What we wish we knew...

By: Jess Drakes

When I found out that I was pregnant I had such a rose tinted view on what I thought it would be like to have a baby and that was completely ok. Being pregnant and having a baby are both amazing experiences but just because I felt ready to be pregnant didn’t necessarily mean that I was ready to have my baby.

Don’t get me wrong, he is my world and I wouldn’t change him for all the (cold/lukewarm) tea in China, but the job description I made up in my head couldn’t have been further from the actual job itself! I had a pretty straight forward pregnancy (apart from being told he was going to be a giant baby) and I thought I had prepared myself thoroughly and knew what it would take to be a mum. We had prepared his nursery (and showed it to anyone who cared on FaceTime), we had bought every baby related product I could get my puffy hands on, joined antenatal classes and even completed a hypnobirthing course. These things all helped me to get 75% of the way there but what I hadn’t paid any attention to was what the fourth trimester actually involved.

In hindsight, I really wish that I knew what I know now about being a new mum. I wish that other parents had been more open with me about how it could be rather than just telling me to sleep as much as I could (this was one mainly from dads who clearly haven’t had to sleep while heavily pregnant with a large baby pressing on your bladder and sciatic nerve) and that “it does get better” (by the way, it really does but in the midst of baby blues I didn’t need to hear that over and over). I don’t blame them though, I totally get it now. I have bit my tongue when pregnant friends have asked for advice so as not to scare them just before they are due to go through pushing a baby out! What I have made sure to do is to be open with them about my own experience and make sure I am there for them to furiously text words of advice and tell them “it gets better”! Those first few weeks were all a bit of a blur. I look back at pictures of me and my baby or me and my (socially distanced) family and see someone I don’t recognise. I see an exhausted woman desperately trying to look like she is enjoying this new experience but inside I was wanting everyone to leave so I could cry again.

My husband was so incredible through those first few weeks but I couldn’t have felt more alone. I had lost all sense of myself. I hated being sat on the sofa watching my husband clean the house or do some gardening and I felt trapped. Trapped underneath this little helpless soul who I had waited 9 months to meet and would spend a lifetime loving but I felt trapped nonetheless. I couldn’t digest everything that was going on around and to me and I look back now and wish I had been kinder to myself. I didn’t need to decide at that point whether I was fully breastfeeding or fully formula feeding, I didn’t need to ping back to my pre-baby body (fat chance of that with all the pick and mix and biscuits I consumed in pregnancy) and I definitely didn’t need to feel the guilt that I did for how I was feeling at that time. It was most definitely OK for me to not be OK. My whole being had been through such a huge experience but I felt that I had to just spring into action and get on with life as it was before. I’ll be honest, I did let myself think “what the fuck have we done” on many an occasion during those first few weeks. Now I look back and think “why the fuck didn’t we do this sooner”!

I turned a corner though and, guess what, it got better. It was like a light got turned on and someone turned down the white noise machine in my head. I could see so much more clearly and make decisions much more rationally. That turning point is what has enabled me to reflect so positively/pragmatically on my experience. There is so much that I would’ve done differently but also in the same breath I would do nothing differently as that was MY experience. I wish going into motherhood, I had spent less time worrying about things to spend my money on that he would never use or how to breathe during labour and checked in with myself mentally. Ultimately, I had no choice but to be ready to be a mum but I wish I had gone into the fourth trimester with a better idea of what to expect. Maybe I glossed over those bits in all my internet searches and maybe all the books that are sitting on my bookshelf unread talk about the fourth trimester.

Either way, if I can impart any piece of advice on new mums, mums to be or those women wanting to be mums it would be to just go easy on yourself. Don’t feel like you have to get being a mum straight away, don’t feel like you have to be madly in love with your baby the minute they are plonked on your chest all covered in gunk, don’t feel like you have to struggle through sleep deprivation because that’s what you expect with being a parent and definitely don’t feel like you have to make any life changing decisions while you are still recovering physically and mentally from the trauma of chid birth!

Motherhood is the biggest head fuck of a journey but it’s YOUR journey - take the route that you want to and don’t let anyone else tell you otherwise. Everyone will have advice that has worked (or not worked in some cases) for their baby but don’t expect it to work for your little one. Don’t let anyone make you feel like you’re anything less than an exceptional mother for the choices that you make for your child. If you want to go out for dinner with your husband when your baby is two weeks then go but equally, if you want to wait until your baby is two years then do that too! Looking after your mental and physical health is as important as looking after the baby.

You’ve got this, mama bear!