I’m Scared to Be a Mom: Here Are 5 Resources That Helped Me Overcome My Fear

Here's how I found my footing and embraced this exciting new chapter.

By: Jen Glantz

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5 Ways I Prepared Myself for New Motherhood

When I found out I was pregnant, I felt overwhelmed by two very conflicting emotions. Part of me was dazzled with joy that I was going to have a baby and I felt so grateful for all of the new adventures ahead. But another part of me felt extremely anxious about becoming a mom. Not only was I fearful of what would happen to my body while I was pregnant, but I was also scared about how labor would go and what it would be like to parent a newborn when I didn’t know very much about babies.

In an effort to be as prepared as possible for all the changes, challenges, and moments of confusion ahead, I decided to spend a few hours every week doing what I could to learn more about this journey and feel more confident about all that I was about to experience.

Here are the five resources that helped me overcome my fears during my pregnancy.

Back to Class

I realized that one of the biggest reasons for all of my nervousness around being pregnant and having a baby was that I didn’t feel like I knew enough information about either. Before getting pregnant, I didn’t spend time researching the ways my body would change or what childbirth would be like. I also didn’t spend a lot of quality time around newborns, so I didn’t know how to change a diaper, properly feed a baby, or even what type of sleep schedule to try out with my own child once she was born.

I decided that I’d learn all the information that I could, in chronological order, once a month.

I first signed up for an online course that shared information about the different stages of pregnancy and what to expect, then a childbirth education, followed by a newborn preparation class, and finally a lactation and newborn CPR class.

In order to retain all that I learned, once the class ended, I typed up the most important notes and added them to a shared folder so once a month, my husband and I could look back at these takeaways and give ourselves a refresher. I found that with every completed class, my confidence rose, and I felt more empowered by all the changes that were on my horizon.

Local Communities

After I got pregnant, I noticed that in my friend group, I was the only mom-to-be. Most of my friends were single or newly married and not planning on having kids for a very long time. I started to feel alone in a lot of what I was going through and even though my friends welcomed vent sessions, they couldn’t provide me with the advice or guidance that I needed.

I decided to research local communities or groups that I could join so I would have exposure to moms in my neighborhood and other pregnant women who were also about to become new moms. I found a few local groups on Facebook, went to meetup events that childbirth education schools offered in my area, and took prenatal workout classes in an effort to meet other women who were also pregnant. By doing this, I had a few different sources of communities to turn to when I needed tips and I also found that as my pregnancy progressed, I was able to become a resource to other people who felt the same fear that I had felt early on.

Practice, Practice

Since I’m someone with a very Type-A personality who likes to be as prepared as possible, I decided that once a week, my husband and I should spend a few hours acting as if we already had a baby home with us. That way, we could put a lot of the advice, information, and best practices into play that we had learned along the way. One week, we spent an hour practicing putting diapers on a stuffed animal (since neither of us had every diapered a baby before), another week we took the stroller on a test run around the neighborhood, and most recently, we tested out the variety of swaddles we bought, so we’d know how to use them once the baby arrived.

While it might sound like a silly thing to do, getting a head start on using our newborn items and putting our responsibilities in motion helped ease my anxiety about becoming a mom quite a bit.

Parenting Book Club

A fun way that my husband and I decided to learn more information about becoming parents, during my pregnancy journey, was to start our own book club. Every month, we’d both grab the same book from the library, spend two weeks reading it, and then come together on a date night to chat about our takeaways.

Each month’s book had a theme that was different from the last month’s theme. One month we read a book on sleep techniques for newborns, another month we read a book on childbirth, and last month we read a book on different activities to do every month with a newborn.

Doing this together made reading and discussing these books an exciting activity.

Consider a Birth Comfort Specialist

Toward the end of my pregnancy, I felt proud of myself consuming so much information, finding a community of other new moms, and practicing a lot of what I learned, before the baby arrived. But I still felt really anxious whenever I thought about what it was going to be like to give birth. I decided that having a one-on-one session with a birth comfort specialist (who can also be called a doula) could help me address specific questions I had about pain management during birth and even breathing techniques that I thought could help me when my anxiety started to spike. I had two sessions with this person and felt like it was the last puzzle piece I needed in my journey to really feel like I had all the tools, information, and tips that would help me ease into becoming a mom.

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