12 things I wish I’d known before having my baby

A wee while ago I asked my lovely followers on Facebook to answer the question above. I knew this was something I wanted to write for a while and whilst I had a ton of things myself that I thought were important, I wanted to find out how my experience of having my first newborn related to everyone else.

I had lots of amazing feedback from some truly fabulous and super experienced mums, grannies and even midwives. As a result, over the last few evenings, I’ve been ignoring the TV, my husband and the wash pile (to be fair, I ignore that all the time!) to collate some of the key things that came up from this post.

Before I begin though, I just want to say…I hope you are having an ok pregnancy. It’s so nice having a wee bub giving you a good doof on the inside every now and again. There’s something so special and magical about the relationship you have with your unborn baby. A connection only you and your baby understand. So whilst pregnancy absolutely has a good few down sides, I really hope they aren’t depriving you of enjoying the nice bits.

The other thing I want to stress is that a lot of the comments that were made highlighted some of the more negative aspects of having a baby - mainly because of the question. For the sake of balance and so I don’t totally freak you out, I would like to state for the record beforehand…

everything is worth it!

 Really worth it.

And you might not recognise that when you’re in the midst of it but that’s ok.

However, every now and again you will smile or laugh or have a moment when they will be asleep (I’ll be honest, it’s mainly the asleep moments that are great!) and it will just feel overwhelmingly amazing. So keep that in mind as you sift through.

Here goes…

1. The Labour

I’m not going to go into masses of detail on this one. You’re pregnant so you’ll have heard the stories from girls at work, your female relatives even the old wifey you met at the post office will have told you hers, whilst no doubt inappropriately fondling your baby bump! To be honest you want to know as little as is humanly possible about it!

But here is something that is worth noting.

Birth plans are the equivalent of watching an episode of Grand Designs.

They start with a plan and a budget (think of the budget as the time your labour will take). There’s an argument with the builder within the first chunk of the programme – this will be the bit where you lose it with your husband/midwife or anyone else who happens to get in your way mid contraction.

Then the budget starts to stretch. Everyone gets a little tense. There’s a wall that’s in the wrong place and things just don’t quite go as smoothly as was initially planned. The budget stretches again. There’s a flood that wreaks havoc on the downstairs flooring. The budget stretches again. But then finally at the end of the show, there is a cracking building that makes everything worthwhile and everyone very, very happy forever and ever.

In other words, a plan is great to have, but it’s just a plan!

They never quite go the way they are meant to so please just know that the less detailed your plan is and the less attached to it you are, the easier it is to change when the time comes.

One lovely midwife illustrated this point well when she popped on to the Facebook post to say,

‘health care professionals can provide a pathway of care but they cannot force you to have something done. Informed consent should be obtained throughout’.

And for god’s sake…if you need the drugs take them!

Ok that was a long one. I’ll keep the rest a little shorter. After all, you’ve got things to do, babies to grow. You’re a proper busy person!

2. Baby days are the easiest.

People are going to mention this…a lot.

You are going to want to punch them.

This is honestly a fact that you do not realise is true until the early days are long gone, you’re dealing with the terrible twos and looking back with fondness to a time when answering back wasn’t an option. By this point the reality of the sleep deprivation has softened a little in your mind too.

The truth is that when you first bring home a newborn that sleeps for a couple of hours at a time, it is hard. You think you know this. You think you have a rough idea of how hard. I’m really sorry and I genuinely don’t want to burst any bubbles here but that rough idea you have…multiply it.

I very much hope that you are that lucky person that gets the baby who sleeps for 5 – 6 hours overnight at a time! If you are, that’s wonderful! (Keep it very quiet from the rest of your ante-natal group!) But if you aren’t, then exhaustion is very real and very disorientating.

Which is why the next point is crucial…

3. Accept help/Ask for help/Admit you need help.

You’ll have this picture of the baby being born and everyone coming round and you making tea and dishing out homemade brownies that you whipped up whilst the baby slept.

Yeah ditch that idea.  

When someone comes to your house for a visit they can pop to Costa beforehand and bring you one too! No one will be offended by this because they remember having a new born themselves. No one expects you to be perfect/to look perfect/your house to look perfect and no one cares either.

