Mrs Frantic - your marvelous post about the first 6 weeks has totally inspired me!  It was awesome! 

I'm making a little gift for 2 friends due to have their first babies soonish, and would love your help, ladies!  They're both wonderfully competent women who'll be great mums, but as we all know, those first few weeks can be truely difficult for most of us, and we need to know we're not the only ones. 

So I'm compiling little notes with statements that encourage women during those early days - not advice, but just encouraging stuff.  I'd love to be able to add comments from you lovely ladies - real snippets of encouragement from other real mums who've been there, done that.  I'll do each quote up on a little piece of paper and fill a box with them, so that when the going gets tough, there's a box full of statements from other people's experiences that'll help.  My little bits to add to it are along the lines of: "you'll only get more and more competent at parenting - can't go backwards!" and "you're in the toughest time of baby-hood now, it'll get easier", "your baby won't remember any mistakes you make now" and "you can't see how much your baby adores you yet, but there'll be TONS of smiles coming for you very soon".   I'd really love to add comments from lots of other women's experiences too - so for those of you who don't mind being quoted, I'd thoroughly appreciate any bits of encouragement you could add - and a name and something like how many kids you have, or what age your baby is would help make it a bit more 'real' too.  Thanks heaps if you're considering adding something!