As the newest baby blogger here at families.com, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about all things baby. My own daughters will be three-years-old this spring, and when I started thinking about all the baby topics I could write about, I began to relive some of the moments I’ve shared with my girls since they were born. It may sound trite, but it really brought home to me how quickly the time goes. So for my first blog here, I thought I would give a bit of advice to new moms – don’t waste a single minute wishing for your baby to make it to the next milestone. Cherish each moment because before you know it, the moment will be gone.
Sounds like a simple and almost silly piece of advice, doesn’t it? It may seem so, but I think it’s something important to remember, especially for first time moms. I remember spending a lot of my daughters’ earliest months of life waiting…waiting for the first smile, the first laugh, the first time they sat up. There are so many firsts during the early years of every child’s life. Each milestone is important, and it’s exciting to watch your child begin to explore the world and discover new things. As a new mom I also found myself using these milestones as a yardstick to figure out how I was doing as a mother. Each time the girls learned something new I felt joy, and also relief. I would think, okay, I must be doing fine because they started crawling (or smiling, walking, rolling over, etc.) in exactly the time frame they are supposed to.
It’s perfectly normal to use your baby’s milestones to measure their well-being and how you’re doing as a mom. After all, when you visit the pediatrician the first questions asked usually deal with whether or not your baby is learning to do new things at a certain time. However, waiting anxiously for each new developmental skill can cause you to wish away your child’s babyhood rather than enjoying each of these precious days.
I’ve learned this lesson. There are days I wish I could freeze my girls in time for just a little while. Each day they make me laugh, and they certainly keep me on my toes. Seeing how fast the first two years have gone by, I remind myself that the girls will learn each new skill when the time is right for each of them. In the meantime, I enjoy each moment I spend with them, knowing that it’s a moment that I will never get back again. This is what I wish for all of you, too.
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