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.