To wonder why people want you to feel stressed about motherhood.

[Beebeezed]

Ever since I got pregnant and had my baby I have realised I that so many people like to tell you the worst parts of pregnancy, labour and motherhood.

Once I announced my pregnancy and explained I felt much better after a tough 3 months, the response was mainly ‘oh you wait til the third trimester!’ ... third trimester comes, tell people I’m mainly ok but feeling more tired... ‘ohh you wait till the baby is here. Then you’ll know what tiredness is!’

Baby arrives... tell people how I’m feeling (which is quite good actually overall, have been blessed with a good sleeper and feeder). The main response is ‘oh you wait for the teething, or the terrible twos etc’... it’s almost like people don’t want you to be enjoying it, and if you are they want you to be aware the tough is yet to come.

My hairdresser is pregnant, and I told her about my labour and she burst in to tears saying I was the first person to tell her a slightly positive labour story. (I left out some bits for the exact reason of this post!) So far all she has heard has been the horror stories and she’s petrified. I just don’t see why people feel the need to do this?!

I totally understand people have really tough times, but I just feel conveying this to pregnant people/new mothers is slightly mean.

Why can’t people just let new Mother’s enjoy the moment rather than telling them all the negatives they are going to deal with in the future?! Unless of course you’re really good friends, but I’m talking about Acquaintances or even people on public transport!

Has anyone else found this?

All I can say is that a good friend of mine said to me when DC was 6 weeks old:

“Why didn’t you tell me how awful it is?”

We can’t win!

Watching TV shows about mental health in new mums would suggest that high expectations vs reality is a trigger. If people are genuinely only being told the bad stuff wouldn't their expectations be lower?

I've found this!

I have 3 dc (and am pregnant with number 4). I absolutely get that it can be difficult but I personally don't feel its as horrendous as some people try to make you feel it is.
My lovely friend recently had her first baby and, when she was pregnant, asked me was it really awful as everyone she spoke to were terrifying her with tales of horror.
It's bizarre IMO.

My cousin is probably one of the people you've described in your post, OP. I have tried to be kind and patient with her but honestly, she sucks the life out of me with her constant complaints of how tired she is and how awful motherhood is (Its commented on by lots of family members: "did you see xxx? did she remember to tell you how exhausted she is?")

You'll be fine OP, motherhood is lovely. I wouldn't have kept getting pregnant if it was as awful as some would led you to believe.

It’s always been that way. Personally I’ve never understood people’s obsessions with regaling expectant mothers with every detail of their horror stories (sometimes for years) because it’s more or less irrelevant to that person.
Every birth, apart from the basic mechanics, obviously, will be different. Depends on so many variables, including an individual’s pain tolerance. What’s a 10 to one person will be a 5 to another. One of our births was horrendous, one was a piece of cake. Passing that on to a nervous mother to be isn’t going to help them one iota.

I think people are just making conversation, and it’s an almost universally accepted truth that child rearing and babies are hard. So nobody is going to tell you ‘oh congrats! It’ll be a breeze!’, it’s a way to try and connect I think, a bit of a ‘oh welcome to the difficult club’. Or maybe the people you’ve spoken to genuinely had very difficult times in pregnancy and with their kids and they assume it’s universal.

When I was told, a friend who had just given birth told me it was like dying.
I then spoke to another friend after her DD was birn and I was heavily pregnant. She said it hurt a lot obviously, but you get through it. I really needed to hear that after all the horror stories and really appreciated it.

It is really tough to get the balance right here, though. I recently sent a friend a message with a newborn saying 'I hope you're having a lovely time but if not... ignore all the people who tell you this is the best/easiest time and to treasure every minute!'. I got told that a lot with a newborn, and it was a) bollocks for me (having my 10 month old is a million times better than having my newborn was - but obviously others will have different experiences, that's the point!) and b) really upsetting - I felt so guilty for not treasuring it. Generally, some of the shittest advice is given by people with older children who have forgotten the bad bits of having a baby and just go all rose-tinted and 'oh, you have to cuddle them to sleep for an hour at a time five times a night? LUCKY YOU to be getting all those cuddles!', which is completely about their nostalgia and completely not about the desperate mother in front of them.

