamas who were worried about their babies taking too long to pick up skills, I actually stressed that Isaiah was doing things too quickly. Crazy, right?

He started walking about 10 1/2 months. After he started walking, I read an instagram post that said crawling was a crucial skill and babies that went straight to walking or only crawled for a very short time were at risk of some things down the road. Ugh. It’s always something, right? Of course I freaked out. Even though he had a good 5 1/2 months of crawling, I was still concerned and did everything in my power to get in on the floor again to crawl.

I know having him crawl more is not hurting him, but I also don’t think he was in the grave danger I had worked up in my mind. While I don’t regret playing games with him that got him crawling more, I do regret the level of stress I allowed to fester in my brain. At the time, it felt like if I didn’t have him crawling more, I was setting him up for failure. That’s drastic, but it’s how I felt. I reckon other moms can relate to that kind of irrational fear and stress.

Every baby is different. Some do things early, some later. The milestones are meant to be a guide and held a bit loosely. I’ve stopped looking at them altogether. I know Isaiah is developing just fine, but if I did have some concerns, I’d pop into the doctor and have him checked out. While there’s no need to stress out, it also doesn’t hurt to have your baby checked, even if it’s just to calm your racing mind.

Bouncing Back

Bouncing back is a major thing to NOT stress about during the first year of motherhood. In fact, you can go ahead and flush the bounce-back concept down the toilet. Do not stress one moment about it. After surviving an insanely traumatic physical event, the last thing you need to stress about is fitting back in your pre-baby jeans the next day or even the next year.

How many new moms went to their 6-week check up feeling like they had just been run over by a truck, only to be told that they were “good to go”? Good to go where? To an osteopath? Back to bed?

When I went to the doctor for my 6-week check up, the midwife had the audacity to discuss BIRTH CONTROL with me. I’m sorry, what? I could still barely sit on my bottom without a mountain of pillows to ease the discomfort, and she started discussing contraception. Hahahahahaha!! Sorry, but I wasn’t planning on letting anyone or anything anywhere near my lady parts anytime soon.

Maybe we should have discussed things that were relevant to my body and where I actually was physically. The healing process after having a baby is intense. At least it was for me. Granted, I wasn’t 20 when I had my first baby, so maybe the 20 year-olds are actually bouncing back by 6 weeks. Not this grandma. Far from it.

I’m a year postpartum, and I’m just now feeling good. A year. It took me a year to not feel my pelvic floor prolapse every day while walking. I worked on my postpartum healing, and even with intentional work, it took me a year to “bounce back”.

After you have your baby, focus on your baby and healing deeply. Don’t focus on superficial bounce back culture. It’s such a load of BS.

Unwarranted Advice

When I had a baby, people suddenly felt the urge to give me a boat load of unwarranted advice. Most of it was stuff that I didn’t agree with at all, but I’d just nodded along in agreement to get them off my back.

Unwarranted advice was something I learned to NOT stress about during the first year of motherhood. It’s amazing how people felt like they knew what was best for me and my baby even though they’d not spent more than a couple of minutes or hours with us. Funny how that worked.

If someone starts to give you unwarranted advice about anything, politely (or rudely) interrupt them and say, “Thanks, but no thanks.” You are allowed to set boundaries and let people know that their passing thoughts are not helpful.

I started doing that about half way through the first year. If anyone gave me advice and it didn’t sit well with me, I would simply say, “That’s not how I’m choosing to do things. I’m doing what’s best for me and my baby, thank-you.” That usually shut people up pretty quickly.

You know what’s best for you and your baby. No one else spends as much time with them as you do. Trust your gut, and tell everyone else to shut up.

Getting It All Right

In the first year of motherhood, do NOT stress about getting it all right. Name one person in the history of the world who has done everything perfectly as a mom. I’ll wait. There is a reason there are so many therapists around today.

You can only do your best, mama. You’re never going to be perfect, and you’re never going to get it all right. Who even determines what it looks like to do everything perfectly as a mom? I’d like to meet this person and ask them a lot of questions.

Us moms have got to release ourselves from the mom guilt and expectations of being perfect. This practice is something I kind of suck at. I often feel like I’m not doing things well enough and I’m failing as a mom. My inner self-talk is not great at times, but I’m working on it.

At least once a day, take a moment to sit and congratulate yourself on making it this far on your mama journey. You’re doing way better than you think. Think of at least one thing every day that you’re doing really well as a mom. Take the time to mentally celebrate yourself either when you wake up or before you go to bed at night. Make a habit it of it.

What Everyone Else Is Doing

Social media was the bane of my existence during the first year of motherhood. I often compared myself and my mothering skills to women on social media, women I’d never even met.

Do yourself a favor and do NOT stress about what everyone else is doing. Don’t stress about it during the first year of motherhood. In fact, don’t stress about it at any point in motherhood.

I am me, and you are you. My life is not your life. Your life is not my life. My life will never be your life. Your life will never be my life. Comparing ourselves to each other does nothing other than make us feel like we’re not good enough, and it’s just not true. We are all more than enough even though we likely have very different ways of raising our babes.

Sometimes, I just have to cut out all the negative voices in my head by turning off social media. You might have to do the same thing for some seasons. While I’ve learned a great deal of positive mothering tactics from social media, it’s also had a damaging impact on my confidence levels. As a result, I’ve learned to turn it off when I start to feel crap about myself.

Things that work for other moms might not work for you or even be relevant to your mothering style. That’s ok. If you’re doing things differently than the influencer on Instagram, it’s ok. You’re an amazing mom even if you don’t follow along with the influencers. Turn them off. You don’t need them, anyway.

How To Maintain Your New Found Mama Zen

So now that you’ve learned what to not stress about during the first year of motherhood, and you’re as cool as a cucumber, how do us mamas maintain this new found mama zen?

I’m sorry to tell you that it doesn’t come without intentionality and work.

Stress is often knocking at my door, and to be honest with you, I am not the best at keeping the stress at bay. More often than not, I find myself in the work mode as I fight to maintain mental peace in my motherhood journey.

It’s ok and super normal to feel stress, but it’s also really important to identify it quickly and shut it down. While being a mom is super stressful, I’ve hopefully equipped you with some knowledge that will help you release some of the common stressors of being a new mom.

Stress feels big, but mama, you are always more powerful than the stress, and you can kick it out as soon you feel it creeping in. Never forget that you are the best mom for your bub, and they are incredibly blessed to call you “mama”.