what single piece of advice do you wish you'd known before becoming a mum?

[AnyasMum07]

Am just writing an email to a friend who's due in a couple of weeks. What single piece of advice would you give her?

Go on instinct, don't stress yourself out by trying to do everything the books (or the health professionals) say, they all say something different, every baby is different. Far better to go on gut instinct.

Also, I believe babies are born 3 months too early and for those first 3 months they need a womb environment ie close to mum at all times day and night (slings, safe co-sleeping) and feeding whenever they want it, for mine it was all evening every evening for a while. Both mine hated being put down and we were all far happier when I stopped trying to get them to be happy apart from me and just cuddled them...apart from when we were out and about in car/buggy, ds2 was close to me in a sling. At around 3 months he was then happy to lie under a baby gym or sit in a bouncy chair for a while.