Advice for First-Time Moms

Hey mama, you're listening to the Postpartum Prep Podcast. My name is Ceridwen and I'm here to help you prepare for the part of having a baby that no one really tells you about, what to expect after birth. This is the show where we dive into all the questions you didn't even know you needed to ask about life with your new baby.

So let's get you ready, because birth is just the beginning. Hello and welcome back to the Postpartum Prep Podcast. Today we are celebrating our 50th episode.

I cannot believe we're here. This time last year is when I made it my mission to get to 50 episodes. We made it! I'm so excited to be at our 50th episode.

There is one question that I ask all the guests on the podcast. I ask them, if you could go back and talk to yourself when you were pregnant with your first baby, what advice would you give to yourself back then? And this is just always my favorite question to ask, because the responses give so much insight into how mothers have grown through their journey in motherhood. And often the responses they give, I think, yes, if only every pregnant mom heard this, it would make such a difference.

At least when I think of all this advice, if only I had heard it when I was pregnant, it would have made such a difference. But I'm sure that so many other moms would relate and would agree that the advice, which I'm going to share with you in this episode, I'm going to go back and share the advice every guest that we've had should be in this episode, sharing what they would go back and tell their pregnant self if they could. So I think this episode really is just like a run-through of all the best tips that moms could give to pregnant moms about preparing for postpartum and preparing for life as a new mom and life with your new baby.

Some of this advice will cover breastfeeding, some covers sleep, some just covers the emotional transition of becoming a mother. So if you're currently pregnant, this episode is definitely worth giving a listen to because really, honestly, you could listen to this episode and none of the other episodes and you'd be getting some of the best advice out there. Although I hope you'd still listen to other episodes of the podcast.

I'll actually be linking, I'll make sure to link in the episode description and the show notes, I'll link all the episodes that the guests in this episode have appeared on. So let's just jump right in and hear what these moms had to say about the advice that they would give to themselves when they were pregnant with their first babies. The first guest that we're going to hear from is Lily Nichols.

Lily is a registered dietician and nutritionist, certified diabetes educator, researcher and author of three books, including Real Food for Pregnancy, which if you are pregnant, I highly recommend because it has a great section on preparing for postpartum nutrition. But for now, here's what Lily had to say when I asked her what advice she'd give to her pregnant self. Back with my first, I would have told myself to do a little more preparation for postpartum.

You know, I put so much energy into planning for birth, you know, I wanted and I still think it is very much of value to put energy into planning for the right, you know, setting and providers and people to be present at your birth so you can have the best possible outcome. I don't regret any of that, but I wish I had also put a little bit more emphasis onto postpartum prep. Our next guest is Rachel Shepherd-Oda.

Rachel is the founder of Hey Sleepy Baby, an online platform offering gentle attachment-centered baby and toddler sleep support. We recorded two episodes together about how much sleep babies really need and night wakings and weaning in older babies. Here's the advice Rachel would give to her pregnant self.

I think I would have just told myself that like, it will end. There is a light at the end of the tunnel, I think, and I hear this from new parents all the time. And it's so unfortunate that we don't have this perspective with our first baby and we often get it with our second, but everything really is a phase.

Everything does pass. Everything is temporary. And I think when you have your first baby, you feel like your whole life has been blown up.

And especially if you have a really difficult high needs baby like I did, and you have postpartum anxiety and all this stuff, it can feel like, oh my God, this is my life forever now. This is horrible. What did I do to myself? And if you can zoom out with your first baby and just keep that perspective of this is just a season, this is just a phase, we will get through this.

I will sleep again one day. If we could just learn to like let go a little bit and just trust the process and trust development, it really does happen. So I would definitely tell myself to chill out and yeah, just trust the process.

Our next guest Kyla is a mother, birth keeper and postpartum care provider. You may know Kyla as carlasagebirthwork on Instagram. We recorded two episodes together about preparing emotionally for postpartum recovery and what to eat after birth to support your postpartum recovery.

Here's what she said she would tell her pregnant self. I would say that she deserves rest, that she needs to have a lot more people around her and involved in postpartum, and that she does need a postpartum doula as well because I actually had one living close by me and I like rejected that and thought that my midwife would be that person for me and she absolutely wasn't because midwives can't really be. Our next guest is Vanessa from Matrescence in Colour.

She is a licensed therapist and certified health coach supporting women of colour through the transition into motherhood and navigating the early years. Here's what Vanessa said when I asked her what advice she would give to her pregnant self. So I think I fell really deeply into like intensive mothering very early on.

So even before my baby came, like reading up on everything, like half of the books back there, like pregnancy books. And so if I could go back, if I could tell her like, relax, like relax, take it easy, be in the moment. Not necessarily enjoy the pregnancy because I think I hate that advice even like enjoy the early years.

