First Year Regrets – 5 Things That Should’ve Happened

During a pregnancy, we make a thousand and one plans on what we are going to do when our bundle of joy arrives, it’s these thoughts that help us get through the difficult days of waddling around with a big bump. Not once do we think about things not going to plan and when they don’t, it really puts us down and this is what happened with me.

Here are a few things that I regret about Little A’s first year and what should have happened instead. I guess some may seem petty but when your hormones are riding on a rollercoaster, you do tend to get emotional about such things, eh?

Belief 

Thanks to a rough start to our breastfeeding journey, I really began to doubt myself and would worry extensively about things that didn’t need worrying over and suffered from the feeding guilt.

You know, that good ole’ breastfeeding guilt – I won’t go into extensive detail here as I have already written a dedicated post about this but since this post is all about my regrets then there was no way I was going to keep this out.

I guess I shouldn’t have let feeding overshadow our time, I should’ve persevered and be strong willed and should have fought my corner, which I did but that was much later on, this should have happened right at very beginning when I was being given wrong advice.

I should have had more faith in myself that I was just perfect for my child.

Expressing

Newborn Photoshoot 

This makes my heart leap and not in that lovingly kind of way. Throughout my pregnancy, I had planned that I would arrange a professional photoshoot for Little A in her early weeks of life. I had even decided who I was going to book, contacted them and had 80% of everything arranged. I also had wanted to take advantage of the Bounty Photoshoot that takes place at the hospital but if you read my birth story then you already know that it didn’t happen due to the neonatal stay.

When Little A came home at 4 days old, I ended up disabled for over a month.

Then in her first month she ended up with cradle cap all over her face – so I guess you get the gist of it all now. This didn’t really bother me as I have gazillions of photos of her and do my own photoshoots of her but when someone casually mentioned to me last month that ‘everyone has a professional photoshoot done of their babies, why didn’t you?’ It really hit me hard.

Letters

During my pregnancy, I had bought a cute diary and decided quite excitedly that I was going to write a letter to Little A each month and did I? Nope! I know it’s not too late to start this but it would have been lovely to have documented her developments and memories of the month on paper for her to look back on.

 Milestones 

I didn’t buy those special milestones cards until much later on and now you must be thinking what was even the point! Crazy me ended up buying it the day before Little A turned 6 months old, yes 6 months (blame Amazon prime, not me!). So a lot of them are unused of course but I was determined to use them from that point on and I did for example when she turned a month older, ate solids for the first time, sat independently etc but there have been milestone cards that are gathering dust such as ‘first tooth’ – she cut her first tooth and I began to think that doesn’t count right? It needs to develop properly then I never got round to take that picture. When she unexpectedly began to crawl when weren’t home that week as well as turning 11 months at the time, neither photos were taken.

But I was adamant on using the ‘Today’s My First Birthday’ card.

Little A had her birthday over at her Nanna’s and whilst packing her things the day before, I made sure I had packed it but it is, unfortunately, still lost in transit somewhere as I have searched both homes for it and I still cannot find it!

I guess the regret here is I shouldn’t have bothered buying them 6 months on in her life and when I did buy them I should have not let life get in the way of using them. It does sometimes make me feel awful when I think about it.