There is so, so much here. So let me boil it down to this. Your best piece of advice? Know your family. Remain teachable. Be okay with imperfection. No one, I mean no one is ever fully prepared and ready for pregnancy, labor, delivery, or parenthood. Like so many things, you have to actually experience it. 

Your intuition is so important. Having confidence in who you are, in how your body responds and works, and what you want for your family is so, so powerful. Oftentimes what gets us messed up is when we look to all outside sources for answers and don't trust...or even know - our own intuition. It gets confusing to navigate, and ultimately, either way, we do the best we can with what we know at the time.

You want to educate yourself on your options…and also be realistic. Research and studies will change, and what we believe is helpful now, we may learn isn't later down the road. 

It can be super overwhelming, so let’s tackle some of the biggies here:

It used to be that having babies was simply a natural process of womanhood, and there was only one way to do it - naturally! Now, with the advent of modern medicine, the options for birth choice have gotten more and more complicated. Not only do you have a birth choice, but you also have a multitude of reasons why you would choose to deliver a certain way. So as expecting parents, how do you determine the first of the many questions - how and where will you deliver?

Birthing at home, in a birth center or the hospital are the most well-known options we have here in the US. Go to another country with an indigenous culture, you may add in birthing in the woods or a birthing tent. Or maybe in this fast-paced society, you end up birthing in the car or a public setting as your baby comes faster than you expect! 

Vaginal birth naturally, with pain meds, or cesarean may all be different types of childbirth, and each of these will look a little different based on your setting, who you have in the room, and the health of you and your baby. 

Before you deliver, there are quite a few things you need to address. Just in the first few days after birth here in the US, you may be faced with decisions about giving a Hep B shot, erythromycin eye ointment, a vitamin K shot, and/or a heel prick to test for rare genetic diseases. For larger or early babies, they may want a blood sugar check. You may potentially even be faced with antibiotics for mama or baby if the mama gets a fever during labor (even though a known side effect from epidurals is a slightly raised body temp/fever). 

There are so many parenting articles and parenting websites with advice on raising children. How do you start? Who do you listen to and how do you figure this all out?

Here are a few great words of wisdom I crowdsourced in the Mama Says Namaste Facebook group, added in with some of my own:

Yes, this is just the tip of the iceberg on decisions you will be making for your growing family. And these are all topics to explore for every child, not just as you embark on your first. We are all constantly learning and growing - and advice changes based on what we know (the world is actually not flat) and by the influence of marketing and the media (remember when cigarettes were what all the doctors recommended)?

It’s a big, scary world out there. There are many, many legitimate things to fear. And…fear will cripple you and prevent you from enjoying this life. Life is a wild card. You cannot control everything, however you can control what you chose to focus in on. I believe in the law of attraction - and it’s amazing what our own minds can manifest. When we fixate on our fears, focus on the negative, and spend all our time researching, we miss out on so, so much. Unfortunately, it’s easy to spiral down a tunnel of cautionary tales that really limit us. 

Don't parent out of fear. It's a scary world, and yes, there is a lot that can happen. But we can cripple ourselves with fear. As your child grows, it's going to be more important to look beyond what the "right path" is for parenting.  Turn more attention to your child so you know what their path is. 

Before you go any further with your research, stop right now and sit down with your partner. Create a vision for what you want for your family. If you aren’t sure where to start, START HERE. 

When you start with a vision, and that includes things like ease, happiness, joy, laughter…keep these in mind as you do your research. Yes, you want to be smart about your decisions. Yet you never want to spiral so deep into research that you are engulfed with negativity and fear. Not only is that a sad way to live, but it does more harm to your whole family than you may realize. Toxicity isn’t just brought in by chemicals and outsiders. Sometimes the most toxic thing in our lives is within our own head and the perspective we hold about whether life is out to get us, or a beautiful thing. So make the choice for your family to pursue the beautiful and focus on the good. That is the basis for healthy decisions for your family.

And ultimately, you aren't looking at someone else's story. This is the beginning of creating your own. Make it beautifully yours.