Things you think about differently since having children

[BabyLlamaZen]

1. Adoption and surrogacy. I really can't work out my views on surrogacy, but it's not as simple as I once thought. As a general rule, I always thought both would be very hard on the biological mother. Now I've had a baby, I've seen how early on a newborn is attached to it's mother and it's heartbreaking. So even though I understand it's an important process, I find it much more upsetting. I suppose in an ideal world, only those who wanted children would be able to have them and those who wanted them definitely could! Not sure how this would work for gay couples though :(

1. Always thought if one of my single friends got pregnant I'd think it'd be wonderful. Now all I can think of is how horrendously difficult that would be!

Almost all of these!

Also The choice of father is the single most important decision you will make

I wish all girls and young women were told this.

I thought long and hard about this last night.

I honestly don’t know how single parents manage. I have no idea. DH and I have both been home since DS was born and DH is a star who pulls his weight...and it’s still been SOOOOOO hard!

Pumpertrumper we just do all the things you do without any support or company. You'd manage.

@lightenupsummer
You still deserve a medal. I'm on a heap on the floor on the best of days. 😂

I just came back to apologise for the depressing tone of my comment I'm fine most of the time just a bit lonely today. Thanks for the medal!

@lightenupsummer sorry to hear that, hope tomorrow is a better day! Can you bubble up with someone now lockdown is easing?

I'm sure your child/children are going to be very pleased with all you've done for them some day.

I didn’t realise why the birth was important. I thought if the baby was out and healthy and you were healthy, who cares? I didn’t get why people talked about their birth stories over and over and why people were still talking about the c section they didn’t want 20 years later.

I was very wrong and I definitely needed to talk about my experiences too.

Also I hate the whole narrative of however you parent you’re doing a great job because there are a lot of shitty parents out there who are failing their kids and I find bad parenting just painful to watch now.

I’ve changed my mind massively on what I class as ‘bad’ parenting; it’s not longer driven by the way the child is behaving. So for example, pre baby I would see a child having a meltdown on public transport because they wanted to watch YouTube and I’d think ‘that’s crappy parenting’ just because the child was making a scene, regardless of how much effort the parent was making to keep them calm or stop them.

Now I pay way more attention to the parent than the kid. It doesn’t matter what level of meltdown the child is having as long as the parent is making a basic effort to sooth/calm it then they’re doing a fab job. It’s just parents who ignore/play on phones/wind the child up further who I roll my eyes at!