When you’re pregnant people offer you all sorts of advice. Sometimes the advice is welcome and offered in a take-from-this-what-you-will, sharing of wisdom way. Sometimes it’s just kind of thrust at you and is more rude than it is helpful. Or sometimes it’s just gross. Someone I know went into far too much detail about the hazards of poopy nappies with me while I was pregnant. Which is fine. I’m not going to go into a swoon at the mention of poo. However the timing was a tad questionable as we were at a chocolate tasting at the time…
Anyway, I swore that once I had popped that sprog out, I was definitely not going to become a “dick parent”, gleefully terrifying expectant parents with tales of poo smeared furniture and chronic sleep deprivation.
However… the first year of parenthood is one hell of a steep learning curve and there are things about the whole process that just weren’t covered in antenatal class or any of the books or on the websites that I consulted before The Master came into our lives. I kind of got blindsided in a few instances. And as embarrassing as some of these things are, I feel like I should share them just in case, at some point in the future it saves some other soon-to-be mum (or dad) from having to do the “what the hell is this now?” face like I did.
Of course, it should go without saying that every pregnancy and baby is different and that how things were for me aren’t necessarily how they are for anyone else. If you never experienced any of the following when you had a baby then yay for you. You should definitely not get all angry at me in the comments because this post doesn’t accurately reflect your experience. It’s not your blog, it’s mine. This should all go without saying but for reasons I’m about to lay out, it really doesn’t.
Having an opinion about parenting is DANGEROUS – Parenting is a super important job and if you get it wrong you end up with something terrible like Donald Trump so naturally it all comes with a lot of angst. A lot of the time you’re flying by the seat of your mashed banana-smeared pants. There are a million little decisions every day that at best you’re only 70 per cent sure are right. This general uncertainty can create problems when it comes to drawing comparisons with other parents. Let’s say I decide, for my own reasons, that I want to wear pink today. My preference for pink doesn’t mean that other colours aren’t as good or aren’t a valid choice. It doesn’t mean that I judge others for their colour choices. In fact, I probably don’t care very much what they are. And almost no one would assume those things either. Nobody is walking around saying “you’re wearing pink – are you saying you think my blue cardy is a bad fashion choice?”
But when it comes to parenting choices, rather than a range of colours being equally acceptable, there’s only “my way, or the wrong way”. If there are two different parenting approaches being suggested then one of them must be wrong. This is demonstrably not true. I mean, many different people raise children in a variety of ways but almost none of them are Donald Trump or serial killers. But the simple fact that no one really knows if they’re doing it right means that people become very insecure about their choices. If everyone was 100% certain that they were doing the right thing they wouldn’t be bothered about how other people parent, they’d just shrug and get on with it. Rather, all sorts of topics from sleep-training to breastfeeding develop “factions”. There are heated debates on internet forums. If you cock your ear towards the nearest playground you can almost hear the handwringing and judgement.
Abdominal numbness – Before I had my C-section I signed some kind of pre-op release. I can’t remember what it said so maybe it mentioned that I wouldn’t be able to feel my tummy properly for 6 months. Let’s just say I was genuinely surprised to find that the numbness carried on past the time that my scar had healed. I would change the baby, bump against the change table and wonder what had done it only to look down and see that I had. It was very, very strange and I wasn’t aware that it was even a possibility.
A C-section doesn’t mean your bits won’t hurt – Although I agreed to the C-section it wasn’t how I’d hoped things would go. Still, at least all my lady equipment had been spared the ordeal of childbirth. Everything in the vicinity of “La Cucina” would be as pristine as it ever was. Great. We’d all been warned in antenatal class about holding off on sexy times for 6 weeks post-partum and there were instructions about care of stitches etc. But hey, I wouldn’t have to worry about all that. My C-section scar healed up and the SF and I were good to go.
But actually, um, ouch.
Turns out breastfeeding releases a whole bunch of hormones, some of which make your baby chute downright inhospitable to company. I like to think it’s Nature’s way of saying “Hey, hey, hey there. You already have a baby, sweetheart. Maybe you should just go to sleep?”
Nature can be a real dick sometimes.
What’s that smell? Oh, it’s me… – A few days after my son was born I noticed that I had quite noticeable BO. I wasn’t so surprised because I was spending a lot of time in NICU, which is very hot, and I had to get someone to help me with showering.
But then it sort of carried on. I went from having fairly benign body odour to something closer to that of a teenage boy (but without the Lynx overload). Apparently this is our friend “hormones” at work again.
I think that things have settled down on that front now but I’m not sure the baby would say anything if it hadn’t. Unless that’s what all the crying has been about?
It’s not necessarily love at first sight – If the only information you have about having a baby comes from soap operas or Huggies ads then you’d probably expect a lot of soft focus in the delivery room. You might also assume that the first time you see your baby that your whole life makes sense and this is your reason for being and oh-my-god-I-love-them-so-much. In truth it’s not like that for everyone. It took me a while to fall in love with my son. This is no reflection on him or me. It just happens that way sometimes. I felt responsible for him straight away but I didn’t feel the way I thought I should. In the end it doesn’t really matter because I’ll spend the rest of my life loving him. It’s not important how you fall in love with your kid, only that you do.
Parenting a newborn completely does your head in – It’s not the sleep deprivation. At least that wasn’t the problem for me. Rather it’s the inescapability of your baby. You can’t call in sick. You can’t ask it nicely if it wouldn’t mind if you just had a sleep-in. It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead.
No, wait. That’s The Terminator (but you get the picture). A baby is forever and it can be very difficult to accept that you can’t just beg off from being a parent for the day. The buck stops with you. I remember, at one point, feeling the way I had when we were having daily earthquakes. I wanted to get off the crazy ride but knew that that wasn’t going to happen.
Eventually babies get a bit older and you can leave them with a willing nana but to start with it’s pretty full-on. I was shocked at how difficult it was for me to adjust from being a person who could do what she wanted, to being pretty much the opposite of that. In retrospect it’s not that surprising. I’ve never been good with change and becoming a parent is the biggest change there is. I just wish that one of the people who’d harped on about how tired I’d be when the baby arrived had instead said “you might feel like you’re losing your mind for a while – don’t worry, that’s completely normal”.
So, hopefully some of the above is useful to you. Certainly I wish I’d had some notion about this stuff before I had a baby.
Originally published on Stuff, 18/09/2014
(Featured Image, public domain via Pixabay)