What people want more than anything when a new born arrives is to be of help!

They want to come in and do your dishes. They are happy to put on a wash/hang out a wash/take the baby out in the buggy while you sleep or shower. They want to bring round a meal for you. Let grandparents/friends/siblings help out in house, do the dishes, hang up the washing.

Let them!

Seriously. Let them!

And not only that, ask for help.

If you are beyond knackered and all you can think of is sleep, then ask whoever you can to come round and let you go upstairs for a few hours.

The best things my friends and family ever did for me were …

1. My mum, my in-laws, my sister and sister in-law would come to help out by letting us nap for a few hours in the evening. My mum would cook tea in that time too so when we came down we had a proper meal and were already a little rested before the onslaught of night feeds began. Honestly, this help was invaluable and helped keep us sane! 

2. One of my closest friends arrived at my door with a weeks worth of M & S dinners. Stuff that could be shoved in the oven with no prep. Golden!

3. Another of my friends came round after I had baby number two and took my two year old off my hands for an hour and a half. The baby slept and so did I. It was absolute heaven! 

We received so many lovely presents from so many lovely people but these offers of help were the gifts that meant the world to me! Why not plant the seeds of these ideas with family and friends now?!

4. Baby sleep.

Just so you know… your little one probably won’t sleep through the night for a really long time and that’s normal. Dispel all ideas that by 6 weeks old you will have a baby that sleeps through the night.  In reality, when you go back to work a year or so from now, you probably still won’t have a baby sleeping through every night and they will definitely disturb you when you have work the next day. It’s just Sod’s law at work! 

People say to sleep when the baby sleeps for a very good reason.

YOU SHOULD!

Forget the dishes and the housework and just sleep. Put your phone away or you’ll waste serious napping time flicking through mindless guff on social media.

Just sleep. 

5. Everyone is winging it.

They say that babies don’t come with a manual and I can’t tell you how cruel and unfair this is. Out of all the things on the planet that come with a perfectly useless manual, it’s not unreasonable to think we’d have evolved into producing our own little pocket sized personal guide to accompany baby’s arrival.

What use is Google when babies are so unique? You can spend hours and hours going round in circles and not actually find the answers you desperately crave! What I’m saying is ....this is the ultimate game of ‘wing it’. You will soon become an expert at winging it.

Everyone is winging it.

Even the mums who are back in their size 8 jeans, who seem to have perfect sleep though the night babies and all the make up and nails going on, they are winging it. Winging it and also (possibly) not being completely honest about how bloomin’ hard being a new parent is. My own personal guide to winging it goes something like this.

a) If they cry, feed them

b) If it’s not that, take a sniff and change them

c) If it’s not that, they are tired. Get the buggy out!

You will second guess everything. It’s just the way it is.

I should probably note that I am no expert. I have two boys, both rubbish sleepers. My good advice on parenting is pretty limited…which is why I asked all the other good mums to chip in!

6. It’s not always love at first sight. 

You know when you watch a movie or any episode of One Born Every Minute or Call the Midwife or anything where there is a baby born and basically it goes like this ....  

Baby arrives and is handed over to Mum who is beyond emotional - she cries and you cry and your husband secret cries and it’s all so lovely. And whilst watching it, you imagine that the Mum is overwhelmed with a deep sense of instant love like no other kind ever felt before.

The reality is this doesn’t always happen.

And if it doesn’t, that’s ok.

Sometimes bonding with your baby takes a little while. It’s a very personal thing and it will be totally influenced by who you are as a person, what kind of labour you have and another fifty random factors. If it doesn’t happen instantly it will. Just give it time.

7. Feed your baby. 

This is a straight forward title because it’s a straight forward thing. Feed your baby.

Yes try breastfeeding, go for it and if it works and you are both happy and connected and everything is brilliant then - great.

If it doesn’t work, feed them another way. Combination feed, express, bottle feed – just feed them.

There is a lot of pressure out there to breastfeed and I wholeheartedly agree that it is the best way to feed your baby but for any number of reasons if it doesn’t always work out, don’t beat yourself up.

If you are feeding your baby you are doing your job. End of.

