I can very clearly remember my first week as a mom, about 6 years ago. I was struggling so much with breastfeeding my tongue-tied baby. It was excruciating. I felt like I’d been hit by a bus after a brutal unmedicated labor with 2.5 hours of pushing. I was tearful and exhausted, and felt like my entire life had just been blown up. While I was “happy” to have my baby, it wasn’t the profound bliss I’d been expecting.

The birth of a baby can have a significant impact on your relationship with your partner. Often two people will find the pregnancy and expectant period bonding, unifying and exciting. The idea of an addition to your relationship is beautiful, but the reality of life with children will change the previous relationships.

I always knew I would practice gentle parenting but parenting in a different way to your friends and family is exhausting and can be lonely.

It wasn’t until I had had my first child and felt this missing element in my postpartum journey that I had even heard of the phenomenon of Postpartum Doulas.

Postpartum freezer meals are a great thing to prep while at the end of your pregnancy to be sure you can take care of yourself just as well as you’re going to be taking care of that new baby!

Just a few days after I gave birth, I started feeling anxious again. How on earth was I going to manage the needs of two young children? We were in the middle of potty-training our son and he was still sleeping in a cot. There seemed to be a lot of hurdles in our way and I was feeling overwhelmed. I also felt guilty for being unable to spend as much time with our son.

A shower in those newborn days was not helpful or relaxing for me. If my child wasn’t screaming because he was legitimately starving, I was taunted by phantom cries. Getting into the shower led my heart rate to increase and it was a mad dash until I was out. No amount of breathing exercises made a shower enjoyable. What was relaxing for me was holding my baby, getting outside, and being in absolute silence.

One morning I decided to give an episode of RHOP a try and was instantly hooked. I immediately binged and what I didn’t know was that this show was exactly what I needed to start healing the pieces of myself left wounded by pregnancy loss.

When a new baby is born, so is a new set of parents. And along with the bliss and excitement of a new baby also comes the exhaustion and huge adjustment period for the parents. Before you run over to meet a newborn baby or bombard the new parents with lots of questions, read this handy guide to discover how you can best support new parents.