What I'm doing differently as a second-time mom

What I am doing differently as a second-time mom.

Okay I want to preface this and say that I feel like with every new season of motherhood, there is learning, stretching, and refinement. SO what I say here today, might not be the case in a year, or if we have more kids. I think as a first time mom, at least for me, I was researching and making decisions at that time with the information I was given.

Which is NORMAL! But now that I have 5 years under my belt of being a mom and I have two kiddos, I am able to intuitively make decisions that makes sense to what I know AND what I am experiencing.

Without further adieu, here are some things I am doing below:

1. I am not buying items that are marketed as baby products. So for bath time, I am just using nontoxic items so for my whole family so that I know it's safe for baby and for all of us.

   
   

   For example, nontoxic laundry detergent.

2. I am not sleep training or stressing about sleep. I did use a bassinet and I taught my baby to go to sleep on his own, but I also rocked him to sleep several times and still do at age 16 months. He wakes up once a night, maybe a couple times per week, but for the most part, I am not freaking out about not getting sleep. I definitely think not having a 9-5 job helped with this for me.

3. Baby crying used to give me anxiety, and as someone who actually had postpartum anxiety with my first, the second time around I do feel more confident, and even if he is crying, I am not on the same level of anxiety as I was before. Even though he is a different kid that has unique needs, I am a lot more confident because I know that things are more normal.

4. I am not using bottles to get my son to sleep, I realized that that caused a lot of ear infections, which looking back with my first I wish I would've known that. My first had to get tubes in both ears and he had reoccurring ear infections that antibiotics did not work with.

Being a mom is literally THE best but man does it give your nervous system a hard time. If you can relate, I would love to know what YOU are doing differently, and if you're a first time mom, I would love to know what was challenging for you in the first year. Comment below!