Will Life Ever be the Same?
Life is never the same after you’ve had a baby. On the upside, it’s a lot more fun: but on the downside, this fun element doesn’t always (or even usually) kick in straight away. Many new mothers and fathers find the early weeks and months a bit of a haze – there’s just so much about this new life to get used to, and sometimes it can all seem too much. There never seems enough time in the day to do all the things you need to do – let alone have some time left over for yourselves. The thing you’ve got to remember is to hang in there: it might be tough going at the moment, but it really is going to get better in the not-too distant future.
I need some space for me!
You have several months to prepare yourself and get used to the idea, but somehow the arrival of a baby is always a shock. And nothing is more shocking, particularly when it’s your first child, than the realization of how much time looking after a tiny infant can take up. It takes up hours and hours and hours of every day – and, contrary to some expectations, these hours are not merely spent playing with the baby, taking him for walks in his stroller, or having coffee mornings with friends.
It’s all too much!
A lot of looking after a baby is repetitive, boring work. It’s worth remembering that it is a lot easier for us than it was for our grandparents when their offspring were young. But even with all the labor-saving machines we’ve got around our homes, there’s still plenty to be done: washing and ironing to get through, diapers to change, doctors’ appointments to keep. And that’s before you’ve started on any other household chores, which – whether you were used to doing them or not before your baby arrived – may well be coming your way now if you’re at home all day.
One of the reasons why it all gets too much especially for new mums (or dads, if they’re the ones that stay at home) is because you feel you’ve got so little control over your life after a baby arrives. If this is your first child, your life may become very different. Perhaps you were used to an office life in which you could decide what was going to happen and when. Suddenly, maybe within just a week or two of leaving work, that certainty about what a day will hold vanishes. Instead of feeling in control and on top of things, you feel you’re living in disorder, mess, and chaos. There are so many things to sort out and no realistic possibility of doing so.
Making time for yourself
Don’t think that being a new parent means taking on some saintly mantle and giving up all hope of an evening out with friends, or a night at the movies, or a swim at the local pool. You do need time for yourself. Not only is it fair that you still have a bit of life for you and you alone, it’s actually best or your child and your partner.
It’s amazing how much of a lifeline a bit of independence can be in the early months of parenthood. It can help you. put your life into perspective and remind you that there are other things going on outside of your immensely absorbing new life. You’ll feel better in yourself if you have some interests that are separate from your immediate family, and you’ll find you actually enjoy the time you spend with your baby and partner more because you’ve had some time apart from them.
Don’t feel selfish about asking for time on your own when you’ve got a small baby; look on it as an investment in your sanity, in your own future, and in your relationships with those around you, too.
How to organize time for yourself
Organizing time out for yourself won’t necessarily be easy, but if you look hard enough, it will usually be possible. The most important first step is to make your own private time a priority: don’t allow it to be pushed to the back burner.
Ideally, you need to be able to hand your baby to someone for a few hours so that you can completely get away from being a caregiver for a short while. But if there is no one you are happy leaving your baby with, you can still invest in some “me time.” Try this: next time your baby goes down after feeding, run yourself a hot bath, and add your favorite bubbles. Get yourself a delicious cold drink, put on a face pack, play some music if you feel like it, and light some candles in the bathroom. Simply wallow for as long as you can.
Having massage or enjoying a reflexology session can be very relaxing and will help you switch off. Some practitioners will visit you at home to make it easier for you – a few can even bring a babysitter.
Your support network
It’s worth making sure you have a support network you can rely on. This will help you get a bit of time to yourself, because as your child gets older you’ll certainly need to rely on others from time to time, whether you’re in paid work or not.
If you look after the baby while your partner is working, your partner can enjoy caring for the baby during the evenings or weekends, and this will allow you a bit of freedom.
If you’re a mum who’s breastfeeding, ask your partner to take your baby for a walk in the sling or stroller once in a while. Your baby is less likely to cry and want milk while she’s on the move and if her mum is out of earshot.
Meanwhile, you will have some precious peace and quiet.
Try to spend more time with people who boost your confidence in your ability to be a parent, and spend less time with those who undermine you – that’s those who tell you what to do and how to do it, rather than listening to your views.
Beyond your partner, you may be able to call on family members like your mother or mother-in-law – but if not, you need to start finding other helpers for your network. They could include older neighbors, other mothers, babysitters, and au pairs. As your baby gets older, investigate whether your shopping center has a baby care service where you could leave your baby while you shop.
You don’t have to leave your baby for hour after hour with anyone else. In fact, that could be a very bad idea for such a young child. But don’t feel that to be the perfect parent you have to be hands-on 24 hours a day – you don’t.
Adapting to life with a baby
Things do seem to change all the time in the first few months of your baby’s life, and it can be disconcerting. No sooner do you think that you’ve got everything figured out and you know when your baby will be asleep and when he’s awake, then suddenly he does something you don’t expect and the whole routine is up in the air again. It’s confusing, but it’s actually a measure of how fast your baby is developing and how quickly his life is changing.
Why things change so much
This may surprise you, but babies do not always take well to being laid in a crib, put down to sleep, or even left to play or kick their legs. What they really, really want is to be held all the time in close proximity to a breastful of warm milk from which they can sup whenever they feel like it. The structure we expect from our babies – that they will feed at roughly similar times of the day, that they will sleep or roughly 3 to 4 hour intervals, that they will sleep for longer at night and so on – is our invention, not theirs. That’s why we’re so often confounded by their behavior. Because they didn’t write the rule book, we did. And they haven’t read it yet!