8. The clothes.

Couple of really simple but totally vital pieces of information. The man who invented babygrows that button up the back had obviously never had to actually dress a baby. He was a silly man. Front fastening only girls. It’s just not worth the hassle! 

Vests come down and up. You know how the top of a vest has criss cross shoulders? Well it’s so you can pull the neck really wide and whip it off down the way. You are wondering why you would need to do this… well you will wonder no more when you have seen the amount of projectile poo your child can produce! Good luck with that. At least you know the vest thing. There are many of us who didn’t until waay too late.

You also now get super fancy vests that have fastening bits up the front too. I’m going with the theory that a clever mum patented that idea!

9. Get out of the house.

Managing to do anything semi-productive with your first newborn can be really daunting. Things like going shopping and even getting your baby set for a hurl in the pram can seem a bit like mission impossible.

It is an effort and it does take a good bit of time to get into the swing of it all but getting out is important for your sanity! Fresh air is great for the baby and you. Walking with a pram is up there as one of the top three nicest bits of having a baby.

If you can, get to a wee baby class or grab a coffee with a mum from ante-natal. It can be hard getting motivated to go or to get out of the house on time when life runs around a baby schedule. But if you click with the right set of mums it can be totally life changing to have some baby mum support. Support is nice. Support from someone who will be awake when you’re on WhatsApp at 4am is even better!

10. Be a team.

You and your significant other need to work together as a team. You are not a one woman show and here’s why that is really important…you need him to get used to having the baby on his own so you can, at some point in the future, get a break!

The more your other half has to do with the baby the more his confidence will grow and I’m afraid that means handing the bundle across and leaving them to get on with it together. He is perfectly capable of winging it in the same way you are and the more he does the more likely it is that you will feel comfortable leaving them together for some Daddy time whilst you rest/bathe or even get your hair done!

Tag team overnight feeds (if you aren’t feeding yourself).

My husband is the king of the washing pile. He knows where the hoover is (doesn’t mean he uses it but if asked to he absolutely would) and the dishwasher is his domain – I don’t fill it the way it should be filled. And that’s ok with me if it means it’s one less thing to do.

Divide and conquer the jobs.

Gone are the 50’s housewife days. Leave them in the 50’s where they belong!

And finally on to some nice bits…

11. They aren’t little for long (eye roll).

There were lots of mums who mentioned how quickly it goes in. It’s a cliché for a reason…it’s absolutely true. One mum mentioned that she had taken a photograph every day of her baby. Cute idea!

There are some really lovely memory boxes and memory books out there and you will treasure all the little bits you keep for years to come, as will your kids.

But, if you don’t manage to keep up with all of those things in amongst day to day survival, at the very least, breathe in their smell while they are on your shoulder, watch them sleep, leave the housework just to cuddle, stroke their baby hair and soak up as much as you can of their littleness.

And finally…

12. YOU ARE GOOD ENOUGH.

I promise you, you are!

I wish for you a very quick and painless labour. I wish for you a happy, healthy baby. I wish for you 6 hours of continuous sleep a night. I wish for you a group of mum friends who genuinely support you and who tell it like it is. And I very much wish for your baby a life filled with love, luck and happiness.

For those of you that have time on your hands to do a little more light reading then some of the below links may help you out or give you a giggle.

Oh and…if you haven’t thought about newborn photographs yet and you liked the look of the images included in the post then feel free to click the button for a nose at my Maternity page or my Newborn page.

Or perhaps you really don’t have a clue about the whole Newborn Photography thing in which case you might want to click on the image below and have a nose at this wee blog. It will totally help you to get organised for that.

Further reading

Suzanne Zeedyk – This one was suggested by a local Mum. Suzanne is a ridiculously well-known and highly respected research scientist (based in Dundee University too – the best one!) who, amongst many other things, studies child development and most importantly the science of connection and attachment. Her Facebook page has links to literally hundreds of insightful articles that will enhance your understanding of parenting, child development and even adult relationships. Well worth a look.

And for the less high brow and a little light relief we have…

Hurrah for Gin and Peter and Jane. Both ridiculously funny blogs about being a Mum that I love!