To think maternity leave is supposed to be enjoyable?

[Newmumhere40]

When does that happen? Baby is currently almost 3 months, I'm sleeping 5/6 ish hours a night in 2 chunks, not sleeping during the day. Exhausted every morning. My partner is fantastic, extremely supportive.

I was so looking forward to maternity leave but I'm just feeling monotony and tiredness, sad that 'this is all I do now', change nappies and breastfeed. I get outside every day and that helps, but this feeling is just not going away. Please understand I absolutely love my baby girl, but this is a question to the Mums, does it get easier?

I had that, it was anxiety that I wouldn't be able to cope later on if I got too much help and that people would judge me for not being able to handle it on my own. I think the 'mothers sacrifice' is too glorified but that's my opinion.

You have all really helped me this morning. Of course there are posters on here who just want to make people feel bad but the majority of you really have helped, thank you.

Absolutely normal to feel this way. You'll have good and bad days. My baby is 6 weeks and what I have found is if I accept that I'm going to stay in PJs and just enjoy her and read, nap etc I have a lovely calm day. If I try to get ready, do chores, go shopping etc I get stressed, then feel bad for not enjoying her.

It's a stage in our babies life we can't ever get back so that's why they say enjoy it. I love creating our own routine and getting in the floor with her at 'playtime' seeing how her little face is changing and she's reacting to stimulation, sounds and my face.

My advice (fourth child) is try to break the day up into stages. Create a doable routine and be kind to yourself.

You got this mama 💕

I think the poster's friend was laughing at herself?

Gorgeous!!!! And THANK YOU!

Arhhh in which case. As you are!!

Wtf??? She was telling it to me as a joke!!! She was laughing because she thought she’d have so much spare time because it would be so easy! We were laughing because we both learned how reality isn’t as easy as our expectations.

Obviously it's not a holiday...that's not what I said. Thank you for the rest of the post though.

I think society gives quite a romanticised view of motherhood which doesn’t live up to the reality and this makes the reality harder to stomach.

i think the reality is most people struggle for the first 9 months with the monumental adjustment. Things maybe start to get better 9-12 months in - but then, if you’re just off on maternity, you’ve got to readjust back to work.

I think it leaves a lot of mothers feeling resentful that they haven’t had a “break” to actually enjoy their baby.

@Newmumhere40enjoy the good bits… plough through the bad but don’t bottle up your feelings. Vent if you need to.
this state will pass & then once you hit the imaginary play phase, you really will starting questioning your life choices 😂

If you can have help ask for it my mum used to come round in the morning so I could go back to bed to catch up on sleep. It's makes the world of difference.

i think the newborn stage is sold as amazing, fufilling and wonderful. I'm sure it for some mothers.

But, also for lots of mum's its exhausting, boring, hard and it should be okay to say that, one person finding it awful, doesn't negate those who love it.

Feeling these also doesn't mean you don't love you daughter, and anyone who implies, suggests, states that it does is wrong.

Actually i am social and active and i found the five months of my son's life really hard, but once he gir six months I lvoed it he could do more and we interacted more!

hope that helps!

I’m at 8.5 months and my sleep is still the same as yours, the regressions are awful - be prepared.

I love mat leave but I have made some great mum friends and we go to lunch / coffee / gossip. It’s been a blast.

I agree with the woman who said it should be called Maternity Service, not Leave.

Some people love being in the baby bubble, some people find it hard to accept the change. I think maybe it's about expectations. The people who I know who are miserable spend a lot of time mourning their old life and trying to get it back.

I just think lean in to the monotony and the simple life. why are you not sleeping when she naps? She must still nap often?

Oh yes by the way it does get better. But it's still all consuming.

I hope it gets easier for you op. I really enjoyed my mat leaves and most of my friends did too. We felt lucky to be able to have that time off with a job to go back to. First time around I had a good sleeper, felt like a holiday, second time was a lot harder but I still really enjoyed it even though my toddler (who I later discovered was autistic) had me in tears most days! I have a lot of friends so plenty of options if I wanted to see someone. but I did spend too much money going out to make life easier for me - do what you need to to get through the day!

I really enjoyed my mat leave (most of the time) but it was definitely hard work and had similar feelings to you early on. Do you have much of a social network? I found it hard going from working full time and always being busy to not really having much structure and found it much easier having a busy week planned of baby classes, meeting up with friends etc.

The sleep deprivation is hard but gets easier. I could never sleep during the day either but I assume at 3 months baby still naps a fair amount in the day even if it's on you - try to enjoy the resting on the sofa with baby and making the most of binge watching netflix etc as that soon goes.

It gets easier, but there’s also a realistic expectations thing.

It’s not set up to be a gap year. It’s set up because baby’s are sodding hard work.

I never viewed maternity leave as something that was meant to be enjoyable. I viewed it as a necessity to allow me to recover from giving birth and to care for my baby.

Currently on mine and I found months 4-5 the hardest with sleep, which meant the hardest with everything and often felt robbed of joy and unable to enjoy all these lovely enjoyable things around me including the baby at the times.

From 6 months it's consistently got easier with the switch to co-sleeping having worked for us, longer stretches of sleep, more time between feeds and a gradual reduction in nursing as he switches to solids. Also weening, learning to crawl, going swimming are all fun. Now I feel like I am enjoying it

The start of spring has also helped enormously

Also just to add breastfeeding gets quicker, a lot quicker!

Total luck of the draw. I’ve known mothers who gardening and shopping less than a week after the birth. That certainly wasn’t me.

@Newmumhere40

At 3mo - is roughly when my PND hit. Accumulated tiredness, anxiety, low milk supply, etc - all came together and knocked me out for months.
So - no, maternity leave, or more specifically - the first year with baby was not enjoyable for me.

I have two kids - and both times, the first year was the hardest and least enjoyable time.

It started getting better by 12mo or so. And now my kids are teens. Mercifully you forget a lot of the struggles of the early days.

Ok...I try to enjoy life if I can whilst recovering and caring for my baby. I matter too.

Thank you!