Advice To Those With A Womb With A View

I currently know a number of women who are baby smuggling, and it is delightful to watch their excitement as the prawn in their womb turns into a real life actual human being (or human bean as they are also known).

What is not so charming is to listen to them recount the horror stories that they have been told by other mothers, tales of ripped pereniums (look, it happens but it is incredibly rare), nipples that explode (never seen a documented case), an inability to sit down (again, never read a case) and various other horrible, extremely rare occurances that nobody has experienced but everybody "knows" somebody who "knows" somebody that it happened to.

The looks on their faces, the terror that it invokes, removes what should be a beautiful and happy time for them.  Therefore, I will tell you the absolute truth as I experienced it about childbirth, parenting, and the all that bollocks.

If your first question is "does it hurt" the answer is, quite obviously, yes.  Of course it does, it has to - look at the logistics for a start.  However,  it's not as bad as they say. Honestly.  When I had The Boy, I was given a sleeping drug as I was 1 centimetre dilated. Ten minutes later, I was fully dilated, and giving birth.  That was truly terrifying, and I wasn't prepared, I wasn't ready.  But - he was born (there was a hairy moment due to the fact I hadn't a clue what was going on and was essentially off my tits), he was there, all present and correct.  The stitches hurt much more than the labour (and apparently, as I found out with my second one, the person stitching you up should not be inserting their finger up your rectum to check for tears), but it is do-able.  Really. 

When I had Lid, I had no pain relief at all, due to the fact that the bitch took five days to be ready to pop out, was two and a half weeks late and then decided to almost be born in the car park (and, when asked to "hop up" on the bed by the midwife, I restrained myself better than I had with The Boy and was polite instead).  Again, the stitches hurt, but honestly the pain is nothing compared to meeting the mini person you grew in your stomach.  Truly.

Giving birth? It's like having the biggest, most beautiful life changing poo you will ever, ever have, so use all those muscles and push the bugger out like you're having a giant shit.

As far as pain relief goes, remember there aren't any medals awarded for not having any.  Far from it.  If you need it, have it.  If you have allowed yourself to be caught up in the natural childbirth ideal whereby you do not allow yourself the possibility that you may need medication to help you through, please re-consider.  I cannot stress enough that you need to look after yourself, and that includes making sure that you are ok during childbirth.  Just think on it, ok?

Where breastfeeding is concerned, not everyone can do it, not everyone wants to do it.  So, here's the deal - if you can't, if you don't want to, I give you permission not to.  With The Boy, I tried.  I tried really hard, tortured myself over it, and he lost a lot of weight.  So much that that I had to combine breast feeding with bottle feeding.

I was on my own, I was terrified, and in the end after he demanded more and more bizarre positions to be fed, I stopped breastfeeding altogether.  You should note that I only managed to do that because my midwife, a marvelous woman of many decades experience and a great many of her own children, gave me permission to do so.  With Lid, who used to insert her fingers into my nipples and pull them open, scratching and ripping at them, I gave myself permission (she was constantly hungry and extremely violent, my breasts were bleeding so it made sense to stop and I trusted myself).

You will get extremely tired, and about 5 days after the baby is born, the hormones kick in and you feel utterly, utterly crap.  This is all perfectly normal, as is crying because you feel rubbish and you don't know what you're doing (and so you know, neither did your mum when she had you, or your nan when she had your mum, and so on and so forth back through the ages, regardless of what they may claim).  However, if you find that you are crying more than you think is normal for you (and your partner or close friends will be good at helping you judge this), you may want to see your doctor.  For me, it was when I had been crying for 5 days non stop after my second that I realised things may be a "tad" wrong, but that was my story and it isn't necessarily going to be yours, but just be aware that it could happen and that it is nothing to be ashamed of.  Honest.

People will offer you help, not because they think you are shit and that you are not coping, rather because they love you and want to make sure that you are ok.  You are the priority, because if you are well then you can look after the baby.

"They" say that you should sleep when the baby sleeps.  I could never do that myself, I was too paranoid that I was being judged as a crap parent if the flat was dirty (seriously!) or if the baby slept in the same sleepsuit for two nights, or if everything wasn't sparkling.  I can't remember if I was even offered help (I shouldn't have thought anyone would have dared), but how I wish they had.  How I wish I had rested more with both of them, and been kinder to myself.  I wish that I had had the courage to ask for help, and at times it does genuinely take courage, as your pride mis-advises you that asking for help signifies weakness.  It doesn't. It indicates strength.  Remember this.

Let me tell you a story.  With The Boy, I once had to re-dress him five times because he poo-ed, or vomited, or posseted, or weed over the outfit he was in.  It took me 6 hours to get out of the flat.  I was utterly deranged with determination that we would go out, and we would attend groups, and we would do this, that and the other.  With Lid, I dressed her almost exclusively in sleepsuits for the first month.  We went out, but when I fancied it.  It was much more relaxing, merely because I took the pressure off myself.

Groups are great for making friends, but you won't like everyone there as you may only have a baby in common.  I was in the strange situation that I was the only one amongst my peers who had a baby, and (seemingly) even stranger was that I was single which appeared to make me a threat to the more deranged amongst my female friends.  I would go to these groups and be accused of seeking out other women's husbands when I couldn't have been less interested.  Of the women I met there, I am still in contact with three of them as we shared a sense of humour and disgust at the other parents.

There is no reason to force yourself to go out every day. If you're knackered, sleep.  You're under no obligation to get out of your pyjamas if you don't have the energy to.  Slob about, just make sure you all eat properly.  Try not to pressure yourself to be perfect, because no one actually is, regardless of what they tell you or pretend to be.

The baby will get bigger, and you love for them will grow as they do.  As they get bigger, often they will ignore you, disobey you, but be perfectly behaved for your friends or worse random strangers. 

It is a long, long journey, and there are many sides that can be perceived as being terrible but please believe me when I tell you that all of that evaporates when your baby looks at you, when they smile at you, when they tell you they love you, when they call you mummy, when they do their first poo (in a pottty or a nappy), when their eyes twinkle, when they write their name, when they appear in the first play, and so on and so forth. 

Everything unpleasant, everything physically painful becomes dust, and from that dust a diamond sparkles, and it is a diamond that you made.

Just try to ensure that you eat, rest as much as you can, and that you look after yourself.  Ask for help, and mostly enjoy yourself.  Once you relax, it all becomes a lot better, a lot easier. 

What I can't prepare you for, what nobody prepared me for and even if they had I wouldn't have believed them, is how you feel about your child, and it is this.  Nothing will ever compare to how you feel about your child.  Nothing.  It is unconditional.  It is absolute.  It is incomparable.  It is the neutralisation of everything about you that is bad and awful and wrong.  It is proof that goodness exists.  It is overwhelming in its completeness.  It is a shock to find that everything you thought was love before is merely piss in the wind compared to this.  It can take time.  It can be immediate. 

When it hits, you will never, ever recover.  When it hits, that is when you are truly a parent.  And every bad thing, every awful thing, every painful thing is swept away by the power of it.  You lucky, lucky sods.  Enjoy.