Coping with an unsettled baby
One particularly difficult problem many parents have to deal with is colic. Typically, a bout of colic strikes in the evening, and it can last for 2 hours or more at a time.
It can seem like the thin end of the wedge after a long, hard day, and can make you feel inadequate at a time of day when you’re running short on energy and need to have your confidence boosted, not dented.
All my babies have had an unsettled period in the early evening, and I remember how concerned we were when it was happening with our first baby, Rosie. By Miranda, my third, I found the best way to cope was to have a glass of wine, put on a CD, and have a slow dance around the room with her. She didn’t always stop crying right away, but she seemed to like the change of pace and I felt a lot more relaxed.
This pattern of unsettled evenings can go on interminably. The only way to deal with a phase of colic is to live with it and to believe it will go away (and it will, usually at around 3 months).
Every day is different
Young children, but especially babies under 6 mont of age, don’t function as we would expect or always want them to. No two days are alike: their behavior often seems completely random and unfathomable. Occasionally, you will hear stories of a baby who arrived in the world complete with a natural routine that made life a dream for his parents. Don’t listen to these stories, because they are almost always fiction have probably lost every grain of truth in the telling.
In short, don’t expect your baby to behave in an organized fashion in the early week and you won’t be disappointed. But that doesn’t, of course, mean you can’t work around your baby, and introduce an element of order into your lives yourself.
Studies show that 80 percent of normal, healthy babies have at least one period of unexplained crying every 24 hours.
Coping with your new life
It’s easy enough to say that you should stop worrying about how your house looks, or whether you’ve got a meal in the oven, or even how you’re looking yourself. Easy to say, but not easy to do. How many of us want to stop caring about our homes, our lives, and ourselves? The truth is that some parents find it relatively easy to cope with the fact that life gets less controlled and more chaotic, and others find it very difficult indeed.
The key to coping is in knowing yourself. Think about the way you lived before your baby was born, and think about the way things are now. Are you the sort of person who can live with piles of ironing everywhere, who doesn’t mind surviving on take-out and ready-made meals, and who doesn’t mind knowing there’s a bit of dust on the top shelves? Or do you know in your heart of hearts that you’ll never be happy unless you feel on top of your domestic situation?
There’s no “right” or “wrong” sort of parent. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a control freak or whether you’re happy-go-lucky in every way. You just need to find a balance that’s right for you and your baby, and try not to set yourself unrealistic expectations to live up to.
Coping with your new life
It’s easy enough to say that you should stop worrying about how your house looks, or whether you’ve got a meal in the oven, or even how you’re looking yourself. Easy to say, but not easy to do. How many of us want to stop caring about our homes, our lives, and ourselves? The truth is that some parents find it relatively easy to cope with the fact that life gets less controlled and more chaotic, and others find it very difficult indeed.
The key to coping is in knowing yourself. Think about the way you lived before your baby was born, and think about the way things are now. Are you the sort of person who can live with piles of ironing everywhere, who doesn’t mind surviving on take-out and ready-made meals, and who doesn’t mind knowing there’s a bit of dust on the top shelves? Or do you know in your heart of hearts that you’ll never be happy unless you feel on top of your domestic situation?
There’s no “right” or “wrong” sort of parent. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a control freak or whether you’re happy-go-lucky in every way. You just need to find a balance that’s right for you and your baby, and try not to set yourself unrealistic expectations to live up to.
You’re the perfect parent for your baby, so don’t torture yourself thinking about whether you’d be so more successful if you could only be someone else. No one else could be a better parent for your child than you are- although that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t always try your best.
Avoiding comparisons
Whatever else you take on board from this book, I’m absolutely certain you won’t be following the advice I’m about to give you now. Why? Because although every parenting author will suggest you DON’T compare your baby with anyone else’s, we all do it – however hard we try not to.
Mothers groups
In many ways, mothers’ groups can be a lifeline: they provide other parents to chat to, share tips with, and make friends with. The downside is that, from the word go, you’re secretly comparing your baby with theirs. You discuss things in a neutral way, but inside you’re feeling insecure. How come that baby, born 2 days before yours, is already holding her head up? Why does that child sleep through the night, while yours wakes every 3 hours no matter what you do?
Have confidence in your baby
As the parenting guru Sheila Kitzinger says in her book The Year After Childbirth, the reason we compare our child with others is because we’re suffering from low self-esteem. We’re not experience yet in parenting, an it’s natural to doubt our own abilities. As time goes on, you’ll become more confident in trusting your own instincts. You will worry less about how other people’s children are doing and take your cue about how your own are doing from within yourself, not from what you see around you.
Don’t get into the habit of saying your own child is “a bit slow” or “not as advanced as yours,” because you’ll start believing it and your lack of confidence will eventually filter through to your child.
Try not to let the inevitable business of comparing your baby to others lead you to put your own child down. Remember that everyone needs someone to believe in him, and if you can’t rely on your mother and father to do this, who can you rely on? You don’t need to blind yourself to your child’s faults and failings, but don’t underestimate the importance of your support and loyalty.