• A good friend of mine recently gave birth to her very first child. An amazing baby boy. Every time I see her, or read her posts on Facebook, she seems completely overwhelmed.

    At first I assumed it was because having your first baby is a crazy experience. How could she not be overwhelmed? After digging a little more, I find that she is only overwhelmed because of all of the unsolicited advice that she is getting from every person she comes in contact with. One lady says there is nothing more important than getting your feeding schedule established. This is then followed by someone who swears that the first month should be “feed on demand” only. Finally someone says you should do both, schedule feed and feed on demand. Whatever that means. Everyone swears that they know how to be the perfect parent.

    My advice was to not take anyone’s advice and instead do what felt right to her.

    Honestly it seems like the only thing they are truly capable of doing perfectly is confusing this new young mom. You can imagine that I am reluctant to give her any pointers when she finally comes to me and asks. Goodness knows who I’ll be contradicting! Instead I tell her to not worry about anyone’s advice, mine included. I will gladly tell her what worked for me, and my family. She could use that as an example, or something she was welcome to try if it sounded good to her, but that my advice was to not take anyone’s advice and instead do what felt right to her.

    What works for her family is probably the right way to raise her child. Heck, if the baby is fed, changed, cleaned, and at some point sleeps, I’d say she has been rather successful for those first few weeks of her newborn’s life. Even worse is that what works for one child within a family might not necessarily work for another. So, my advice is for people to get informed but take what people tell you with a grain of salt. There’s no exact recipe so you will have to tweak the ingredients to make it work for your family. Happy cooking!