Would you have wanted to be told how hard motherhood would be?

[bourneville]

I was so shocked and a bit resentful once i had dd that nobody had thought to tell me how hard it would be! Particularly regarding breast feeding. tbh i don't know if i was actually told and just didn't understand, because i did do a breast feeding workshop and i remember ppl saying how "hard" it was at the beginning and how it seemed "constant" - maybe it just didn't sink in because i had no conception of what it might be like? But also the amount of time it took to physically recover! That was the real . Actually 2.6 years later I don't think i have physically recovered yet!!

But anyway, anyone i know who has got pregnant since has had the misfortune of a complete explanation of how hard it all is from me. I miss out the really scary nightmares of labour, etc, and details of bodily functions etc, but I really do think we need to know! What do you all think? Would it have helped you get through it easier? When I was pg i read a couple of books and one particular book (i forget which one) i stopped reading by chapter 2 because it freaked me out so much. But once i had had dd I was eternally grateful that i had read as much as i did because i don't think i was as shocked as i would've been.

A friend also once said that she thought it made a difference whether or not you had planned to have a baby and were desperate for one, or was unplanned. I had NO INTENTION of ever having a baby, last thing i wanted, for me getting pg was the end of the world at first, so in actual fact i was pleasantly surprised once dd was here how wonderful (though hard) it all was, and kind of easier than i was expecting in a way. I seriously remember going clothes shopping when i was pregnant and thinking, "I will never be able to do this again!" !! But I imagine a lot of mothers who are really wanting to have children and perhaps have a blissful motherly vision are in for a HUGE shock and perhaps it is them I am saying need to know?? Or would they rather not know? Would it stop ppl ttc?

I think I have got sidetracked actually. I would have wanted to be warned about preganancy and labour - although nobody could have known quite what a gothic nightmare mine was going to be. Motherhood itself hasn't been awful at all.

I didn't find the beginning as hard as i thought it would be. Probably because, having found out we were expecting twins, everyone became doom and gloom and constantly went on and on about how awful the first six months would be, so we were very prepared and pleasantly surprised that it wasn't quite so awful - at least not always .

The hardest part for me is the constant worry of something happening to one of them. Not a particular conscious worry, but always there at the back of my mind, worrying about their safety and happiness, and I doubt if that will leave me until the day I die.

I don't think it would matter if someone told me how hard it would be because you can't fully understand it until you are living it iyswim.

I found the baby days pretty easy to be honest and I think the stage I'm in now is probably going to be the hardest (please God!). I've got 3 under 5 at the moment so it's very hard - ds3 not in any form of childcare, ds2 just does mornings, ds1 in reception. I think it's going to get easier for me from September when ds3 starts morning nursery and it will get easier still as each one gets to school. Hopefully!!

..and anyway - even if it is really hard atm, I wouldn't change it.

for me its been a hundred times easier than i thought. i listened to all my friends (and was greatful that they were so honest). One friend in particular referrs to the first 3 months as "the black hole". So i was prepared for the first 3 months to be sh*t and then slowly improve from there. But its all been fab and i have been blessed with an 'easy baby'. Said friend is majorly pissed off with me and is cursing me with twin boys for my next pregnancy. What i hated when i was pregnant was unsolicited advice, esp from strangers. But i grilled my friends about every detail and really feel i was as prepared as i could be for anything.

One thing though, i didnt feel that overwhelming rush of love at first sight for my girl. It was more fascination really, thats the only way to describe it. Though funnily enough at the same time i would have fought to the death for her because i sort of knew that i was going to love her more than anything. And i do. Thats the best thing.

GDG i find things 'easy' at the moment, but tbh i have no idea how people do it with 2 or more. Even if they are 'easy'. respect.

I wish I'd read Kate Figes' book rather than Sheila Kitzinger's and Janet Balaskas' when I was pg. I really believed that positive thought and a bit of squatting could give you the birth you wanted. Which is b*llx of course.

Motherhood with a 16mo is a lot of fun atm, more than I thought it could be - I was never a baby person before having ds - but the first few months were such hard work. I knew about sleepless nights of course, but I just didn't (couldn't?) understand how relentless looking after a baby is.

No, probably not because if I had any true comprehension of how tough it was I probably would have never have done it! And that would be really :( because the rewards outweigh the hard work 10 fold. :)

Possum - I didn't have that rush of love straight away either. I remember looking at them thinking would I be bothered if someone walked off with them and thinking probably not , but thinking the same thought a couple of days later it brought tears to my eyes, it was unthinkable.

Wow! Interesting thread, especailly from my point of view as a first time ttc-er. I have entered into this ttc lark with the attitude that I will arm myself with as much information as possible (cue trawling MN for info) and at the same time accept that none of it may be applicable in the long term.

