Becoming a parent, especially for the first time, is an exciting but scary experience. You'll be entering a whole new world where different rules apply, and no matter how prepared you think you are, there's usually little you've experienced before which you can draw on when making the choices and snap decisions that will become a major part of your life once the little one arrives.

It's for this reason that there's an abundance of parenting advice available which you can use to inform your decisions. There are print magazines packed with useful advice, web sites with tons of articles to peruse, not to mention the well meaning but sometimes irritating advice and opinions of family and friends. Despite all this information being available, most parents are terrified that they're somehow not up to the job and will do it wrong, and herein lies the most common parenting mistake of all: not trusting in your own judgment and instincts.

However intimidating the prospect is of having ultimate responsibility for the nurture of a new and precious life, you should be in no doubt that you have exactly the skills and capabilities you'll need over the coming years.

Think about it. As human beings, we're all parenting specialists. In evolutionary and genetic terms, our whole existence is geared towards producing and nurturing offspring, and over the millions of years that the human species has been developing we've become generally incredibly good at it. You only need to watch a mother and child together to know that however difficult the process may seem, bringing up a child is the most natural thing in the world, and something for which each and every parent to be has the necessary skills to make a success of it if they make it their number one focus.

Of course, this doesn't mean that you should ignore all advice. After all, the experience handed down from generation to generation is absolutely vital and is how civilization developed in the first place. Not one of us has all the answers, we all need input from others in all kinds of situations.

But trust in your own capabilities as a parent above all else, and trust in your own ability to make the best of all the advice and support that's out there. That way you'll definitely be the best parent your child could ever have.