Baby milestones are all the rage the first year of your child's life. By the time your little one's first birthday rolls around, you likely have a list -- both mental and physical -- of all the momentous things he or she has done. Eating solids? Check! Sitting up? Check! Crawling? Check! Walking? Eh, maybe.

But milestones aren't just for babies. Moms hit milestones, too. Mama milestones. You just weren't keeping track because you were too busy taking pictures of your baby.

There are some things you just cannot do once you become a mother. For many women, the line is drawn pretty strict. I'm a little more lenient. You can still dance on the table (a very stable one, after you've cleared the dishes), have a cocktail before dinner, and dress like a slut if you want to, in my book. But even I have my standards. Here are seven things I think we have to give up when we have kids.

If there's one thing new parents really get competitive about, it's baby's first word. Mom wants the little person she carried for all those months to say "Mama" first. Dad, of course, is working every angle to get kiddo to say "Dada."

I've seen parents sit their baby down and spend a half hour (or more!) trying to coax their name out of the poor kid. I hate to break it to the parents who do that, but you're just making yourself crazy. Your baby is going to drop that first big word -- usually sometime after their first birthday -- and what they say is going to be totally up to them.

Heck, a quick poll of parents showed kids come up with some pretty goofy stuff. So don't fret if your kid said your partner's name first. You could have gotten one of these:

Whoever's daughter crawls first is the coolest! Whoever's son gets teeth earliest is destined to have an Einstein on their hands! Whoever's child drinks out of the sippy cup quickest wins a prize!

Or not.

Although often treated as a competition, baby milestones are more intended to serve as red flags. For instance, baby not sitting up by a year? Red flag. Baby crawling at 6 months? That's great, but ... doesn't necessarily mean you have a genius on your hands.

Here's a quick rundown of what you need to know about four big milestones -- and when it's okay to stop worrying!

Image via ella novak/Flickr

If you're like pretty much every single mom I know, then the mere thought of leaving your baby with a sitter for the very first time makes you want to hide in a closet while clutching and rocking the baby and cry your eyes out for a good two hours or so.

That pretty much sums up how I felt when trying to decide whether or not it was time to surrender control of my precious baby over to another human being -- other than immediate family, of course.

And apparently fearing the babysitter isn't a phenomenon that only happens to first-time moms. A good friend of mine just welcomed another little one into her family, and at 8 weeks, she's definitely not ready to pass her off to someone else just yet.

If you're like every other mom on the planet, then you just can't resist taking photo after photo of your baby to document every single precious moment of their lives.

From their big entrance into the world to their first smiles, tastes of solid foods, family holiday gatherings, and birthdays -- it's so important to capture all of the special times we have during our babies' first year on film.

And while all baby photos are sweet and adorable any way you look at them, there are some really cool camera effects you can use to make your pictures even more spectacular.

Crawling. It's one of those milestones we just can't wait for our babies to figure out, and we can drive ourselves nuts trying to make it happen. If I could get back all the time I spent fretting over when my baby would start crawling, I could probably get half the crafts on Pinterest completed!

Here's the truth, Moms and Dads: not all babies crawl! And when they do get a move on, they all seem to find their own special way to get around. Afraid your baby isn't normal? Just wait until you read these moms' confessions!

Almost the instant you become a parent, you start hearing talk about the elusive "sleeping through the night." Like war stories, veteran moms and dads tell tales of their raucous first few months of parenthood, typically concluding with the happy ending of when, in either months or weeks, their little one stopped waking up and started sleeping through the night.

At first, when you're really in it, it's impossible to believe that your crying, hungry, helpless newborn will ever, ever in a million years sleep like a normal human being, and you reluctantly come to terms with the fact that you'll never be well-rested again. But eventually your baby does start sleeping through the night. And it truly is a beautiful thing.