Picture
You know how people talk about that moment when the baby first comes out? Something about an instant connection or love at first sight? I can’t say that was my experience at all. I felt instant relief. Relief that he was finally out, relief that he was safe, relief that I was no longer pregnant and relief that I could finally start the recovery process from all the damage pregnancy does to one’s body. Not to mention feeling incredibly tired. My first thoughts or feelings about my baby were more along the lines of ‘gees, he’s a big baby and ‘wow, his sack is almost bigger than his butt’ (apparently all boys come out retaining some fluid in ‘that’ area and the swelling goes down over the next few days). I can’t say that I felt like a mum instantly nor did I feel that parental love that people talk about. In fact the first few hours of my baby’s life, my mind was mostly on the excruciating pain I was feeling as the nurse was a little slow getting me pain relief after the epidural from my c-section had worn off.

During the first few weeks of my baby’s life, my thoughts were focused on the job at hand; learning to feed, changing nappies, settling him and just generally learning how to care for my baby. During this time my love for him grew but for me it was and still is about getting to know him as a person. The more I get to know him, the more I love him. In fact, I recently said to hubby, “If I had known that bub would be this awesome, I would have complained a lot less during pregnancy.” The beauty of hindsight.

It’s taken me a while to get on board with the whole idea of being a parent. Who am I kidding, I’m still not on board. I’m four months in and I still don’t really see myself as a mum. It’s a bit of a foreign thought to me. I just can’t make that switch in my head overnight. When people refer to me as a parent or a new mum it makes me kinda uncomfortable. My first thought is usually ‘who are they referring to? Oh wait, that’s me, apparently.’ So I asked a friend when she first felt like a mum. “My baby was about eight weeks old and the in-laws were visiting and he wouldn’t stop crying. My mother-in-law tried to settle him to give me a break. But he wouldn’t settle. I couldn’t stand it any more so I took him back and he settled immediately. Seemed he just wanted me. His mum.”

I have well and truly passed the eight-week mark and am still not ‘feeling it’. I know logically that I am his mum, I just haven’t felt it. I’m hoping any day now that moment happens for me.

Well, that moment happened for me today. Yes, today Monday, 22 July. Today I was shopping to kill time while my car was being serviced. I was in Big W looking for a particular Bonds onesie that I happen to love (pictured). It’s doubled over in the chest area to keep bub extra warm. Plus I love the fabric used, the stretchiness of it and this particular onesie is a bit longer which is perfect as my bub is longer than average. In case you can’t tell, I’m a tad obsessed with this onesie. I’ve only seen it in DJs before but have looked in other shops that I know stock Bonds stuff. Well today I found it in Big W, which was the highlight of my day. There were different colours as well as summer and winter versions. I felt like I had struck gold. I grabbed a few in different colours and sizes. I was just looking at a few other items on my way out of the baby section when a young woman came up to me and said something complimentary about my baby – I wasn’t really paying attention. She then said something about needing to get a gift for her niece but didn’t know what babies wear. I would usually miss that this was a cue for me to give a suggestion. I’m actually impressed with myself for picking up on this. She went on to tell me that her niece was three weeks old. I told her that I thought onesies were great and more specifically which onesie I happened to love. Knowing I’m not necessarily normal as I favour practical over cute any day, I added “but hey, that’s just me and everyone is different so she may like something different.” “Oh no,” she said, “It’s good to get this from a mum.” I don’t know why, but this made me feel super awkward which would have been apparent as I let out an awkward laugh and then got out of there as quickly as possible. This complete stranger saw me with a baby and credited me as being a mum. And she was serious. No laughter accompanied her comment. It felt strange that someone would put any faith in my knowledge as a mum. What do I know? I’ve only been at this for a few months. As I continued to walk around the shops, her words kept ringing in my head. The more I thought about it, the less (and only slightly less) awkward it felt. This might actually be the start of me feeling like I’m a mum. How strange!

 
Picture
Our baby was only two weeks when this topic came up. Hubby was getting ready to go back to work for the first time since we’d had our baby. I was doing baby talk to bub who was sitting in his bouncer on the kitchen bench. I jokingly said to hubby as he walked by, “So when do you want to start on the next one?” I can’t emphasise how much of a joke this was to me. “Oh yeah, as soon as you’re ready to go,” he said as he passed through the room. “Um, was that a joke?” I yelled out to him in another room. “It had better be a joke,” I said more quietly to bub sitting in front of me. As hubby walked back through the room and out the door for work, he smiled and said “Nah, let’s go straight away.” What?! Surely he was joking. One could easily assume he was joking. But something told me he wasn’t. And then he was gone – off to work.

