First Time Mama: Am I Normal? Common Unspoken New Mom Worries and What Helps
It’s 3:17 a.m. My 8-week-old daughter is breathing warm and slow against my stained sweatshirt, one tiny fist curled in the neck of my shirt. My half-cold coffee is leaking through the chipped mug on my nightstand onto a stack of unused burp cloths, and I’m scrolling so slowly on my phone that my thumb cramps. I just passed three reels: one mom doing a themed weekly photoshoot with her newborn, another demo-ing a 10-step baby sensory play routine, a third talking about how she’s already back to running 5Ks three times a week. I delete Instagram off my phone, open Google, and type the words I’ve been too embarrassed to say out loud to anyone: first time mama am I normal?
I was that person who read all the books before the baby came. I had a color-coded binder of developmental milestones, I stocked the play mat with all the high-contrast toys the top blogger recommended, I took a newborn care class where I learned how to give a bath and swaddle correctly. But the second we brought her home, none of it worked. My swaddles always came undone. She hated the fancy play mat. I cried in the grocery store parking lot once because I forgot her favorite pacifier and I couldn’t find another one in the messy diaper bag.
A week after that 3 a.m. Google search, I met my friend Lila, who’s an early childhood educator working with new families, for coffee at the diner down the street from our pediatrician. The booth was sticky, my baby spit up on the vinyl seat halfway through our chat, and the waitress just dropped an extra stack of napkins and moved on without a side-eye. I dumped everything out, the stuff I’d been holding in: how I sometimes cry with her when she won’t stop crying for an hour, instead of being the calm reassuring mom I was supposed to be. How I feel a huge wave of relief when my husband takes her for a 20-minute walk around the block, and I feel terrible for feeling relieved. How I don’t do the 20 minutes of structured tummy time every day the app tells me I need, because she cries the whole time I lay her on the mat, and I end up picking her up 5 minutes in. I told her I’m worried I’m stunting her development before she’s even 3 months old. I told her I think I’m the only first mom who feels like this, because no one else talks about it.
Lila leaned back, twisted her napkin into a little roll, and pointed at my daughter, who was chewing on my car key I’d handed her, grinning and drooling all over my wrist. She says she gets asked this question every single week, by almost every first time mom she works with. The only difference is most people don’t say it out loud. She nodded when I rambled about messing up tummy time, and explained that the research never actually said it had to be structured on a play mat with fancy toys. All it needs is 10 to 15 minutes total a day of time off her back to build neck strength. Holding her on your chest while you watch an episode of your show counts. Laying her on your legs while you sit on the couch folding laundry counts. If you’re stressed and tense the whole time you’re forcing her to do 20 minutes on the mat, she picks up on that tension, and it’s worse than cutting it short. That was the first time anyone had said that to me, straight, no frills.
When I asked her about the guilt of wanting 20 minutes alone, she said that’s not a sign you’re a bad mom, that’s a sign you’re a human. New babies take every bit of your energy, 24 hours a day. Your body and brain need 10 minutes of no one needing anything from you to reset. She suggested I schedule 15 minutes of that time every day, right after my husband gets home from work, before I start dinner or do any chores. No laundry, no answering texts, just whatever I want. For me that’s sitting on the front porch drinking a lemon seltzer and watching the neighbors walk their dogs. It’s so short, it doesn’t mess up anything else in the day, but it makes a huge difference. I don’t feel guilty for it anymore, because it’s planned, it’s just part of the daily routine.
I started doing that, and I also joined the low-key mom group the library hosts, the one Lila recommended. The unwritten rule is you can’t leave the first 10 minutes without saying one hard thing that happened that week. No one posts photos, no one brags. Last week one mom said she forgot to cut her baby’s fingernails for two weeks and the baby scratched his own face so bad he had scabs. Another said she fed her kid nothing but puffs and applesauce for an entire day because she had a migraine and couldn’t stand to do anything else. I said I’d left the house without a diaper last week and had to buy a pack from the gas station at twice the price, and everyone laughed and said they’d done that too.
I’ve realized that the version of “normal” new motherhood we see everywhere isn’t normal at all. It’s curated, it’s marketed to us to sell apps and toys and classes, and it leaves almost every first mama feeling like she’s doing something wrong. The little things that work for me now are simple: when that little voice creeps in saying you’re weird, you’re doing it wrong, you close the Google search and text the most honest mom friend you have. Nine times out of 10 she’ll text back something like “I cried over a spilled milk jug yesterday too”. Cut any activity you’re doing just because someone says you have to, if it makes you stressed. The baby doesn’t care if you do sensory play or tummy time the “right” way. They care that you’re fed, you’ve had 10 minutes to breathe, and you’re not walking around tense all the time.
My daughter is 14 weeks old now. Some nights I still end up scrolling at 3 a.m. and typing “am I normal” into Google. Last week I dropped a soft rattle on her head while we were playing, and I cried harder than she did. I still forget to brush my hair some days, and I order takeout more nights than I cook. The color-coded binder I had before she was born is sitting in the back of the closet, unopened. The 15 minutes on the porch still works, the mom group still makes me feel less alone. I don’t know if I’ll ever feel like I have it all figured out. But I know now that asking if you’re normal is the most normal thing a first time mama can do.
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