I constantly worry about the negative side of becoming a parent, albeit from an objective point of view- how does anybody afford it? how will I work and be a mother? how does the housework get done?- and as I previously posted, I find that people are all to happy to tell you their own horror stories. My colleagues happily tell me 'oh no don't ruin your life just yet' and 'you want to enjoy yourself while you still can'. I really wish that people could tell me some of the joys of motherhood- probably inexpressible- but a couple of comments here and there would be very reassuring. I suppose it is very difficult to counterbalance that there are a lot of losses- sleep, work, health, figure, social life, travel- and only the one gain- the baby. How do you explain that something so small could possibly replace so many losses?

Going off on a tangent slightly, DH thinks that I set too much store by what other people say, especially with regards to MN (and not just because he believes it to be a cult!). I had started to believe that there were a high number of affairs, separations and divorces amongst MNers- maybe there are- but as DH pointed out, people are more likely to come on to discuss negatives than positives because they are seeking help and not smugly declaring their happiness. Selfishly, as a non-parent I worry an awful lot about the effect of parenting on my relationship with DH. I know there will be enormous changes and our priorities will shift, but I can get very hung up on the 'my DH doesn't understand' and 'he's having an affair at work' threads. Ridiculous, huh? Who knows how parenting will affect us?

Am I the only one who didn't suffer from sleep deprivation?

I remember when I was pg a colleague at work telling me that it would be horrendous, how we wouldn't eat together as a couple for years because we'd be pacing the floor with the baby etc etc, how we'd be woken 5, 6, 7 times a night by a screaming baby, but on the flip side how labour wasn't really that big a deal and how she'd given birth to her 10 lb baby at home with no pain relief and that it had been a doddle. And for me, it was the opposite.

I had a nightmare labour, pushing for 4 hours which ended up with ventouse and a epesiotomy, was unable to breastfeed because .. well quite frankly after 3 days of trying I decided that my DS' need to be fed was greater than my need to keep trying to latch him on and suffer agony so I switched to bottles. And now to the sleep ...

My DS would wake once in the night, only once, for a feed, I could feed and change him within 20 minutes/half an hour and he would go straight back down. (there are advantages to not being able to see - I was able to do everything in the dark and thus my DS developed a sense of perception of day and night from the earliest opportunity). The getting up night after night was hard, but by comparison to those who get up 7/8/9 times a night I don't consider that I was ever sleep deprived. And he slept through the night from 9 weeks. But all those things are physical things and they all pass. The sleepless nights, the weening, the first jabs, colds, having to let them go to play group/nursery without you, all those things pass, but I think the one thing that I wasn't prepared for was the absolute overwhelming sense of emotion and love that I felt for my DS. The moment he was born, the first thing i said was "is he ok". And I remember holding him and him sleeping in my arms and my DH saying "we should put him in his chair so you can get something to eat/drink/whatever" and me just wanting to hold on to him for that little bit longer. I remember crying when he wasn't well and he was crying, not because I was exhausted, but because I couldn't bear the thought of my little boy being so unwell/upset.

I think I'm going into soppy mum overdrive here but basically what I'm trying to say is that we can try to prepare people for the physical things, to tell them how hard it will be to have no sleep etc, but it's the actual being a mother you can never prepare people for.

Bugsy - Kate Figes was the same book I was talking about! :)

bakedpotato - good point about PND, I hadn't thought of that before, that knowing it is supposed to be hard might undermine how a woman is feeling when she really is feeling sh*t.

Sherbert - re your dad's comments, when i was pg/in baby days when things were hard my boyf (not dd's dad) frequently said "you chose to have the baby" as if that meant i wasn't allowed to find it hard.

I am surprised that you think the idea of motherhood being hard is oversold or whatever it is someone said! I think it's because i didn't know anyone who had children so it was all a mystery to me. I just assumed you sort of settled into "family life", and also that "everyone" has children eventually (i had no intention of it and was forever having to explain to ppl why not - actually even then i knew it changed your life and i wasn't willing for that to happen!) I had no idea it was so hard until I started reading books.

kleggie - i feel the same way about my future with my boyf, I imagine all sorts of horrible things in my head, and base far too much on what happens now between us, when it isn't fair at all to assume he will be the same as a father/partner as he is as a boyf/friend to dd now iykwim. (don't get me wrong, he's great as a boyf & friend to dd, just there are things that i wouldn't be happy with if it was as partner/father. prob doesn't make any sense without going into details, sorry...

Funny how different your experience is kleggie. When I was pg, as i said i was facing medical phobia, was going to be a single mum etc, so it was all a nightmare, but it used to grate on me that all my friends/colleagues were all so excited and positive, I felt like my negative feelings & fears were all getting buried somewhere. My parents were more in tune with how i felt at the beginning, in their , but they very quickly morphed into the future doting grandparent role that they are now - my mum simply couldn't hide her excitement (1st grandchild)! Though there was one colleague who hadn't been there very long who when she heard i was pg openly assumed i was going to have an abortion! She was so when I had to explain I wasn't! poor thing, she was mortified with herself! I had to laugh!

