A lot of people will tell you that the first year of parenting is really hard. It is, and it’s also beautiful and amazing, and I’m sure you already know all that. Of course, our number one priority as parents is always going to be the health and wellness of our little ones. But there were three things we did in the first year that made our lives so much better I can’t imagine trying to get through the first year without them. And I’m quite confident they made us better parents, too.

Despite my best intentions, I had what’s known as “gender disappointment.” This is the first moment where we realize we’re not in control of who our children are going to be. When I imagined myself with a baby, I always imagined a girl. I had thought a lot about what I would tell a girl about what it meant to be a woman in this society. I imagined teaching her things about how to navigate a misogynistic world without losing her power. But a boy? What the heck was I supposed to do with a boy? 

And then, if we become parents, the adrenaline doubles down. Now, we have a small being to protect, so our vigilance notches up, even (especially?) when someone else is watching the kid. We have constant pressure coming from pretty much everywhere to be impossibly perfect parents, especially if we have been raised as/present as women, because women are held to a certain punishing standard of motherhood in our society.

When my little one was a few weeks old, I remember feeling like I’d been hired for a job for which I had no experience. The hours were 24/7, there were infinite manuals, and zero agreement on the rules. Everyone has an opinion on parenting and there is no real gold standard to show you the “right” thing to do. My baby just turned one, and I’ve been thinking a lot about what I have learned in the last year.

Feed on demand, the internet said, but don’t go longer than three hours. Feed the moment he seems hungry. Don’t miss a feed or your supply will never go up. Breast is best. Don’t give him formula. Don’t give him a pacifier. If you can’t feed him exclusively, you are a failure as a mother and as a human being. Oh—and relax. If you don’t relax your milk won’t come in at all.

I had drunk the Kool Aid on “natural” birth, even though I’d been actively trying not to. I knew, cognitively, that a good birth was one where the baby and I survived. I knew that having a birth plan was pretty much a waste of effort, and I certainly did not expect to have an orgasmic birth. But the misogyny of our culture is so deeply embedded in my body that I still found myself believing that if I couldn’t do it “on my own” I would be failing in some fundamental way.

You get the message. It’s this: If you feel guilty enough about every detail of your child’s health and wellbeing, you’ll stay home to micromanage your children’s care instead of going to work. That means the government does not have to pay for quality, affordable childcare.

No matter how we gave birth, the body needs time to rest and heal. Take a few minutes for yourself to breathe and observe how your body is already in the process of healing from your experience. Tap into a white-light energy to cultivate that process and rest well.

Babies require a lot of carrying around, looking down at, hunching over, and nursing or bottle feeding. All of these things can shape the postpartum upper back into a bit of a hunch, causing pain in the neck, in between the shoulder blades, and in the chest. Sometimes we even get tingling down the arms or into the hands. The neck and shoulders are so intimately connected that when something is off in one place, the other place usually goes off, too.