As I am writing this, Wyatt is already considered a toddler. He moved rooms at daycare the week of his birthday. It all happened so fast! How did my baby go from 4 lbs 7 oz to a babbling, crawling, scooting, giggling little human?

Parenting is a trip, man. In the past year I’ve talked to several friends and family who are not close to starting a family and some who are. And I am always honest with them! Maybe too honest? Parenting is HARD. But it truly is all the parenting clichés you’ve ever heard. It’s the hardest and best thing you’ll ever do. But seriously, the hardest.

Baby comes home and you’re like . . . SoOooOooooooooo

What the hell do we do? What do we NOT do? You get recommendations left and right but you don’t even know where to start because it’s so out of context because you’ve never had to keep a helpless human alive before. Thankfully instinct kicks in. Seriously. And I think that’s the case for every woman, even though we go into it being terrified that that won’t be the case. You’ll also have memories pop up from the books and blogs and videos you had watched and the unsolicited advice from friends and family (now you’re thanking them for it).

You’ll probably run on autopilot and adrenaline for the first few weeks.

The good news is, those first few weeks and newborn phase is just a phase, just like every other phase to come. It’s a chapter, a season, and it will come to end. At the time you’ll be grateful when it’s over and later you’ll look back and miss it a little bit (see, more clichés). I have a good feeling that whenever the next baby comes, it will all be a little easier thanks to experience and confidence!

The first year has so many phases.

The sleep deprivation phase and why-are-you-crying-phase. Then, rest assured, comes the finally-getting-big-chunks-of-sleep phase. Also known as the slightly-more-energy phase, so now maybe you’ll cook one small meal a day! This phase rolls into the phase where the baby still just lays around a lot and you can actually get stuff done. This phase lasts a few months and it’s great. Baby hangs in the swing, baby lays under the mobile. So much time for activities!

Next is the crap-nap phase. 35 minutes is not enough time for mama and it feels like the loooongest phase. Eventually that phase turns into better naps and even better naps! praise hands emoji. Then there’s the sitting up phase which is cute because he can actually play with toys now but he’s still pretty stationary. Next is the I’m-trying-to-crawl-phase. It’s mostly baby yoga, but baby gets irritated because he can’t quite figure it out yet and you have to save his day several times a day. Soon enough it’s the crawling phase and you’ll never get anything done outside of nap time ever again. And that’s where we’re at over here.

All these phases leads me to a list of things I’ve mentally noted that I will do or not do with the next baby. Because #1 is a gentle reminder to always remember that almost everything is just a phase. At least, this little list is what I think I plan on implementing when the time comes. But, check in with me after baby number 2 turns one, because this list should also include remembering that parenting means everything changes constantly and you just have to go with the flow!

Here we go. 6 things I hope to do differently next time, and 6 things I plan to do similarly with baby number two.

What I’d Like to do Differently

1. Don’t panic, and remember that everything is a phase, Val. Unless baby seems sick, or something really doesn’t seem “right”, chalk it up to a phase. It’s not the end of the world, I promise.

   Every time Wyatt would do something new or different than he had been for weeks, I would freak TF out. Why is he refusing to nurse lately? Is he weaning himself already?? Why isn’t he eating as much in the morning now?! Why did he wake up early two days in a row?!

   Also remember that it might not go back to exactly how it use to be, and that’s OK. There’s nothing wrong with it being different now. Baby is growing and changing.

2. Next time I will label my frozen breast milk bags with the time of day and # of ounces. With Wyatt I only labeled the date and sometimes I put “AM” or “PM”. There is research that suggests a baby should be fed milk that was expressed around the same time he is drinking it now. I guess evening milk has more melatonin. It makes sense! I’ll be better about that next time.

   Labeling the # of ounces in each bag will allow me to distribute the appropriate amount of milk for future bottles, waste less milk and just save a bit of mess.

