Babies don’t need all sorts of ‘stuff’. They need a car seat to get them home safely, and a place to sleep. She even told me of how when she’d visit her moms with her newborn she’d put her newborn to sleep in an empty drawer on the floor.

All the manufactures of baby stuff make you think you need so much to raise a child, but in reality you don’t *need* all of that stuff. You can change the baby’s diaper on a towel on a bed or the floor if you don’t have a change table (or in our case, we hadn’t assembled it yet). A baby is not going to notice if you have hung the matching valances in the nursery or not, and they’re not going to make use of any of their toys for a few months still.

I’m sure this nurse had seen it a hundred times over where mothers to be are stressing over all these little things that don’t really matter much in the end. My husband was able to assemble the change table before I was induced, but it really helped me put things into perspective. There’s more than enough things to worry about for any new mother, you really need to learn to let go about sweating the small stuff.

Another one was take tons of pictures. We have, of course, and I love looking back on them so far. I don’t think I realized how fast my son would grow and change in a year.

And it really is true. You will have good days, and you should enjoy those, and you will also have bad days, and if you do, handle it and move on to the next day.