Dear New mum, it’s okay if you don’t “love” it.

[FatMumSlims]

Hey, new mum.
Hello, Bonjour, Aloha, pass the fucking coffee. Whatever greeting works for you.

I just wanted to say hi, and ask how you’re doing?Like how you’re really doing? This might be your first or twenty first but, In the middle of the night when you’ve not slept for days, how are you doing? When you’re 3 weeks post section and somehow your scar is infected and now you’ve got sepsis. How are you doing?
When your milks drying up or your tongue tied baby won’t feed. How are you doing?
When you’re 16 weeks Post-partum and you’re bits still feel like fire. How’re you doing?
If you honestly feel like your baby would be better with someone else. How’re you doing?
When you’ve not seen another adult or washed in days, how are you doing?
If you feel like your husbands not as in tune with the baby, How’re you doing?
If You’ve been asked 49 times whilst walking round Lidl if she’s a good baby, how are you doing?
If you’ve been asked if you’re feeding them yourself, how are you doing?
If every fucker wants to hold your baby and you’re too anxious to let them but too polite to say no, how are you doing?
If you can’t cope with the perpetual presence of your in laws or your great aunt or whoever, how are you?
If you’re overwhelmed, and overcrowded but lonely too. How are you?

Honestly how are you doing?

Having a baby is fucking rough, and the telly and the world don’t tell you. There’s a weird narrative whereby unless we are seeing extremes of mental or physical postnatal ill health, we are expected to ‘bounce back’. So unless we are women in comas with sepsis or women who’s PND is so bloody awful they attempt suicide or adoption, or people with postpartum psychosis, we should probably after giving birth on Monday, be at mum and baby Zumba in the church hall on Thursday and doing the entry stall at the PTA on Saturday.

As someone who is almost recovered from PND which I almost solely attribute to giving birth in a pandemic in a society that’s attitude towards pregnancy and early motherhood lets women down; here is what I wish I knew.

the “rush” of love might not happen straight away, and that’s absolutely fine. It doesn’t make you a shit mum.

If birth wasn’t “the making of you” you’re not alone. About 80% of women actually described their birth as traumatic last year (according to a Docu film which I now can’t find to credit but definitely will)

You don’t need to bounce back

Instagram is probably a lie

It’s okay for you to not do much
You’ve not failed because you’ve not washed or ate or gone out - but if you want to be able to do these and need a hand ask.

All babies are good babies - they’re good at being babies.

Very few people find it easy - we are just told not to share the hard bits

It’s not a treat to have time to meet basic needs like wash or poo, or run errands like food shopping or paying for petrol alone

It’s not ungrateful to want it to be different

It’s not wrong to grieve for your old life.

It’s ok to feel like you need space

It’s okay to be angry at your partner

It’s okay to feel alone sometimes

You are probably exactly what your baby needs even if it feels like you are not.

I felt all of these things for a really long time, my soul aches, it felt like I was a failure and a monster and I’m not. And if you feel like this please here me when I tell you YOU ARE NOT ALONE.

These feelings are all ok but might be PND, and if you feel like these thoughts and feelings are impacting on your day to day life PLEASE speak to your HV, midwife or GP. Who can help.

But again it’s okay to have PND you will get better.
YOUR FEELINGS DO NOT MAKE YOU A WORSE OR LESS OF A MOTHER

And there’s all this without the pandemic where you can’t see any other mums, where you laboured alone. So remember you’re a bloody superhero.

And it’s okay not to love it.

This is nice
How are you?

Instagram is the biggest lie. I regularly see prams and children positioned just perfectly in the autumn leaves ready for a picture with their matching outfits which also match the leaves all posing perfectly.

Now, reality. My DS is 16 months. One I am not coordinating him with the leaves/weather and certainly don't get him to pose. If I let him round around in the leaves and started faffing around with my phone he'd probably eat dog shit or whatever was on the ground at that minute. Probably would also make a run for it.

👏👏👏 you've described my first year of motherhood.

My boys are 2.5 now and things are significantly easier. I'm expecting #3 soon and hope my experience is different this time but also know that if it is just as hard - it will pass.

I'm glad you're feeling better, new parenthood is really tough. Transitioning from an independent person to a full time carer is tough. I wish more people admitted it's a bit crap to start with.

If only my feelings had actual words... This is what they would sound like. Gosh, the first year is so so hard. Why do they not tell you that in reality? Why do they not show the dark side of becoming a new mother, the real part, the raw part, the ACTUAL part of it.

OP, I hope you are well and please please know that this too shall pass and you'll be in a better place mentally, physically and socially... Until the terrible two's hit

I agree with some of the sentiment but the mummy blogger writing style is really off putting. See also: “I see you mama” poems doing the rounds.

PND is an important discussion to have but I actually feel like people talk much more negatively about pregnancy / labour / newborn days etc than positively. I don’t think there is a sense of perfection on social media of being a new mother. It anything, it’s the other way around - all “I haven’t washed in a week and have milk and baby puke all over my top”. It’s ok to find bits difficult but it’s also ok to find bits easy and should be celebrated to find bits enjoyable!

I’m glad you’re recovering, and sorry you had a difficult start.

I agree with most of what you say - just not that the world doesn’t tell you but... my youngest is 13 now and even when I was pregnant with her, you couldn’t move for bloggers “telling it like it is”!

Also forums like this one, Netmums, BadMothersClub (as was)...

Do you think it’s a difference between those who use that sort of internet, and those who don’t?

