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Photo by MELVIE

Do you ever feel the urge to give advice and share all your baby "knowledge" with new moms? We all do, of course! There's so much we wish we had known.

However, as Alison Neumer Lara, Ideal Bite's Mama Bite Editor shares with us, sometimes it's good to just let a new mom know she's doing a great job too!

Mom to Mom
By Ideal Bite's Mama Bite Editor Alison Neumer Lara

One of my best friends gave birth to a little boy last week, and when I finally caught her on the phone, we gushed for a bit, but the conversation quickly turned to nursing, bottles, and all the other practicalities of dealing with those overwhelming first few days and weeks with a newborn.

I hardly feel like an expert — Roxane is my first and she just turned 11 months — but I realized I had a lot of little tips to share, like what to put on cracked nipples (olive oil in a pinch, or even stretch mark creams); how to soothe inflamed ones (wet and chill cotton nursing pads, applied between feedings); and when to start using a sling or infant carrier (get ‘em used to it right away, especially when they fuss).

Also there's stuff I wish I'd known to do at the time, like scheduling friends and family to bring dinner and groceries or immediately booking a post-natal massage, as an experience gift to myself. Handling cloth diapers and not worrying so much about occasionally adding in formula, too.

But mostly? Trust that you're doing the best for your kiddo. And with that, I promptly zipped my trap.

What kind of advice works best for you since having a baby? What kind of advice do you tend to give?