I also wasn't prepared for how alienated from the rest of the world I would feel. I completely felt like I was stepping into a world that I hadn't known existed. It still amazes me. It's a different world altogether. Kleggie you'll prob be already getting a sense of that having come on here, i didn't discover mumsnet till a year or so ago.

I got thoroughly fed up (and still do) with mums who fall over themselves to regale pregnant women with horror stories about the birth and what life with a baby is like. Firstly, it's a bit late now, unless you're trying to scare the poor woman into having a termination. Secondly, it's different for everyone. Her experience might be fantastic. Thirdly, it's not going to help if she's going into the situation already apprehensive, if not terrified. Now I'm not saying that we should lie, or give anyone unrealistic expectations and specific questions should be honestly answered but what you can never explain properly is that all the pain, exhaustion, worry, guilt and panic is utterly wiped out when your new baby grips your finger, or smiles, or falls asleep in your arms. It's a whole new world that not many non-parents could even imagine - I certainly didn't.

wouldnt have believed them either. had feeling that other peoples children's ghastly behaviour was probably because they were rubbish parents (but now know better... or maybe am rubbish parent). i made it through to about 6 weeks with ds1 by approaching task in spirit of project or crash revision for important exams but then cldnt believe it was still as hard... and would go on being so hard seemingly without end. parenthood is v hard for a control freak (see name)... only thing i learnt that really helped me was that everthing (however difficult) was a phase that would pass...

Also meant to say that what will be worth far more than hours of searingly honest 'preparation' before the birth is a helping hand after it.

I had NO IDEA how hard and unreal the first few weeks would be. And to be honest it would have helped if someone had said to me "You may feel as though you have been handed an alien from outer space and told you must look after it, but that feeling will pass." Instead my recently parented friends seemed to have this conspiracy of niceness about how wonderful it all was. Only when I said, as DS1 was about 6 weeks old, how hard I was finding it all, did the floodgates open "Oh yes it's horrible, the sleepless ngihts, the cracked nipples, the sore bits, the feeling of helplessness etc etc". "So why didn't you tell me?" I said. "Oh no, you couldn't tell anyone," was the response.

All I know is it would have helped to know I wasn't alone in not feeling like a totally natural mother from the word go.

very good point satine

that kate figes book is sooooooooooooo depressing
I chucked it away (as well as that two socks one hairbrush one 'I didnt go out unaccompanied for a year after I had my second child' what a load of crap)

The thing is you just don't know and no matter what people tell you, you will never know how it will affect you.
I don't honestly believe that anyone would be put off having a baby because of the opinions of colleagues at work.
Some people find bfing easy, some a nightmare. Some have wonderful sleepy babies, some have always awake screamers, some have smiley contended toddlers, others have evil child demons, and so it goes on.
No matter what anyone tells you, your own experience will be entirely individual!

I think it is always useful to be prepared. I had observed a number of friends make the transition to motherhood, and read quite a lot about it too, so I did have a fairly realistic picture. Of course you don't really comprehend exactly what will be hard until you're in it, but it is helpful to expect it to be hard, then on bad days you can think to yourself 'ah, THIS is what they meant....' and kind of know you are not abnormal to be struggling sometimes.

Haven't read all this but, personally, I don't think anyone would believe how hard it is until they've actually been through it.

I had no idea at all - dd was a surprise so I spent 7-8 months (didn't know I was pregnant till around 6-8 weeks) of pregnancy deciding to ignore the fact I was pregnant plus any pregnant woman, newborn babies!

I remember going to a fantastic, swish dinner party (hosted by 2 gay blokes who went to so much trouble for one dinner party it put a life time of mine to shame) and a lady had her 6 week old baby there - I was about 30 weeks pregnant and she asked if I wanted to hold her babe - at which, point I nearly ran a mile!

I think with babies, a bit of ignorance is bliss (if we really knew what was coming, we'd probably put it off for much longer!). Only thing I really wished I'd done differently was research all the baby products/had someone to tell me what was really important because in that first year, I spent a vast amount of money and most of it was on stuff I never used or needed.

and i think it balances out somewhat. you luck out with something (say labour) and make a hash of something else (say sleeping) or whatever.

When my dd was 3 weeks old my pregnant friend came to visit. She made several comments about how tired and run down I looked and gave me the smug impression that she believed it wouldn't be that way when her child was born. I mentioned I was finding breastfeeding really hard and she started on about "I can't understand why anyone would bottle feed, breast is best, etc etc." she's now had her baby and lasted a week breastfeeding as she couldn't cope.

I don't believe if u r told how hard motherhood is that u can have any real understanding of the enormity of it until u r doing it. It's not just tiredness, for me it was the knowledge that I could never switch off or truly relax ever again. The stress of that has to be felt to be understood.