I try and go for 'it's really hard but it's really lovely' (if asked, I think the best strategy is not to volunteer advice unprompted at all, really - but I broke that with my friend because I so wished someone had told me that it was ok not to 'treasure every minute') - I hope that's an ok balance, but I'm sure it's not for some people. We (and our DC) are all too individual for there to be one right thing to say.

Don’t ever forget, some people find it tough. Some people find driving, or cleaning their house, or working, or studying, or travelling tough beyond the levels they can cope with. Everyone has different levels They can cope with.

We’ve all got that friend who has to be worse off than everyone else! Ignore them. Parenthood is AMAZING and that little baby is yum yum yum. In rare cases you will not feel Like that, or the baby will have complex problems but what’s the point worrying about that until it happens?

As for labour you’ll be fine. It’s not much fun but you’ll survive.

I actually think that these days I find it the other way. Banging on about hypnobirthing and visualisation, how magical breastfeeding is etc. Yes they can be. But I think they often set up a woman to feel crap if she can’t do those things. So I suppose it goes both ways?

I think the reason you never hear the nice happy stories is because people are afraid of coming across as 'smug'. I had such an easy baby, everything was a breeze. She slept through the night from early on, hardly ever cried, very few tantrums as she got to the toddler stage, sailed through teething. I was very reluctant to tell anybody this in case they thought I was bragging or rubbing it in. It was nothing more than pure luck but I still felt I had to play it down.

Why are people talking to the OP as if she's pregnant? She's been through labour and has a baby, she doesn't need reassuring about either!

You can't do right for doing wrong really. If you admit that you aren't struggling and are actually enjoying things (I've been blessed with a good sleeper and a happy placid baby so the first four months have actually been quite lovely) then people either think you're bragging or want to bring you down a peg or two by telling you how awful it's about to become. It's easier sometimes just to join in and say what's expected of you because people seem to accept it more and get less annoyed about it. So I just nod and smile a lot.

DP has found this too - people keep making jokes about him being sleep deprived with a new baby and when he says 'actually I'm not at all', they don't really know what to say!

I found people tried to scare me the whole way through pregnancy.

I had an absolutely amazing birth and I'll tell anyone and everyone about it.

Unfortunately after my amazing birth, I developed PND and for an entire year after birth I was a complete and utter mess and I desperately wanted someone to identify with what I was feeling so I did talk about how hard it was.

Now I am out of PND I do talk about it to people because i had absolutely no idea what it could be like and I think it's really important to talk about it. (My sil said she had absolutely no idea so I obviously did enough smiley smiley to cover it up) I'm not trying to scare anyone, but to reassure that I'm there if they ever feel overwhelmed and low because I've been through it.

I do think sleep is so important to your experience of having a baby. When DS started sleeping through I couldn't believe how much easier absolutely everything was. I had been in awe of the mothers who had babies who slept through at 6/12 weeks and so seemed to be sailing through it all and thought they were just much more competent - but actually, it just was so much easier for them.

Not very bright but well-intentioned people have trouble understanding that their experience isn't universal, and feel that motherhood/labour and birth is some kind of great all-purpose 'all girls together' leveller .

When in fact, I've found the opposite it's as individual as losing your virginity, or any other physical event, just as actually becoming a parent is as individual as undergoing any other major life change and nothing I read, was taught, or told by anyone else (and I was a birth partner for two friends) was remotely like my labour and birth.

None of those jolly 'all girls together' anecdotes about throwing your dignity to the winds and not caring you've shat yourself while crowning was true of me. And while I found the first few months of motherhood absolutely awful, that was true of me, specifically, because of various circumstances -- and I certainly don't dash about telling pregnant women it'll be awful because I found it so.

And anyway, advice unless specifically requested is a real bore, as NewAccount said.

Oh and she never slept. Ever. Not until 18 ish months did she start doing long stretches so I felt inhuman for an entire year and a half.

(However, I think the most fundamental problem of newborns is not solved by how they sleep, which is just that they're really boring!)

I admit that I found it tough going but looking back my ex worked 12-hour night shifts with 90 minute travel time each way, my family were an hour away and my friends without children melted away like snow in summer.

