How to Navigate the Holidays with a Newborn (Without Losing Your Mind)

A quick note: This post focuses on Christmas because that’s the holiday my family celebrates, and it’s what I was navigating when T was a baby. But these strategies apply to any holiday or family gathering during late pregnancy or early postpartum – Hanukkah, Diwali, Eid, Thanksgiving, New Year’s, family reunions, whatever your family celebrates. The stress of managing expectations, setting boundaries, and protecting your capacity is universal.

It’s Christmas, I think we can get a little personal.

My child is 25 this year, and is spending Christmas Eve and Christmas day with their girlfriend’s family. The two of them will be here Christmas day eve, but as a single mom who always had them on Christmas, and every other day for a lot of their life, it’s weird. I’m also really happy for them that they’ve found someone that they care that much about, and sitting in this place looking back, versus your place looking forward, this is our job. It’s to grow them up to be independent adults who have their own lives and goals and dreams. FYI it kinda sucks sometimes, and other times, you recognize that it’s your greatest accomplishment.

It makes me think of Christmas when they were younger. I personally have a lot of siblings and trying to get everyone together over Christmas was a lot, especially since some of them didn’t live close, many of us had young kids at the same time, and some of us worked in retail so Boxing Day etc. was chaos. To make it work “Christmas” was flexible in our home. Sometimes it was actually Christmas day, sometimes it happened early and sometimes a few days late. We didn’t do the big huge Christmas lead up, and T didn’t really care when it happened as long as they got to see everyone and share the experience. Luckily for me, they were a mid-year baby so it was so much easier. I wasn’t crazy pregnant the Christmas prior and they were 7 months old the next year.

I have lots of people in my life however, who have early in the year and late in the year babies and the struggle is real, especially when you have more than one sibling with littles at the same time, are trying to accommodate both sides of families, and/or have long standing traditions that just feel like too much this year.

Setting boundaries and realistic expectations are hard, especially when other family members, or even yourselves have sucked it up in previous years, but this year, just feels so very hard. So where do you start? How do you navigate this time when it’s supposed to be all about family and togetherness and joy, and it all feels like way too much?

I think the first step is communication and planning ahead. As I sit here writing this on the afternoon of christmas eve, you can tell that I’ve aced that one, but let’s pretend. What are all the potential commitments of the season? What things do you usually do? What’s required of you? Where do you usually go? What new traditions are you looking to make this year with the baby, or if the baby isn’t here yet, what things are you looking to do one last time before things change? Sit down with the decision makers of your family, and write them out, and then decide which ones you actually have the capacity for, and are healthy for you and why or why not? Once you can decide which ones are automatically not happening this year, it helps you navigate the rest of the list much better.

Ok, so now you have this long list of things you want to get done.

Start by prioritizing them. Which ones are things that you have to do to have it feel like Christmas? The tree? The six trees? The village? The outdoor lights? The cookies? Christmas morning with your parents? Christmas Eve dinner with the in-laws? The Boxing Day party with 67 people where you only know 5 and requires you bringing 6 million cookies and having a new holiday outfit?

From there, how can you make those things easier? Some of them, you might just need to skip this year, maybe that party isn’t going to happen. Maybe the dinners sound like fun, but there’s going to be 30 people at each, and they’re all going to want to hold the baby, and there’s always at least 5 people who are snuffy. Maybe we do one tree that’s artificial instead of real, or that is bought pre cut vs the going to cut the tree excursion. Maybe lights stay indoors instead of out, and you make only the cookies you really like, and buy the rest, or you make the rest pre-baby, and toss them in the freezer because your past self was being kind to your present one. Maybe you pick the 5 favourite things from the village and it becomes a hamlet this year.

You don’t have to give up on all your traditions, but for now, or maybe for always, you may have to adapt them to better suit your abilities, and time constraints, and just be kinder to your sleep deprived low energy self.

Ok, so what about the things that you feel like you have to do but really don’t want to do? What if it’s important to one of you, but not the other?

I think, not being a professional, you break each one of them down together. I think the most important thing is to determine if it’s really important to you or them, or if you just don’t want to deal with the drama or the fallout of you not doing it? Obviously if it’s super important to one of you, that carries much more weight than if it’s just a thing you feel obligated to. From there make a con/con list? Yes I know, it’s supposed to be a pro/con list, but truth here, it’s really about the drawbacks of doing it vs. the drawbacks of not. If there were lots of things on the pro-list, you’d have already decided you’re going.

So what are the cons of going? You’re exhausted. The baby is unpredictable. Someone will make a comment about your parenting or how the baby should be sleeping or eating. You’ll have to pack seventeen bags of stuff. The baby might scream the whole time. You’ll be away from your safe space when you’re already feeling vulnerable. One of you might still be recovering physically and emotionally from birth.

And what are the cons of not going? Aunt Margaret will be disappointed. Your mother-in-law might make passive aggressive comments for the next six months. You’ll feel guilty. Your partner might feel caught in the middle. You might miss out on a memory.