3. I will NOT obsess about short naps! I followed the Moms on Call schedules pretty much to a T, and I could.not.handle it when Wyatt wouldn’t take the 1.5-2 hour naps that they suggested. Starting around 3 months is when he suddenly would sleep only 32-35 minutes max. Every.single.time. And then that would mess up the whole dang schedule!! I am sweating thinking back to that stress and anxiety I felt. I don’t know why I didn’t read this until after the fact, but it turns out that short naps around that age are completely normal and actually, standard. That’s just the length of their average sleep cycle and there’s nothing you can do.

   So next time I will accept this, knowing it will get better, and probably just adjust the “schedule”.

4. Baby-wear more often. This will probably come out of necessity; juggling a toddler and a newborn. Next time I will find a wrap I really like. I didn’t love the one I had and didn’t try to find something better.

5. More dates with my husband. We did not and still do not do this enough. I know it’ll be a lot harder to get out when we have two, for many reasons, but all the more reason to cut out time for us and our marriage.

6. Never judge another parent ever again.

What Worked and I Plan to Do Again Next Time

1. One of my favorite things I did from just about the beginning with Wyatt was play a lullaby (Braham’s Lullaby) on my white noise app on my phone a couple minutes before I was putting him down for a nap or back to sleep in the middle of the night. I purposely did this to help him relax and associate that song with sleep. A year later and it still absolutely works!

2. Baby mittens again for the first few weeks. They rarely came off but prevented a lot of scratches and therefore, tears.

3. I do not mind one bit that I was too tired to care about the cutesy outfits and anything with buttons (zippers zippers zippers) for the first couple months with Wyatt. I still look at pictures of young babies on social media and wonder how the hell the parents have the energy to put their baby into these cute but sleep-inappropriate outfits. Do they do multiple outfit changes a day?! No thx. To this day, if Wyatt stays relatively clean, he’s in the same outfit for 24 hours in between his bed time baths.

4. I’ll implement a routine again. Routine feels so good when everything else feels a little chaotic. I followed the Moms on Call schedule maybe a month in and I liked it because as a new mom I was desperate for some kind of predictability. note: The jury is still out on how strict I will be next time. I was intense about it with Wyatt and it was very stressful. Hence why I purposely used the word “routine” and not “schedule”.

5. Make sure baby can initiate sleep on his/her own (when developmentally appropriate). I found that this is a huuuuge part of the baby sleep puzzle. If baby can put himself to sleep, he can likely put himself back to sleep.

   When I was really struggling with Wyatt’s naps, it had gotten to the point where it would take 20-30 minutes to rock him to sleep and he would be crying the whole time. My friend’s friend is a sleep consultant, among other things, and she suggested I just put him in the crib awake. And it worked! Not perfectly every time but it was a heck of a lot better for both of us than 20-30 minutes of crying before every single nap. Eventually I could put him in the crib awake for every nap and he’d put himself to sleep within just a few minutes with little to no fussing. Another important part of this puzzle is making sure baby had the appropriate length wake window before his nap. The TakingCaraBabies Instagram account and her online courses were really helpful with this.

6. I will continue to remind myself to try like hell to enjoy the moment and remember that this phase and moment will eventually be gone forever. Some days were so hard with Wyatt, especially because I was juggling him and working. I would get so stressed out, often when I got stuck holding him in his room for a nap when I wanted to or needed to be doing other things. Honestly, I would resent him a little bit sometimes. It sounds so cliché, but many other times I was good about taking a step back and reminding myself to enjoy these precious moments of snuggling my baby. I still make it a point to hold him longer before putting him down for naps or bedtime now and again even when I feel the urge to go check something off my to-do list. Because it’s a fact that soon enough he won’t want to snuggle anymore. Welp OK now I’m about to cry so I think it’s time to wrap this up.

There are probably so many other things that I’ve mentally noted that I did “right” or “wrong” with Wyatt, but these are the top that come to mind. I hope they might be helpful in some way for you, too.

Parenting is hard, and the days are long, but damn, I can already tell the years are so short.