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I agree about that last part about knowing how best to weather the tantrum based on your particular kid – so much of what I read says “put them down and walk away,” but that absolutely destroys my kid and makes it so much worse. I have found what works better is removing them from the situation but sticking with them for a little bit; not fully interacting, but just quietly staying in the background. Sometimes this helps them reset so much more than walking away and prevents them from completely melting down. I think it depends on your kid!

One other thing I needed to hear – it’s okay to change pediatricians! No one really prepared us with the knowledge that we’d need a pediatrician even before leaving the hospital (so we could make the first-day-home-from-the-hospital visit appointment), so we just picked one close to our house. He was *fine*, but not great, and have us some questionable advice around our son’s eczema. It felt weird to switch though, especially since nothing was technically wrong, like we owed him some kind of loyalty. After a month or two though we decided to switch and reached out to our neighbors and friends for recommendations. Once we made the switch, it became SO obvious that our original pediatrician wasn’t right for us. I wish someone had told us earlier that it’s okay to switch! We’ve been at our new one ever since and love her.

When my first kid was about 3.5 months old, I transitioned back to work, which meant starting him at daycare. I wasn’t really nervous except for the fact that he was not a good napper and wasn’t really on a schedule yet. I thought that was a little bit of a failure on my part – the Internet had led me to believe that I should have been able to get him on a schedule around month two, and that just didn’t happen. When I handed him over to his daycare teacher on day one, I shrugged sheepishly as I admitted he wasn’t really on a schedule yet, fully expecting her to judge me at least a little. Instead, she just looked at me and said: He’s three months old – why would he be on a schedule yet??? The relief I felt was so immense and helped me remember not to believe everything on the Internet and that not every aspect of parenting has to fit perfectly into what technically could be possible. Kids move on their own timelines, and that is just fine.