10 Things Every Expecting or New Mother Should Know

When I was pregnant with my first, I soaked up all the parenting books, overflowing with their advice on how to get baby to sleep through the night or proper swaddling techniques, or burping techniques, or get-the-baby-to-stop-crying techniques.



It's all garbage.



Look, if you are pregnant right now and reading this, I am going to tell you everything you need to know right now and save you a lot of time.



1) If and when you are pregnant with your first child, do not do ANYTHING but sleep.....and sleep, and sleep, and sleep. If you get up and the clock says 10 am, fluff your pillow, roll over, and go back to sleep. May I even suggest having someone take video of you sleeping. It will be a great memory to treasure...and cry over, in the months ahead.



2) That said, sleep deprivation is torturous. If you have a kid that sleeps through the night, get down on your knees every hour and thank your lucky stars for such a blessing ---- and never complain about anything else ever again.



If you have a kid who doesn't sleep through the night, quickly disassociate yourself from any friends who have kids who sleep through the night, as they will only make you feel worse than you already do on zero sleep. (Oh yes -- it's possible to feel worse) It is perfectly OK to make yourself feel better by making predictions about those parents with the sleeping kids -- like they will have a horrible time with potty training, or their kid will be the weird one who eats dirt and boogers.



3) Realize that anything that you think is weird and swear your kids will never do, they will do. Like eat their boogers.



4) Never do anything production like clean out or reorganize cabinets full of toys. It is an exercise in futility.



5) If you ignore my advice on #4, this will happen about seven minutes after you put the last dinosaur in the newly created "Dinosaur Bin".

6) Do me a favor and look up "Dinosaur Bins" and "At the end of her rope" in a baby book right now.

7) I told you these books are garbage.

8) Set your expectations low for the day. For example, "Today I will wipe away the crusty eye booger from my eye". That way, anything else you accomplish for the day will be a bonus, and you will feel good about yourself for being so productive.

9) Throw away all your pre-pregnancy shirts now. Trust me on this. Even if you lose all the baby weight. Something weird happens once you've had a baby: all your shirts become belly baring crop tops. It's the strangest phenomena I've ever seen.

10) Ignore any and all advice given to you by other moms who are dressed to the nines, with their perfect hair, in their full perfect make up with their perfect kids lined up beside them. Do feel free, however, to take any and all advice from their nanny, housekeeper, night nurse or personal assistant.

Feel free to ask questions, complain to, or get advice from any mother who is tired, cranky, mismatched, hungry or bitter about dinosaur bins. They get it!

But don't trust anyone in a crop top. That's just wrong.