They'll be small, but for so long, but just be in it, experience all of what it's bringing. And not always thinking ahead to what, who you're going to, because you don't know who you're going to be until you've had that baby until you've been with that baby, you've been with yourself, you've been in it. And that some of the decisions I thought I was going to make ended up not being that.

So I would have just told her to like, in my own way, because I can talk to her like that, like, take it easy, like, chill out. You know, like, relax. You're going to be just fine.

You will figure this out. Our next guest, Claire Fagan, is a birth and postpartum doula, infant sleep educator, and mother. She is the founder of Regenerative Motherhood, which we recorded a whole episode about because it aligns so well with all the things we care about here on this podcast.

And she also recorded an episode with me on how to prepare your home for life with a newborn. Here's the advice Claire would give to her pregnant self. I think I would just be as present as possible.

Like the thing, like, the things that feel important, like probably aren't compared to like, what's right in front of what's right in front of me, I still need to take that advice. I still like to think that the laundry pile is more important than the puzzle that we've done 1 million times, but like, it's just not. Just like, stay present to yourself and to your baby and just know that he's not broken just because he wants to be by you, near you, on you.

So important. Our next guest, Elena, is the mother and voice behind Nurturing Twins, a community supporting and resourcing twin mothers to prioritize attachment with their babies. Elena recorded two episodes with us, one about preparing for postpartum with twins and another about practicing attachment parenting with twins.

Here's the advice Elena would give to her pregnant self about becoming a mother. I would tell myself that your capacity will expand far beyond your wildest dreams. And that you, you simply do not have to be fearful of this experience because it's going to become the foundation for, it's going to become the culmination of all of the work that you've done to this point.

Our next guest, Amy Brown, is a professor of maternal and child public health at Swansea University. She studies breastfeeding and perinatal mental health and has published over 150 research papers and led projects that inform global policies on infant feeding. She is also the author of several books about infant feeding and parenting, and she shared some of her research insights with us in our episode about whether strict baby routines and sleep schedules really work.

And we also recorded an episode together about building a postpartum support network. As a reminder, all the episodes will be linked in the show notes. When I asked Amy what advice she'd give to herself as a first time pregnant mum, here's what she said.

Be as gentle and kind to yourself as you would be to others. Does that sound too cheesy? It's about being kind to yourself. No one knows what they're doing.

If you love your baby and you respond to your baby and you cuddle your baby, your baby is very, very lucky. They will probably fall off the bed or you'll nearly drop them or you'll give them the wrong food or something at some point. I mean, I've got all sorts of stories, but it's just forgiveness for yourself and kindness and recognising that you're becoming a new person, I guess.

You've become a mother too. You're a new person. Be kind to yourself.

Our next guest, Antonio, is actually a dad. He is the only dad so far that we've had on the podcast. Antonio is a baby-wearing educator and strength coach, and he recorded two episodes with me, one about baby-wearing for fathers and another about what dads should do during the postpartum stage.

I asked him what advice he would give to himself when his wife was pregnant with their first child, and here's what he said. To trust my instincts and don't let noise around me interfere with what I believe in. I love that.

That's the best advice I could give people. But that will require for you to be informed and for you to have read and made your research before and having contacted professionals. That's when your informed decision is heavier than the noise outside.

Our next guest, Adele, is a mindful breastfeeding practitioner, which means she supports families through the different stages of feeding with gentle guidance and mindfulness techniques. We explored this in our episode about the emotional journey of breastfeeding. She also offered us some practical tools in our episode about mindfulness techniques for postpartum stress relief.

Here's the advice she would give if she could go back and talk to her pregnant self. Trust your body, trust your baby, and know that most things, breastfeeding specifically, and this isn't even a word I don't think, but are figureoutable. So it's not all or nothing.

It doesn't have to be all or nothing. And asking for support whilst you're breastfeeding, again, isn't a sign that you're not coping and do more of that. Communicate and ask for support because people aren't psychic.

They don't know what you need, and sometimes you don't even know what you need. But it's okay to articulate those things to other people and it not be perceived as, oh, she's not coping or, you know, all of those things. I think it really depends on you as a person.

Our next guest, Gabrielle, is a nurture neuroscience practitioner and certified perinatal mental health professional. We recorded an episode all about why babies want to sleep close to their mothers, which draws upon Gabrielle's neuroscience-informed, attachment-focused approach to infant sleep support. Gabrielle also put her therapist hat on for us in another episode we recorded about how to mentally prepare for postpartum.

Here's the advice she would give to her pregnant self. I remember we had a really, really tough night. The first night we came home from the hospital, my son would not be put down.