Here’s the thing though – one of those lists is about your immediate wellbeing and sanity. The other is about managing other people’s feelings. And I know, I KNOW, that managing other people’s feelings often feels like a survival skill, especially for those of us who’ve been doing it our whole lives. But you have a tiny human who needs you to be as okay as possible right now. And that means sometimes other people’s disappointment has to take a backseat.

Now, if one of you really wants to go to the thing and the other doesn’t? That’s okay too. Maybe the person who wants to go, goes alone. But here’s the catch – they need to handle ALL of it. The planning, the coordinating, the gift buying, the wrapping, the diaper bag if they’re taking the baby, getting everything in the car, all of it. And if taking on all of that feels overwhelming or impossible? Well, maybe that’s gently telling you something about whether this is really doable right now.

Having the Hard Conversation

Once you’ve made your decision, you need to communicate it. This is the part nobody likes. Here’s my advice: be clear, be kind, and don’t over-explain.

“We’re not going to make it to the Boxing Day party this year. We hope you all have a wonderful time.”

Not: “We’re not going to make it because the baby isn’t sleeping and I’m so tired and my stitches still hurt and I don’t think I can handle all those people and I’m so sorry and maybe we can come for an hour or…”

The more you explain, the more you’re inviting negotiation. You don’t owe anyone your story. You don’t owe them the details of your recovery, your exhaustion, your struggles. Your reasons are yours.

If they push back, you can add: “This is what works for our family right now. We’d love to celebrate with you another time.” And then, and this is the hard part, you stop talking. You don’t defend, you don’t justify, you just hold the boundary.

Will some people be upset? Maybe. Probably. But here’s what I learned: the people who truly love you will understand, even if they’re disappointed. And the people who make it all about them and their feelings? Well, they were always going to do that, whether you had a newborn or not.

When You Mess It Up

And look, sometimes you’re going to say yes to things you should have said no to. Sometimes you’re going to skip things you wish you’d gone to. Sometimes you’ll get it wrong. I’m literally writing a blog post about surviving Christmas on Christmas Eve, and between trying to manage expectations with family and my own complicated feelings about my kid being elsewhere this year, my own Christmas feels like a bit of a disaster. So trust me, I get it.

The goal isn’t perfection. The goal is to survive this season with as much gentleness toward yourself as possible, to protect your tiny family’s wellbeing, and to remember that this particular Christmas is just one Christmas. Next year will be different. The year after that will be different again.

My kid is 25 now, spending Christmas somewhere else, and I’m sitting here remembering all those chaotic Christmases when they were little. You know what I don’t remember? Which years we had the full village and which years we didn’t. Which gatherings we made it to and which ones we skipped. What I remember is the feeling of them being small and ours, of building something new together, of learning how to protect our little unit even when it felt hard.

That’s what you’re doing right now. You’re learning to be the parent your child needs, which sometimes means disappointing other people. That’s the whole job. That’s the biggest priority in this whole thing. That’s not failure. That’s actually exactly what you’re supposed to be doing.

Permission Slip

So here it is, your official permission slip: You can skip the things. You can have a smaller Christmas. You can celebrate on December 27th if that works better. You can put up zero decorations or all the decorations. You can say no to hosting, to travelling, to being passed around like a potato at gatherings. You can buy store-bought cookies or skip the cookies entirely. You can spend Christmas Day in your pajamas with your partner and your baby and call it perfect.

And here’s something important to remember – this year sets the precedent for the years to come. Aim small. Aim personal. Do the things that really matter to you and that you actually have the capacity for. You can always add things back in later, but if you start big and try to do everything, you’re setting yourself up for a fight every single year. And maybe with the next baby too. Starting small means less pressure, less expectation, less explaining why things are different now. It means you get to build your family’s traditions from the ground up, based on what works for YOU, not what you’ve inherited or what everyone else expects.

This season, your job is not to make everyone else happy. Your job is to keep yourself and your baby fed, safe, and as rested as possible. Everything else is extra credit.

And if you’re reading this feeling like you’ve already failed because you said yes to too many things or you’re sitting in the middle of a Christmas that doesn’t feel the way you hoped? You haven’t failed. You’re doing your best in an impossible situation while running on no sleep and with a body that’s been through a medical event. That’s not failure. That’s heroic.

Be kind to yourself. Lower the bar. Skip the things. Protect your peace. Your baby doesn’t need a perfect Christmas. They just need you, as whole and rested as you can manage to be.

Merry Christmas, or whatever version of it you can cobble together this year. You’re doing better than you think you are.

A final note: If you’re struggling with how to actually have these boundary conversations or need more support around setting limits with family, we have a free section in our app dedicated to boundary-setting. You can download it from the Apple App Store, the Google Play Store or sign up at cradira.passion.io. It’s there if you need it, but honestly? You’ve already done the hard part by recognizing what you need. Trust your gut.

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