@Steezy

This is nice How are you?

Instagram is the biggest lie. I regularly see prams and children positioned just perfectly in the autumn leaves ready for a picture with their matching outfits which also match the leaves all posing perfectly.

Now, reality. My DS is 16 months. One I am not coordinating him with the leaves/weather and certainly don't get him to pose. If I let him round around in the leaves and started faffing around with my phone he'd probably eat dog shit or whatever was on the ground at that minute. Probably would also make a run for it.

This really interests me. Your comment about your child eating dogshit if you attempted an outdoor photo shoot made laugh 🙂

But that’s the kind of reality with a touch of humour that the internet and mummy blogs have been full of for over a decade.

That sort of thing, I’ve read. I’ve never seen the perfect Insta stories. They’re both out there on the internet, but I was never drawn to the latter.

I don’t think it’s as simple as blaming society’s attitude to early motherhood. I think to change things, we need to go deeper and understand why those in early motherhood are going near the Insta-perfect posts in the first place.

Thank you for this post. I'm almost 4 months postpartum and giving birth was one of the most traumatic things I went through. Postpartum hit me like a train and I'm still recovering. Thank you

Thank you! My baby is just two weeks and I'm finding this bloody relentless. She's lovely but feeding has been a nightmare, I'm exhausted and I am worried we've made a mistake - even though I feel terrible saying that. There are lovely moments too but it's so much harder than I realised.

Is there a similar one for mums of teenagers please?!

Wow!! Can someone musically clever make this awesome essay into a song and insist it's played to all teenage girls in lieu of those fucking pampers adverts. Yes it's a wonderful experience being a parent some of the time but good grief that first year was a shock, a painful, sleepless shock. Wish I'd had more truth to read like this 10 years ago. Well done OP.

Glad you sought support and are getting better.

I feel like the pandemic made my experience so much worse than it had to be. I m 3 weeks pp today and feel lucky I don't seem to have pnd yet but I m still a little traumatised.

I thought I'd be well prepared for labour and birth , my worst fear was being induced overnight on the ward alone and then baby being alone on the ward overnight alone, unfortunately that's what happened to us and worse.

No one warned me that early labour could be 5 days long, I was 1cm on Monday when I got checked at the birth centre and had a slightly high blood pressure but low enough they let me go home with some pain relief. I then went back on Wednesday when I thought I was definitely further along and my waters had broken, but I wasn't any further along according to the midwives and my blood pressure was then too high to safely go home, so got admitted.

They said it would be a day and I d get the pessary if I hadn't gotten to 4cm but the delivery suite was too busy so I wasn't allowed to have it when it got to the 24 hours as they were at the point where any more women got induced then went into active labour and it would be one midwife shared between 2 ladies. I got to 3cm by myself in the early hours of Friday to be promised the drip and my hind waters to be broken on the Friday morning, finally Friday at 4pm I got to go to the delivery suite after 5 days of not enough sleep. I got him into the world after 6 hours of labour but him being a bit big and my waters been gone for over 2 days made him a bit distressed and he ended up with sepsis so had to go to the NICU and then I got sepsis and an iron deficiency.

I felt so guilty that perhaps if I could have had support with me during the nights I was on the antenatal ward then I could have fought for us better and we wouldnt have both gotten ill, but now I know that I was trying to do my best for both of us and it's not my fault there wasn't enough staff.

There's so much of this sort of thing around that I felt guilty at first for liking motherhood and not finding it that much of a grind. Of course it's important that women know they're not alone for feeling certain things, but it's kind of tipped the other way now, into an expectation of hardship.

This is lovely and will help so many.
6 years after the birth of my daughter and I am still not over my perinatal OCD. It was the toughest time in my life and I wish someone had asked how I was doing.

This is lovely. I wish I had read something like this when DS was born. I did not enjoy motherhood until past the toddler stage, it was hard.

My dd is 2.5 now and I can relate to much of what you’ve written. We’ve come along way since then and I love being a mum now. Just about to do it all again and if I’m honest I’m dreading it, based on how I felt having my dd.

Having a baby is fucking rough, and the telly and the world don’t tell you. There’s a weird narrative whereby unless we are seeing extremes of mental or physical postnatal ill health, we are expected to ‘bounce back’. So unless we are women in comas with sepsis or women who’s PND is so bloody awful they attempt suicide or adoption, or people with postpartum psychosis, we should probably after giving birth on Monday, be at mum and baby Zumba in the church hall on Thursday and doing the entry stall at the PTA on Saturday.

Where on earth are you getting this narrative of compulsory 'bouncing back' and new motherhood being a breeze? I will assume from social media, because I don't see it, and I didn't see it when DS was a newborn. And, frankly, if you take some dimwit Instamummy as gospel, then you really need to shake yourself and find some other reading matter. Not you individually, OP, but you plural. Anyone who thinks that Instagram depicts the world as it is.

Coco glad it made you laugh!

I think lots of you are right. I am an occupational therapist on a mother and baby psych ward and I live in imstamum heaven - I’m only 24 but most of my peers married quite rich men at 21/22 and are Mums with nannies. I only have one friend who doesn’t have an au pair.
And I don’t really know what I thought would happen, maybe just what I see. The two extremes.

I live in imstamum heaven - I’m only 24 but most of my peers married quite rich men at 21/22 and are Mums with nannies.

How sad that these young women don’t aspire to their own career but instead rely on marrying men for money instead. I suspect that that will be a regret when they get to late 30s and realise they have nothing of their own.