Marriage is hard, babies are harder, and the first year of both? A Molotov cocktail of sleepless nights, fights, and wondering if your relationship will survive. I’m sharing the messy reality of surviving your first year as newlyweds and new parents. Think crying (you and the baby), arguments over whose turn it is, and a few surprising wins along the way. If you’re knee-deep in diapers and dishes wondering if it’s supposed to be this hard, this is for you. Spoiler: It gets better—eventually.

In a world obsessed with success, we’ve forgotten that average is okay—more than okay; it’s real life. Not every child needs to be a prodigy, and not every parent should push for perfection. The constant pressure for kids to excel in everything isn’t making kids well-rounded; it's stressing them out.

Sure, raising a child is expensive, but it's not just about the money. Today's parents face an overwhelming array of pressures—from managing their child's organic, gluten-free diet to ensuring they're excelling academically and emotionally. The societal expectations are crushing, demanding parents to balance careers, personal lives, and immaculate parenting. The community support of yesteryear is gone, leaving parents isolated. Until these deeper issues are addressed, don’t expect a baby boom anytime soon.

Social media has become the battlefield where modern mothers voice their frustration. Women, disillusioned by the promise of "having it all," are now exposing the stark reality of unfulfilled expectations from their partners. The myth of equality is unraveling as mothers detail their partners' failures in meeting basic household responsibilities, bearing the invisible mental load, and managing emotional labor. These posts reveal a movement that’s calling out dads for their sporadic involvement and lack of appreciation. The digital age has turned these grievances into a powerful rallying cry for genuine change in how parenting duties are shared.

Every new parent knows those initial weeks of waking every two hours with your newborn. You brace yourself, thinking it’s temporary, clinging to the hope that those sleep windows will gradually stretch. But when my one-year-old started reverting back to waking every two hours, I got desperate.

Motherhood is no walk in the park. “Moming” can feel less like a labor of love and more like an unappreciated grine. The struggle is real, especially for those perfectionists among us, grappling with the unattainable quest for perfection in the current season of life.

For those on the outside looking in, offering advice to a new mom can be a tricky endeavor. In the midst of hormonal fluctuations and the profound responsibility of caring for a newborn, well-intentioned advice can sometimes be misconstrued. Many new parents struggle with unsolicited parenting advice, and it can cause riffs in families.