When I’m talking to expectant moms, often they share that they feel overwhelmed by all the information out there. What products they need to have, which products are better than others, which are safest. How they should feed and diaper and clothe and put their babies down for a nap, and all the factual and anecdotal arguments for one method or another. And, of course, since they’re all facing the ultimate unknown–labor and birth as first-time moms–just how, where, and with whom they should give birth to their babies. And expecting moms, especially first-time moms, can easily get very wrapped up in those decisions…not only because they worry about what their choices will mean for their child, but also what their choices will say about them as mothers. Sometimes, that last part is what really confuses us.

When our babies are little we only have a relatively small handful of choices to make about their care: what will they eat? Where will they sleep? What will we put on their butts? What “stuff” will we buy them? It’s easy to find ourselves putting more stock in the answers to those questions than we might need to. Of course, it’s important to be informed, but often, the choice that comes to us first–the one that feels rightest in our guts–is really the right one. Doing too much follow-up research can just cause us to second-guess our instincts and lead us away from what our intuition tells us is the right choice for us. It also leads to us spending way too much money to buy way too much unnecessary stuff, because once you’ve figured out the eating, sleeping, and butt-covering part (more or less), what other choices are there to be made beyond “what to buy?”

Let’s face it–there’s no way, in today’s information-overloaded world, that we can do everything right–or at least, whatever today’s version of “right” is. Most of us are already aware of the really important messages: you know, like “put your baby in a car seat when you drive him somewhere”, and “don’t dangle your baby out a third-story window a la Michael Jackson”. With most of the rest of it, there’s enough gray area that some research is necessary to make an informed decision. But at some point, we all have to be able to feel good about a decision and move on.

After all, as I’m sure I’ll be finding out soon enough, feeding, diapering and sleeping decisions are a cakewalk compared with teaching kids about sex, drugs, and alcohol. Pregnancy and new motherhood is the perfect opportunity to practice making decisions with confidence and then moving on.

How do you deal with the onslaught of data and opinions that come with parenting in the Information Age?