As a first time mom, I know that there's a steep learning curve I have to go through. I've made mistakes and will inevitably make a few more, like the one time I accidentally nicked my baby's skin when I was clipping his thumbnail, or that one time he face planted on the floor while crawling and I wasn't fast enough to catch him. Or that time I waited too long to change his diaper and he developed a bad diaper rash. The list grows every day.

When it comes to my son, sometimes I find it hard to forgive myself when I make mistakes. When he was around 3 months old, I was cutting his nails with a baby clipper when all of a sudden, nip, I got the skin just under the thumbnail and he started to wail. There was so much blood. How can there be so much blood from such a little cut?! I got a napkin to stop the blood flow, it soaked right through in just seconds. I put his little finger under running water to clean it. It bled nonstop. I was panicking by then. I put pressure on the cut with a washcloth and all I could do was console him. I felt awful, to say the least. I felt like a horrible mom at that point.

​When I got pregnant, I did a lot of research on cloth diapering. I watched a lot of Youtube videos of mommies sharing what's in their stash and giving tips and recommendations. I was super interested and had my whole heart set on doing cloth diapers for my baby. 

Depending on the kind of system you choose, cloth diapering can be expensive (although it's just a one-time up front cost). Still, it is so much cheaper than using disposables. There are diaper covers ranging from $15-40. Since money was a little tight, I decided to get just the cheapie ones from Ebay. I got them for only $5-6 each. ​

Choosing the right baby bottle can be a daunting task. There are so many choices out there that it's hard to pick out which one is best for your baby. Like any other mom, I did some research and I was drawn towards glass bottles. My husband and I just don't like the idea of our baby drinking from a plastic bottle. We also love stainless steel and mainly drink from them ourselves, so why not baby, right? I started looking up stainless steel baby bottles. These are the bottles we've used for Henson:

​When my son was just a few days old, we quickly learned that he was going to be a high need baby. He wasn't like his cousin who would just sleep all the time and would be quiet once a pacifier was in his mouth. My boy doesn't like the binkie. He wouldn't just sleep on his own either. And he was a crier. 

Being a new mom, I wanted to understand my baby. I wanted to figure out why he was what he was. In my research, I came across this article from Ask Dr. Sears website: 12 Features of a High Need Baby

​Being a stay at home mom, I take care of baby pretty much all the time. And sometimes, it's hard especially if Henson is in a fussy mood and wants to be carried around or played with, I can't really do anything else. Household chores are not as important as baby, and they are second priority only, but they still need to be done, right?

I've always dreamed of having a baby of my own. There's just that burning desire in me ever since I was mature enough to think about having kids. I used to say, by age 25, I'll have a baby. But when I turned 25, it didn't happen. Then I adjusted the age to 28 years old. It still didn't happen at 28. I ended up having a kid at 32.

I didn't have any clue how to be a mom. I just went into this whole thing with no knowledge whatsoever about how to take care of a newborn. I read books and researched online about what parents should do regarding this, regarding that. There are a plethora of advice out there... SO MANY... that sometimes, you just get confused on which ones to follow. But no matter how much information you take in, nothing really prepares you for the actual situation. There's this fragile little baby and you're responsible for keeping it happy and alive.

​When I got pregnant, I was so sure I would breastfeed. I didn't have any doubts about it because I knew that breast milk is best for baby and I want what's best for my baby. I even bought breast pads and breastfeeding bras way ahead in preparation for it. Little did I know that it would turn out to be super challenging and to be honest, a real struggle.

​For first time moms, we may have read all about what to expect in our first pregnancy and some of the information may apply to us. But you won't really know what exactly works for you until you've actually tried them. Here's my list of essentials or things I found worked for me with my first pregnancy: