Having a baby can be the most wonderful, but hardest, thing a woman will ever do. Growing a child in your body means giving up what’s best for you and focusing on what’s best for that baby for nine and a half months.

But once you give birth, it’s easy to continue to neglect yourself in favor of nurturing the tiny being that you helped to create. Yet what many moms forget is that your self-esteem and confidence extends to the baby, so it is important to find that inner strength that is inside you and unlock it to teach your child how to be happy, too.

Your self-esteem is crucial to your happiness and success as a parent, but how do you manage to find the time, energy, and drive to bother with yourself when you are so busy and exhausted from taking care of your baby?

Here are 8 simple ways you can restore your self-esteem after you have a child.

8 Ways to Boost Your Confidence After You Give Birth

1. Fake it ‘til you make it. A lot of being a confident mother is in understanding and accepting that you don’t always know what you are doing, and that’s okay. Even the most seasoned of parents come across brand new scenarios that they don’t know how to handle, because every child is unique.

Instead, those parents who look like they know what they’re doing have simply mastered the “fake it ‘til you make it” technique, or the knowledge that sometimes you just have to be flexible, roll with the punches, and learn the lesson for the next time whatever happened happens.

2. Give yourself more credit and more time. Moms are often expected to put their bodies through the trauma of nine months of carrying a child and hours upon hours of labor, and then jump right in and be a perfect, loving, patient mother.

This is not only unfeasible, but it’s also downright dangerous. Your body just went through the equivalent of a trainwreck. You need to give it the credit it deserves for surviving such a shock and give it more time to heal before you expect to even halfway know what you’re doing.

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