Dear Sistuh-In-Law,
I barely met you before the wedding, so I don’t know you well enough to give you a nick-name on my blog. Therefore, you are sistuh-in-law.
I’ll start again.
Dear Sistuh-In-Law,
You are about to have a new baby.
Your first, very first, bring it home and stare at it for hooooouuurs, talk about it CONSTANTLY, be surprised a week later that there is still indeed-ey a world outside your home, very own baby!!
Yeah for you!
Now the bad news, you are also going to get a flow of unsolicited advice which isn’t going to reduce to a trickle anytime soon.
(Kind of like other things.)
Advice.
All first time moms get it.
All first time mom’s ignore it.
I don’t know why that is but we all do it.
We ALL do. We ignore it like we’re the most brilliant, clever mothers in the existence of human-kind.
By our second child we want advice as much as we want sleep. You’ll find us searching for it wide-eyed in blog-land, the supermarket aisle, People magazine, maybe at the library during story time. You might even find yourself asking the 50 year old childless neighbor at the mailbox for help you’ll be so desperate…I digress. Let’s bring that up in about two years shall we?
As I was saying, we all ignore the advice.
And you know what? You go girl!
Do it how you want and when you want. It’s your way of claiming that baby as yours.
It’s like taking off the training wheels of parenthood and cruising free.
Sure you feel sort of wobbly but it’s your bike isn’t it?
Ain’t nobody else riding it for you that’s for sure. Not at 2am, 3am, 4am, 5am…I can guarantee that much anyway.
Uh-huh. It’s your bike Sistuh-in-law.
Some might name that bike mother’s intuition. I call it my Mommy Power.
For example: my mommy power recently told me my baby was not constipated or gassy but that she needed to adjust from a two hour schedule to a three hour schedule. Can you say happy baby?
My mommy power also told me what to name my baby and no matter how many blank stares I get, I like it.
My mommy power has told me where to find the missing pink Barbie shoe. It told me how to teach bravery to an eight year old. It sustained me during an hour game of Strawberry Shortcake Memory and it showed me how to rebuild a Bakugan.
You need that Mommy Power and like any other power, the only way to strengthen it is to use it.
So my biggest piece of advice is this: keep an open mind, pray about it humbly, then do what you want.
Here’s my second biggest advice: learn to nod politely and change the subject.
May you reign with confidence and peace now and in the future, love,
The Queen
For more seriously unsolicited advice I suggest, the absolutely funniest post for new moms.