When you’re pregnant, it easy to paint a perfect picture of what kind of mom you’re going to be—you’ll buy the best organic baby food, attend Mommy and Me classes religiously, and you’ll definitely be the kind of mom that never misses a milestone. But once your little bundle of joy arrives all those mommy expectations can seem like a distant memory. “I thought I would go into everything with a real source of like, deep Yoda knowledge about being a mom,” says Mindy Kaling, who became a first-time mom when her daughter Katherine was born in 2017. “That has not ended up being the case.”

All the expectations placed on new moms—breastfeed without complaining, look pretty (but don’t wear too much makeup), fill your Instagram feed with cute baby pics—can also be a major source of guilt. Even for Kaling. “I work with another mom on Four Weddings and a Funeral [coming to Hulu later this year] who has a one-year-old, and the thing that we always feel frustrated about is Mommy and Me classes always take place on like a Tuesday at 11 A.M.,” she says. As a working mom (albeit a very famous one), she can’t just ditch the office. “We just are never there. Getting over the guilt that I have to send someone else to take my child to a class that I’d like to go to is on-going,” she says, “but I’m kind of relieving myself of those guilty feelings. That has been my New Year’s resolution—moving forward it’s the kind of change I want to make for myself.”

On Instagram at least, Kaling seems like the type of mom who couldn’t possibly have anything to feel guilty over. The Ocean’s 8 star could give food bloggers a run for their money with her tutorials of homemade baby food (which, TBH, looks practically gourmet for someone who describes herself as “barely a cook”). “Because I work and I don’t get to cook a lot for her…I wanted to have it memorialized on Instagram so that everyone can see the few times I can actually do it,” she says with a laugh. “It’s for me, too! It makes me feel good and it’s really rewarding.”

IRL, she says, things don’t always look so ‘grammable. “I wish I could be one of those Instagram food stylists who spends three hours on Sunday preparing sweet potatoes and sautéing broccoli so they can make healthy bowls and put them in Tupperware,” she says (don’t we all.) “I’m just not that person and I’ll never be that person,” she says. Kaling, who is a Protein One ambassador, loves a good shortcut. “I throw a box of Protein One bars in my car or in my trailer so when it’s 11 P.M. and I’m working, I don’t go off the deep end and want to eat an entire pizza or have my assistant go and buy me a thing of cookie dough,” she says.

For Kaling, and so many other new moms, a parenting strategy that evolves on the fly shouldn’t be a source of guilt. “I read this book—and not to name drop, but it was given to me by Oprah—that talks a lot about how to be a conscious parent. I loved it,” she says. But it’s not always easy to keep up with. “When I go to bed at night, I’m like, ‘Oh, should I not have been having that conversation on the phone in front of her?’” Still, per her New Year’s resolution, Kaling isn’t letting herself lose sleep over it. “I just try to [say to myself], OK, I was sweet and patient with her and we spent a lot of quality time together, and I didn’t do anything that is shameful,” Kaling says. “I think my parenting strategy—and this is not at all what I anticipated—is just getting through each day.”

Reporting by Jessica Radloff

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