It wasn’t until a few weeks later that I tentatively brought up the subject. I was a little scared to bring it up because I had a feeling he was dead serious. Now, hubby has a habit of avoiding serious conversations so I waited until we were in the car to bring it up – there’s no escaping me when we’re in the car. So as we were driving along I asked him “So, like, were you serious when you said you think we should start on our next kid straight away?” “Yeah.” I was a little dumbfounded. I didn’t know what to say. As I was fumbling to find the right words to respond, trying to figure out where to start, he kept going. “Look, it took us how many years to get pregnant with this one, the longer we wait, the more likely it is we have more trouble or possibly can’t even have more kids.” This isn’t as ridiculous as it sounds. We know a couple in a similar situation and it has us both freaked out. But after what I had just been through in pregnancy, there’s no way I was going to go again straight away. My challenge was to communicate this to hubby in a way that he would accept it. “Yeah, ok, but, like, I need time to recover.” “Do you want to have more than one kid?” “Yes.” “Then recovering is a luxury we can’t afford.” I love how he said it like it was that simple. At that point I didn’t have much to say as I was kinda feeling hurt by this. Being a female I tend to read into things. The fact that he even thought this way told me that he didn’t have a clue or an appreciation of what I went through just by being pregnant. If I were to become pregnant again immediately, it would break me. I consider myself to be pretty strong, but I also know my limits. And this would push me over the edge with no sign of recovering in the foreseeable future.

Hubby wouldn’t let me argue it though. No matter what excellent reasons I gave for not going again straight away, he’d just cut me off with “Do you want more children or not?” It was as though he had already decided there couldn’t possibly be a reason that would trump that argument.

At this point I realised I needed some professional reinforcement. I knew without a doubt that no medical professional would agree with my husband – actually no woman would agree with him. So I let it go for the time being and waited patiently for my postnatal appointment.

“So when would you say is a good time to go again?” I asked my obstetrician. “Two weeks ago,” he said. My eyes just about popped out of my head. “What?!” I exclaimed. “You can have sex as of two weeks ago,” he said as though I should know that. I did know that. I didn’t care about that.

Me: Oh no, I mean go again as in get pregnant again?
Doctor: Oh, I thought you meant the fun stuff. As far as getting pregnant, is that something you want to do soon?
Me: No, but my husband does. As you may recall it took us a while to get pregnant in the first place and my husband thinks that if we wait we’ll have trouble again. So he wants to go again right now. I need time to recover and I need your medical knowledge and advice to back me up.
Doctor: Well just tell me how long you want to wait and I’ll tell you that’s the amount of time you have to wait.

How awesome is my doctor?! But then he got serious and explained that I do need to give my body time to heal. He went into detail about the possibility of my cut bursting open if I got pregnant too soon as a result of not giving it enough time to fully heal. If that happened then I would lose my baby and my uterus. Talk about not having any more children! He advised me to wait two years before getting pregnant if I wanted to have a vaginal birth and waiting about six months if I was happy to have another c-section. He warned that it would be a guaranteed c-section if I got pregnant within the next two years. I thought that sounded like a very solid argument to wait. My cut bursting open had me a little freaked out I must admit.

When I got home I relayed this conversation to hubby. As I suspected there was no arguing with that! Finally we were both agreed. We would wait to have more children. Crisis averted, sanity saved. I could now enjoy being pregnant-free without fear of it happening again too soon. What a load off!

 
Picture
So if I’m going to be perfectly honest I should probably start by admitting that I’m one of those people. Which people? The ones that judge parents out in public with naughty children. I have seen kids throwing tantrums in grocery shops and watch parents let them get away with it. Now that I’m a bit older and hopefully a tad wiser, I realise I truly had no idea what anyone was getting away with, if in fact they were getting away with anything. How could I? I was witnessing one tiny scene without having watched the rest of the play.

Because I used to be like this, when I went out in public with my new baby I felt like everyone was judging me. It was probably also due to my complete lack of confidence in my parenting ability. I haven’t been around young kids or babies much in my life so I really have no clue what I’m doing. Everything I do is my best guess. Bub would be crying and I wondered if people were thinking that I should be comforting him more, or maybe they thought I was comforting him too much. These thoughts can do your head in and they were consuming too much of my mind. It was time to pull myself together. I was far too tired to waste time and energy thinking about what strangers might be thinking of me and my parenting. Who are they to judge? They don’t know me, my baby or our situation. Why give mere strangers power? No more! I vowed to step out in public with confidence and give all my energy and attention to my baby. Easier said than done, but sometimes you have to fake it til you make it. Eventually I will genuinely feel, and more importantly act this way.

But what about family? That’s a different category. I’m all for constructive feedback. In fact I welcome it. I’m the first to admit I don’t know what I’m doing. This doesn’t mean I will take on every suggestion, but I’m open to hearing it. Someone in my family whose feedback I have great respect for is my dad. We have a similar way of thinking. I have often gone to him for advice and place a lot of value on what he has to say. So I was a little surprised when he said… oh wait, I have to back it up. In order for this to make sense I need to go back about a month or so.