He wanted to breastfeed and be on my chest and sleep with me the entire night. I remember being up the entire night crying because I was like, he won't let me put him down. I don't know what to do.

This was before I knew about bed sharing and co-sleeping and everything that I know now. I wish that I had known when he was born, like I said, how to set up the bed safely for bed sharing, how to safely keep him close, how to safely have him sleep on my chest, which I know how to do now, and all these things. That first night home from the hospital is still in my memory as a very, very challenging night, probably one of the hardest nights of my motherhood.

I think just knowing what I know now about that it was normal for him to want to be close to me, that it was normal for him to want to be on top of me and be feeding frequently and all of those things, and knowing how to safely navigate that would have been life-changing in that first night home from the hospital and some of the subsequent nights. Katie Fridge is a baby-led sleep and well-being specialist and the founder of Sleepy Starts, where she supports parents in understanding normal infant sleep, promoting healthy brain development, and addressing root causes of sleep challenges. At least three of the moms in this episode mentioned the importance of learning about bed-sharing safety guidelines before giving birth, and if that's something you still need to do, then you can check out episode 19 of the Postpartum Prep Podcast, where Katie gives us a really great overview of sleep safety guidelines.

She also recorded a Q&A episode for us specifically about preparing for sleep with a newborn. Here's what Katie would tell her pregnant self. To prepare for sleep in a way that would consider my baby's needs.

I like genuinely knew nothing, and like I mentioned before, thought you could just swaddle a baby and lay them down to sleep. I was given an awakening, but I wish I knew to consider that different temperaments tolerate different things. I wish I knew what red flags to look for and what underlying health issues can cause them.

I wish I knew that bed sharing was an option. I just had no idea that it was even a thing, but I wish I knew it before it needed to be. I was grateful for people who gave me safe sleep information when I needed it, but I had no idea, and I wish I knew that neuroscience backs mom's instincts 100%.

Our next guest, Genevieve from A Momma Friend, is a matrescence coach and motherhood mentor. If you're wondering what matrescence even is, then we recorded a whole episode for you about it, as well as a Q&A episode about preparing for the emotional rollercoaster of becoming a mom. Here is the advice Genevieve would give to her pregnant self.

If I could go back, I would tell her that she's about to experience a huge shift in her life, and that it's okay, like she's going to be okay. I would tell her to focus on her instincts and intuition, and aside from like learning about safe co-sleeping, not worry so much about trying to get everything right, because the amount of information available and all of the conflicting opinions is going to add to the anxiety. I would also want to assure her that it will take some time for her baby to sleep, like a lot of time, but it will happen eventually in toddlerhood.

I might also tell her that it will likely feel all-consuming at first, but that that will shift as well, so that she knows like there's another side to this, and you will get there. Our last guest is Jacqueline, who you may know as your baby-wearing bestie on Instagram, or as I like to call her, my baby-wearing bestie. Jacqueline recorded some great episodes with us about how to prepare during pregnancy for baby-wearing after birth, and how to baby-wear safely.

Here's what Jacqueline said she would tell herself as a first-time mom-to-be. I had a really rocky start to motherhood for a lot of reasons, and I think I would really, if I really could speak to right before having my first baby, I would say it is not going to be or look the way you think it is going to look or be. But that doesn't make it not unique.

That doesn't make it unsacred. That doesn't make it unholy, or not beautiful enough, or raw enough, or you're not something because of how it all flows and goes. And if I could just bring that peace to my heart that it is going to be such a wild ride and be completely different, completely different than I thought it would be, if I knew that I would come out of it feeling, or not come out of it, but evolve with it up to this point right now, knowing that there's passion that can still be discovered, there's freedom that is going to come in time, and that right now if I can just focus on devotion and dedication to this one thing of being with my child, holding my child, and really being present when I hold my child, so much healing is possible.

So it's not going to look the same. It will be magical though. And it is a journey that you will not want to get off that ride, really.

Like you'll say you want to, but you don't. And it's so good. And it feeds you.

And so like, buckle up and enjoy. This episode was so much fun to make. It was so fun to go back and revisit all the guests we've had on the podcast.

Hearing all of this advice together now, what I'm really taking away is the themes of trusting your intuition, knowing that things will get better even if you have had a rocky start, and the permission to give yourself grace as you find your feet in motherhood. If you are preparing to give birth, I'd love to invite you to my upcoming postpartum prep workshop, so we can get you ready for a smoother start to motherhood. If you're feeling worried about navigating life with a new baby, or you have any questions about breastfeeding, sleep, or preparing for postpartum, I hope you'll come join me there.

In the meantime, thank you so much for listening to the postpartum prep podcast, and I'll see you in the next episode.