Top Ten

The Top Ten Things I have Learned in my First Month as a New Mom

1. NEVER tell your spouse to go home and leave you at the hospital alone after the birth. This is the biggest mistake you can make. Take advantage of his or her desire to help or you might regret it. That was my hardest day ever.

2. No matter how much you read or what advice you get from friends and family about birth and parenting, it will never turn out like that for you! Your baby will cry and will not sleep through the night just because Grandma passed on the tricks of the trade. In fact all this advice and reading will make you crazy.*

3. You are no longer in control. *follow the advice everyone gives you to "sleep when the baby sleeps". This is the best piece of advice, but the hardest to follow. Give in at the beginning because your life is no longer yours and now belongs to the baby. Your house will be messy but the baby won't care and does not want to give you a chance to clean. Don't try to be super housewife. Take-out can be pretty yummy.

4. Everyone will want to see your baby, but limit visitors as much as possible and keep visits short as this will only tire you out even more. If they want to perform a chore while they visit or bring a meal, by all means LET THEM. Again, you are no longer in control.

5. Babies poop and pee A LOT, often on you. Don't buy changing table covers because blankets work just as well and your bound to have more of them.

6. You can never have too many blankets, clothes, or birp cloths. Babies produce lots of laundry, which of course adds to the messy house theroy.

7. Babies are noisy! Not when they cry, but when they sleep. Even if he sleeps for three hours straight he can still wake you up grunting and moaning for no real reason.

8. You may think you'll never co-sleep, but when it comes right down to it, if it's no sleep or co-sleep, sleep will win out every time, even if baby is right on top of you in the prone position.

9. Cuddle as much as possible and take as many pictures as you can because they change in the blink of an eye.
10. This is the HARDEST job you will ever have, but it will be worth every second. Even watching him poop, this one craks me up!