Goodbye my independent life, hello motherhood

[ChroniclesofMama]

C-Section is happening 4 weeks today. First baby. I have been working like mad (run my own business) to get everything ready to handover to my colleagues. I have finished the work and now feeling suddenly scared, overwhelmed, not sure what to do with myself!

I am terrified of what it's going to be like, and how my life will never be the same again. I feel like I'm having a funeral for my old self. I'm also terrified of the birth (CS). I can't visualise what having a baby in my life is going to be like and so it's a great big unknown. I know that's life - I can't control this. I can only control myself and my own thoughts but not what happens or how the baby is. I have to just let go and let it happen like all the other zillions of mothers who've ever been.

But can anyone resonate with this? Do you remember feeling the same?

I feel like women have a wall of silence about motherhood. They talk about it all through pregnancy and then boom - once the baby is here the child-free friends aren't in the loop. I don't have any close family like sisters who've had babies, but many of my friends have. They don't say much after the birth - just a text message that he/she is here and mother and baby doing well - and then I don't see them until a few weeks later when they are ready and they're just in Mum mode. Weren't they all terrified? What was the transition from being your own person to being a mother like? How do you adjust? How do you make sense of this?

Yes! I remember that feeling well (and my kids are now adults), I had a good job as a facilities manager but stopped work because the hours were unsociable and the travel was a killer. I was terrified I'd lose all sense of who I was, that I would forever be "So-and-so's mum" and to be fair for a while I was but, like everything else in life, I adjusted and soon loved being a mum.

You forgot goodbye bump, hello feet..

Seriously op you wil be more than fine.

Yes, but it didn’t hit me until baby was here. It was a massive shock! Took me a little while to grow into my new role but eventually started to enjoy it. I think the thing I mourned most was not being able to do something at the drop of a hat, I had to think about how will this impact their sleep/feeding etc but I was a bit of a routine freak. I had a section with my second. Please dont worry about it, it will be fine and there’s nothing you can do except follow advice about recovery etc. If I was to ever have another I would definitely opt for a section again. It is a shock but all absolutely worth it.

Yes, life will never be the same again.
But what you will have is a little person who you will love more than you ever imagined could be possible.
You will be fine! More than fine!

I didn't feel terrified when dd was a newborn because she didn't feel like a separate entity, she still felt like part of me. I just trusted in myself and my instincts and spent so much time swooning over her, nothing else mattered. Although dh was the only one who knew what each cry meant - he reckons she sounded a bit different depending on whether she was tired, hungry, etc. but I just tried everything as many times as I needed to until something worked!

At some point your baby will not stop crying, no matter what you do. Just remember: you haven't failed, no-one else is judging you, the crying will stop eventually, it's sometimes sensible to put your baby down in a safe place (like it's cot) and walk in to a different room for a minute because it does get too much at times.

She's 3.5 now and I still feel all funny when I see her, she actually cuddles me by choice now too which is awesome. She's still so little I want to protect her but she's so confident it's incredible to just sit back and let her do her thing too.

I'm so pleased for you op, you've got a wonderful, exhausting, exciting rollercoaster ride ahead of you. Love every minute possible, our time with them is so short

Hi OP. My advice would be to stop thinking like this. To me it is a ridiculous notion. I always felt that my baby was a blessing (I do understand that I was very fortunate to feel like this). The birth of your child is not something that should be seen as a hindrance to your ‘independent life’. Of course your life will change but not in a detrimental way, things will be different, but not a bad different. It will open up a new chapter in your life, not slam shut the book in which you have been living. It will hopefully open up a whole new part of you, your baby is, after all, part of you. Babies are very portable and can be such fun I wish you well and I do not mean to be cruel in saying this but please remember that your baby did not ask to be born, you chose for them to come into your world. I wish you and your baby the best of luck.

Honestly, OP, take a breath. You are only relinquishing your independence for a brief period — as your baby becomes more independent, you get every last vestige of your old self back again. I have an eight year old, and while I loathed the small baby stage and waltzed back early from maternity leave, I’m pretty much exactly the same person I was before I had DS.

Just don’t panic if you feel in the early days you’ve made a gigantic error.

And my CS was calm, and a surreal but perfectly pleasant and pain free experience.

I am the most non maternal person you could meet. Despite that I'm a mother of two.

I had an emergency CS with my first - it was a piece of cake. I remember lying on the operating theatre bed feeling terrified that my life was going to change forever. One of the nurses asked if I was OK because I was crying and I blubber out 'I'm about to become a Mum'. In short, I was shitting myself as well as being completely out my face on whatever drugs they'd given me. A very short time later my daughter was out and in this world, handed to DH, shat on him and I suddenly felt like the most important person in the world with THE most important job in the world. And I was also treated like royalty (read: kept in hospital for five days and brought food).

It was all new and weird but it was ok. In fact it was really good. Me and DH had made something.

There are some weird shit hormone things kick in that make the most independent, selfish women (me) a bit gooey and motherly.

You'll be fine. You do your mothering your way and rock it! Fuck everyone else's opinion, we've all been doing this for fecking years and we've muddled through. That ol thing in there called instinct works better than anything you'll ever read in a book.

Enjoy your tea and toast and don't fret about having a glass of something to celebrate.

OP, I totally totally freaked out once my eldest was born, and I thought "what the hell have I done?" once it really hit home how my life had changed and the independence I was giving up. I really struggled that first year. I don't say this to scare you - I just want you to know that, if you find it hard to adjust to the change, that's really normal, and it's Ok! Just know when it's time to ask for help.

It does all get easier as you go along. Once my youngest was about 4, I got a definite sense of getting a bit of my life back. (I know that sounds a long time to you now, but it really isn't in the whole scheme of things.) And a large part of that is because you just adapt to your new life as a parent. It will come, but don't worry if it's a bit of a bumpy road. All the best, hope everything goes well!

I had a vision. I’d pop him in the car and go hither and thither visiting people, having a natter whilst the baby slept, pinging back to my ordinary clothes. Nope. I realised how different it would be when I discovered I couldn’t eat a meal uninterrupted.

But, you adjust and it becomes ordinary and then there’s another ordinary later on. DH ran his own business, so wasn’t there much, but you get a routine and it settles down and it’s fine. Didn’t