Im coming to the end of my maternity leave, and it has been the best year of my life. Yes there have been hard days (and less sleep!), but overall, it’s the most content I’ve ever been. I love my LO so much, I feel like I have a real purpose and I look forward to everyday with her. It’s really been a blessing.
Now I’m not naive enough to think that it will stay like this, but so far, having a baby is by far the most rewarding and best thing I’ve ever done.
However, I very nearly didn’t have her! I’m a classic ‘high achiever’ - top uni, grad scheme, great job. All I’ve heard for years is how hard babies are, how you’ll never sleep again, it’ll ruin your body / life / freedom / career. Lots of blogs and tv shows about the relentlessness of parenting. No one really seemed to have anything positive to say.
For years and years I was terrified and even though I thought I wanted kids I kept delaying as it seemed there were limited positives to the early years.
Even when pregnant I thought I’d made a mistake as the rhetoric that your life is over is so strong and I was dreading a year off work with a screaming baby. I saw it as something to get through and then I would hopefully enjoy having an older child.
I actually now wish I’d had babies earlier and can’t believe I nearly didn’t have her. (Of course, if I hadn’t, I’m sure I’d have still had a great life!)
I know my experience isn’t universal and I’m extremely lucky, and lots of people do struggle, but AIBU to say that more people should talk about how great having children is? I spent years just hearing the negatives, and actually, for me, it’s been amazing and that never really gets spoken about?
I know a lot of people will say that the positives are inherently obvious, but for me they weren’t and I’ve been really surprised.
It probably helped I went in with very low expectations, and the negative / realistic portrayal are super important as it’s definitely not easy, but we shouldn’t hide away the positives?