The first year with a baby: what helps
Advice about babies arrives from every direction, much of it confident and some of it wrong. A few things hold steady, and none of what follows is advice so much as company.
Sleep comes in stages, not schedules
Newborns sleep in short cycles around the clock, and no technique changes that in the first weeks. What helps is protecting your own rest in shifts, keeping nights boring and dim, and lowering expectations of getting anything else done. Patterns firm up on their own timeline, usually somewhere past the fourth month, and comparing your baby to a sleep chart is a reliable way to feel bad.
Feeding and the comparison trap
Whether bottle or breast, fed is the goal. Babies grow in bursts and stall in between, and a healthy baby on their own curve is doing fine. The same applies to rolling, sitting and walking: the normal window for each is embarrassingly wide. Well meaning relatives remember their babies doing everything early. Memories are kind that way.
The part nobody says out loud
The year is long, and loving a baby does not make it short. Accept help when offered, and be specific about the offer you accept: a meal, a nap, an hour of holding duty. Most parents feel flashes of pure resentment and it means nothing about them as a parent. Persistent low mood that will not lift is worth saying to a doctor, plainly and early.