For as long as she can remember, Sarah has called herself a perfectionist.
As a child, she would scrunch up drawings because she thought they "weren't good enough", and would then re-do the same picture again and again.
After having her first baby, Sarah, 37, began to appreciate just how difficult it was to be both a perfectionist and a parent.
In the beginning, she struggled with the lack of control over baby Sofia's schedule, becoming frustrated when her daughter wouldn't sleep.
"I would be out pushing her in the pram with tears streaming down my face because I just wanted her to sleep so I could keep my day on track," she says.
Sarah also found the mess of a baby - with mealtimes and the inevitable vomit on carpet and furniture - "overwhelming".
"As a perfectionist, you just get the cleaning done straight away, but it means you're expending a lot of energy when you're already sleep deprived as a new mum."
Kirstin Bouse, a clinical psychologist and author of The Conscious Mother, says that being a perfectionist and a parent isn't an ideal combination.
Mind you, Bouse acknowledges it's not that easy to just tell yourself to stop being a perfectionist.
Instead, she says you should identify which areas of your life are really important, and which are just "icing on the cake".
"I ask mothers to think about this: If I was to throw $100, $50, $20 and $5 notes in the air and give them 30 seconds to grab what they could, what should they go for? The $100.
"Parenting is like that. We have a very short amount of time to impact our children - let's go for the $100, not the small change."
She says that means we should really "live and breathe" our most important values, and "let the smaller stuff go".
To do that, Bouse recommends trying to be "intentionally imperfect" in areas that don't mean as much to you.
So if, for example, spending quality time with your children is important to you, and having a clean house is lower down your list of priorities, start there.
Sarah learnt this method on her own, but says having a clean house is "still a big one" for her.
But instead of having her house spotless each day, she now focuses on a few important tasks, such as stacking the dishwasher and cleaning the dining room table.
"If those keys things are done I tell myself that's good enough for now," she says.
She's also learned to accept help, such as when a friend offers to cook a meal for her family, or when her mother-in-law offers to clean her kitchen.
Sarah says that having her second baby, Jack, 15 months ago has also helped her relax her standards, especially around sleep times.
"I actually found that once I relaxed things were just a lot easier. My son just naps to fit in with whatever we were doing that day and he's pretty chilled out as a result."
By curbing your perfectionist tendencies, you can also stop your children from striving to be perfectionists themselves. After all, if you berate yourself for doing things less imperfectly, Bouse says your child will model your behaviour and learn to do the same.
Sarah is very mindful of this and tries hard not to let her perfectionism impact on her children.
"I don't make a fuss or get angry at them for making mess or not adhering to the plan I had in my head, and I never criticise things like their oddball choices of clothing for the day."
Sarah's also slowly learning to stop letting perfectionism rule her own life.
"It's easy to run yourself into the ground as a perfectionist, but you have to ensure you have plenty of energy as a parent and you need to be in a good headspace, too.
"Sometimes, at the end of a long day, you just need to put your feet up."