My Number 1 Tip for Surviving Postpartum

DELETE YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA

We all know about the dangers of social media. There’s the unrealistic portrayals, the comparison game, the toxicity of the comments section. But when you are newly postpartum, those 3am Instagram reels are probably one of the worst things you can do to your brain.

You know how it goes: you watch one reel, and suddenly your algorithm feeds you post after post of content designed to target your postpartum body and mind. “The only Eat Sleep Play schedule you’ll need!” “The Get Your Body Back Workout!” “12 hours by 12 weeks” “Top 5 Enrichment Toys for Your Newborn!” It’s all designed to make you feel like a failure from the start. You immediately feel like you’re falling behind, that you’re already too late, that you’ve lost out on precious time to…what? Bond with your baby?

Because that’s all you should be doing right now. Your baby is a brand new human. They are little, and helpless, and scared, and you’ve just been handed this massive responsibility of caring and raising them. Of course you’ve afraid to mess it up, of doing the wrong thing, of building bad habits. Especially at 3am, when you feel like you’re the only one awake with your baby and you wonder, “What am I doing wrong?”

You are doing NOTHING wrong. You are the best mom for your baby. And what you’re doing, right now, is exactly what you should be doing. The rest of it can wait. You’re not failing your baby—in fact, you in all your imperfection, are exactly what your baby needs.

Babies set their own schedules, and learning to understand their sleepy cues, their tired cues, what they look like when they are awake and engaged, will set you up for a strong relationship before your baby can even talk. You don’t need to put them on a schedule. If you watch them, instead of the clock, they’ll tell you when they need something. Your baby is a brand new human, and the only thing they need in this loud, cold, and scary world? It’s you.

All they need is your body to rest on, your heartbeat and voice to listen to, and your face to gaze at.

So put your phone away (or at least delete the social media apps off of it). If you have questions, wait until the morning, then reach out to a resource you uncovered during your postpartum plan.

If you haven’t had your baby yet and are ready to start planning your postpartum, or you’ve had your baby and didn’t make a postpartum plan, check out my free postpartum planning checklist. It covers all the things you need to rest, recover, and start building your village when you’re newly postpartum.