Add to that a boss who constantly harassed me to return from maternity leave while crowing about how family friendly she had made the workplace and my stress levels were sky high! I had to go to the union to get her to back off and let me have my full maternity leave.

23 years later and I'm beginning to get broody for grandchildren! Would never tell dd that though!

I found this too. Trying to scare me about labour particularly annoyed me.

And you know what? I was absolutely terrified about labour beforehand. I thought I'd made a terrible mistake and I didn't want to do.

Turns out, it wasn't that bad. I mean, it wasn't exactly fun, a lot of things didn't go according to "plan" but I'd take labour over pregnancy any day! Having the fear of god put into me certainly didn't help, though!

I do think sleep is so important to your experience of having a baby.

This with bells on. I do wonder how much PND is actually just sleep deprivation. My friend was worried she had PND but she was just exhausted. After a few nights of good sleep she felt back to normal again.

I found the opposite - everyone told me how lovely/exciting/precious it all was so I was in serious shock when I had my first! Myself and DH were so startled and for months were like “how come no one told us?!”

I now make sure to warn my friends/family that it was pretty awful for me and I hated the early months so if they lower their expectations they might be pleasantly surprised. I think it’s important to tell people if you found it hard (not to drone on obviously) because many, many women suffer in silence in the early days because they think they’re supposed to be “loving every minute”.

I wouldn’t convince people it was going to get awful if they were feeling fine etc. but when asked I’m brutally honest that sometimes having a baby can be hell on earth.

I was the first person to tell her a slightly positive labour story. (I left out some bits for the exact reason of this post!)

• and there you have it. To tell a 'slightly positive' story you still had to omit details. Why do women need protected from the truth?

For a lot of people it is tough in the early days and - personally; I know it's not the same for everyone - I really appreciated a bit of comradery and honesty to know I wasn't failing.

I think the expectation of sleep is important. We didn’t expect to get a wink and when that happened it was expected. A friend who had a baby at the same time (not her first either) was in a total state 5 days in because she couldn’t cope with lack of sleep.

(And as commonly thought, she decided her breast milk wasn’t enough and stopped, which was a shame as it’s completely normal to be up all night in the early months obviously!)

I've also found this but I've also found the opposite...

Before I fell pregnant, no one said anything except that obviously labour hurts but was "so worth it". No one ever said anything else. Then I fell pregnant and it's the worst thing I have ever experienced. I've been in and out of hospital constantly, I'm throwing up all the time, I'm in agonising pain, I can't walk, I can't eat, I have piles and UTIs and I can't go 24 hours without passing out. I'm essentially bed bound because if I stand up for more than five minutes I'll faint, I can't be in a moving vehicle without throwing up before we reach the end of the road and I have to throw up into a bowl because the SPD stops me getting out of bed fast enough to reach the toilet. ...and every time I mention this to anyone they go "yeah, pregnancy's horrible, eh?". Like, why on EARTH would you not make this known? If I'd really, genuinely known what this pregnancy would be like then I'd never have done it - why be all Earth Mother positive until someone is pregnant and then be like "ha - I knew you'd suffer all along"? It's almost cruel.

Equally, I've experienced exactly the same as you. My hyperemesis started at 5 and a half weeks and all anyone told me was that the symptoms would get worse and the bump pain would get worse and everything would be worse...the third trimester is MUCH easier and everyone was wrong.

I can't understand why women completely lie about pregnancy being horrific until someone is trapped in it and then they make them feel as bad as possible, that there's no end in sight and that the hell they're going through will only get worse. This is why 1/3 of women with hyperemesis consider suicide and 1/10 abort their (otherwise wanted) baby - people don't seem to realise that their words have consequences and if you tell a woman in the early stages of pregnancy, going through hell, that it's only ever going to get worse then it's natural that she'll consider abortion and suicide to end it all.

It makes NO sense to me.

I also found it completely the opposite, no one told me how horrendous the birth could be, how difficult breast feeding is, the absolute tedious, relentlessness of being a parent, everyone seemed to think it is ‘magical’, ‘the best years of your life’ etc etc etc.