So there was a time when all of a sudden my excellent little feeder stopped being so excellent. He never had any problem going on the boob. In fact, the boob was a guaranteed silencer. If he was crying or upset, I’d offer him some milk and he’d go from wah wah wah to gulp gulp gulp in under a second. But all of a sudden it had become a battle just to get him on. This was really annoying during the day, but at least I could just wait a bit and try again. But our nighttime routine relied heavily upon him feeding, as this is what put him to sleep and kept him asleep for so long. So after his shower, I would dress him and get him all ready for his pre bed feed. I’d ‘assume the position’ and before I could even get him on he would start crying. He’d do a bit of head banging and arching his back and throwing his arms around. He was really unsettled. I had no idea what was going on so I called my sister to see what she thought.

Sister:     Hmmm, are you into baby wearing?
Me:         Well, I have a carrier.
Sister:     Why don’t you try wearing him during the day more? He could be unsettled because he’s not being held enough.
Me:         What? Can that seriously make him like this? Not holding him enough?
Sister:     Think about it. In third world countries mothers co sleep and wear their babies all the time. Do you see those                        babies crying?

I honestly didn’t know how much those babies cried. I’d never looked into it. But perhaps she had a point. I had nothing to lose in trying it. Thankfully it was the weekend and I had hubby home to help me. “Right, between the two of us we need to hold this kid as much as possible today.” I told him. So we passed him back and forth and didn’t put him down much at all. It was hard work but we committed to it to see if it would make a difference.

That night when I went to feed bub for bed, he went straight on, fed for an hour and drifted off to sleep. I was really surprised. I also felt terrible. I’m a bad mother! I haven’t been holding my baby enough. I couldn’t believe the effect this had on him. This was going to be harder for me to keep up during the week when I had him on my own, but at least we’d solved the mystery.

As the weeks went by I did my best to hold him as much as possible during the day. But holding or wearing him was rather restrictive so I couldn’t do it non-stop. I just did the best that I could. Sometimes my best wasn’t good enough and this was evident through bub’s unsettled behaviour. So I’d have to try harder. I would also try to make the most of having hubby home on the weekend. Kinda like trying to overdose bub on love for two days and hoping it would last a little into the week. Ha ha. Nice thought. At the end of the day it wasn’t practical to carry him ALL day but I learned to stop and give him extra time and attention if he seemed agitated. At the same time, I don’t think it’s a bad thing for babies to cry so I would still let him cry a bit too. I guess it’s all about balance and if anyone has figured out a formula for the perfect balance, I’d love to hear it.

Anyway… so when I felt I could handle it, I decided to take a trip to visit my parents with my baby. It was just a short plane ride but it meant taking bub out of his home environment for a few days. Hubby had to work so he didn’t come. I was on my own.

At this time, my sister, her husband and children were also staying with my parents. Having kids there made it a lot more fun than my usual visits. But it also meant that I wasn’t comfortable putting bub down like I normally would. At home I would put him on my bed, the couch or in his bouncer on the floor or bench. I could do this and walk away to do whatever I needed to do. But with kids around under the age of five, I couldn’t exactly do this and leave him unattended. It was more work for me but it was only a few days so I wasn’t too worried. Plus, with bub in a different environment, I thought it was probably good for him to be held more to give him some extra security.

Well, my dad obviously observed all of this and when I spoke to him on the phone a week later I was surprised at what he said. I was saying how it was difficult to do some things when I had a needy baby that wants to be held all the time. And you know what my dad said? “He’s only that way because you’ve made him like that.” I was shocked. “What? I’ve made him needy?” “Yes. You’ve conditioned him to be needy, so that’s why he’s like that. But he’s a first child so I’m sure you’ll learn with your others. You’re not as bad as some people. But you’re pretty quick to pick him up when he cries.” Gees, if only he saw how much I let him cry at home before I pick him up. I had to stop and take a moment at this stage. I have a lot of respect for my dad’s opinion but this particular ‘feedback’ was based on his observations of me and my child staying in someone else’s house in unusual circumstances. He had no knowledge of the issue I thought I had just resolved with not holding my baby enough nor how I had changed my routine being in a different home for a few days.

My initial thought was to justify and explain all that he didn’t know. I thought it should be brought to his attention that he was a bit too quick to judge without all the facts. Maybe he would see things differently if he knew the background. But then I realised this isn’t the last time something like this is going to happen. If I feel the need to explain and justify my actions every time someone has a comment on my parenting, then I will be doing that the rest of my life. People are always going to judge or give me feedback that I don’t agree with. There’s nothing I can do to stop this. So instead I decided to take this opportunity to practise how to handle this sort of feedback. It’s hard when it comes from someone you respect, but at the end of the day there was way too much information he didn’t have. I have the whole picture, he has a small part of it. And although I trust my dad’s judgment, I trust my judgment of his judgment more – if that makes sense. He’d spent all of five days around my baby so this time I was choosing to discard his feedback. After all, can you really hold a newborn too much?