Let's all give a round of applause for any mom who brought a newborn home this week. As a mom myself, I know exactly where your head is at, and I also know you're likely reading this at 3 a.m. — aka the hour most new moms are frantically searching the internet for information or reassurance. But rest assured that you are not alone. There are a ton of things all new moms do during the first week at home with their baby as they come to grips with being a mom, and while we're all aware that these behaviors are coming from a good place of wanting to be the best mom that you can be, that doesn't mean you can't get a good laugh when you think back on how much you had to learn about being a mom.
From one mom to another, please remember that no matter how unsure or stressed out you may feel when beginning your new motherhood journey, that first week home with your little one is also total bliss. I look back on that time and remember it being heavily filled with paranoia (Having a new life in the world that relies totally on you is a lot of pressure, to say the least!), but it's also so exciting. So to celebrate that wide range of new mommy emotions, we partnered with VTech to round up a few habits that all new moms are guilty of. Anything sound familiar?
1. Greet Visitors With Hand Sanitizer
...and personally oversee all hand-washing before anyone holds your precious new bundle. In that first week, germs and dirt feel like your sworn enemies as friends and family snuggle your little one, but as your baby grows and gets stronger, you'll likely ease up on the sanitizing gel.
2. Obsessively Check The Baby Monitor To Make Sure Your Baby Didn't Suddenly Escape
While you know that rationally your baby can't escape the crib at such a young age, that's not going to keep you from peeking in every twenty minutes just to make sure your little one is still safe and sound. Do yourself the favor of setting up a great video monitor (we like the VTech VM342 Expandable Digital Video Baby Monitor — it comes with a wide-angle lens and its signal can reach up to 1,000 feet) so you can at least make sure that you won't wake baby with all of that opening and closing of the nursery door.
3. Constantly Check The Thermostat
Just to make sure it's not too hot or too cold for the precious new life that can't yet monitor its own temperature. (Psst! That VTech baby monitor we mentioned also has a temperature sensor. Just sayin'.)
4. Repeatedly Check That Your Phone Is Silenced
Because an incoming phone call waking up your baby is not on today's schedule, thanks. But just in case you're the kind of person who prefers to keep your phone on vibrate at all times, try investing in a soother like the VTech Tommy the Turtle Storytelling Soother that can lull your baby to sleep and mask normal household noises, letting your phone buzz away.
5. Micromanage Anyone Else Caring For Your Baby
When we brought our daughter home for the first time, I remember panicking that my husband would drop her or swaddle her too tightly. The feeling of being the only one who can really care for your baby is hard to shake even as they get older, but I'm giving you the heads up now: please take advantage of help when you can get it. Even if it's just a friend dropping over and offering to rock your little one for a few hours, you'll be glad you got the extra rest.
6. Take Hundreds Of Photos... Of The Same Thing
Capturing all of your baby's cute little faces from every possible angle is practically a new mom rite of passage. Pro mama tip: Automatically sync your photos to a cloud drive so you can delete batches of old vacation photos from your phone with no regrets.
7. Google Outrageous Syndromes And Symptoms At 3 a.m.
There's something about a nighttime feeding that often makes it easy to fixate on one little symptom you noticed earlier in the day. After a few months of broken sleep made more terrifying by irrational internet paranoia, I made a rule of no phone past bedtime. It won't cure all the new mama worries, but it'll help encourage sleep, which is a very good start.
This post is sponsored by VTech.
