To hate "say goodbye to xxxxx once the baby's here" comments

[m4rdybum]

Currently pregnant with my first.

I can't say I enjoy anything nowadays without someone remarking that I'll be waving it goodbye once my baby is born.

I'm not even going about big things, like impromptu weekends away (which I can't do anyway cause I'm skint) or going out on the lash (which I don't do cause I'm a boring fucker).

Someone told me very smugly that I won't be able to sit and eat my breakfast and watch telly for 10 minutes in the morning.

I get that things get hectic and sacrifices are made but I just find it so patronising - like people think I'm expecting it to be a doddle (which I'm not cause I'm a realist).

Ok for me getting up to feed a snugly baby in my own warm house, knowing I had the next day (and the one after that and the one after that.....) off was soooo much easier than being on my feet for 14 hours, running between emergencies then coming off shift at 10am all tightly wound and worrying about the patients I'd left, trying to catch a few hours sleep before doing it all again ( read this going to hurt to get an idea). But that's just me.

I’m not entering into a race to the bottom about this but all I will say is that I don’t feel like I do get a day off, or time to recover. Because it’s 24/7 and no amount of people trying to tell me how tiring/hard/awful it would be prepared me even slightly for what I was about to experience. I don’t feel like I have days off, I feel like I just have days to survive through until somehow “it gets better”.

That sucks, @NoParticularPattern. What is it about it specifically though that's so hard? Non-sleeping/high-needs/colicy/velcro baby? Is it just you/lack of other parent pulling their weight etc? Expectations of you from family / friends re: housework, commitments, being physically run down?

I think this thread illustrates really well that it's all so individual it's a bit of a nonsense to say to anyone 'oh it will be glorious / a nightmare'!

In my case...Sleep deprivation, PND, a body that had previously been fighting fit (and rather sexy, I realise now) now being fat, wounded, leaking, bleeding, recovering and with no core strength, unable to exercise because of my injuries, feeling stripped of my identity, two-hour long screaming sessions with no idea of what was wrong, often in the middle of the night when I was just dead with exhaustion, being too scared to go out in case he screamed and cried, suddenly feeling guilt tripped all the time when previously I thought I had been a decent human being, and most of all feeling so, so, so guilty and shitty because everyone else seemed to be having this profound, magical experience where all the crap was worth it every time the baby smiled or something, and I simply didn't feel that way.

I am really glad that this was not everyone's experience but sadly I know I wasn't alone.

So yeah...if you've ever seen me go off on one on a thread where a postpartum woman on mat leave is being told that of course she should be doing extra domestic duties and making dinner to order because SHE'S AT HOME AND THEREFORE THAT'S HER JOB, that's basically why.

Postpartum women take leave from work because they need it to recover. Childbirth is fucking brutal and we have conveniently forgotten how frequently it used to kill women and infants. I object in the strongest terms to the idea that once a woman has a child, that's it, her purpose now is basically to facilitate everyone else. As if, having gone through pregnancy and childbirth, she is still somehow indebted and needs to atone for the fact that she is temporarily not working while she tries to recover physically and work out which bloody end is up now that she has a newborn and the body and lifestyle to go with it.

If someone took on all domestic duties while on mat leave with a newborn and it worked for them, great, but it would have been the death of me.

AynRandTheObjectivist
Excellent post which sums it up for me too pretty much (except for the exercise...!)

Thanks WTF :) I am sorry that you had a similar experience. Believe me, I would much rather that I really was alone in this. But I know now that I wasn't.