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 didn't say that my opinion was the case, did I? I said it was from my point of view, which is all it is! You can parp at me all you like, but remember I am posting from my point of view, with 25 year old childless friends who seem shockingly self-absorbed and aimless to me. Non of them is childless because they can't have children, they are all childless because they think having children is boring and torturous,

This is an entirely different view from someone who has 40 year old childless friends who cannot have children.

Colditz.... I think you should tell your childless friends, with their foreign holidays and ornaments, how empty and purposeless their lives are.

Colditz - having children can be boring and torturous!
I used to hold that view. In my view, you have to be really passionate & committed before you decide to have children. I would never have reached that point if i hadn't fallen pg by mistake. I remember starting a thread ages ago asking how ppl reached their decision to actually have a child cos I personally couldn't imagine how you could!
TBH i am terrified of the day that my boyf turns around and wants children cos it would take a huge amount of courage from me to do it all again! I do want to of course, but...

Um, in case there are any misunderstandings, I meant you have to be passionate & committed about having children before you decide to have them, not passionate & committed in the general sense! :)

Seriously though, I think you need to be careful about assuming people really are childless through choice even when they make out that they are..... I know that back when I was single I used to be very dismissive about it - it was a bit of a pose really as underneath I was just worried no-one would ever want to have babies with me and I needed to convince myself it didn't matter.
On the other hand, now I look like I'm assuming everyone must really want to have children underneath, which is probably pretty offensive too. :)

Yes I rather think I will [sticks nose in air]

I would never say such things to them though. They are my friends, they are good people. I judge then here, where they can't hear me

My life was exactly the same until I had children, I thought having a child would be the worst thing that could happen to someone. Then I had a baby and a bomb dropped on my head. I really do feel like my life was empty before. Probably because I had a particularly aimless life, but then so do a lot of my friends.

Kathy, i think that is so true for me too, I think I was always so negative about having children and never thought too deeply about it because I was too afraid (the phobia) and so always just used any other reason not to want to. In reality i was the sort of person who really would normally have been quite passionate about the idea.
Don't think it's true of everybody though, like you said! :)

Colditz - the best time to tell them would be just after one of your children breaks one of their ornaments.

I wasn't saying that I thought my friends ought to have had children, or that I thought their lives were unfulfilled without them. All I said was that until you have a child, I don't think you can imagine that pure happiness, that key into a whole world of emotion (good and bad) that you never knew about. I had no idea. All the drudgery and hassle disappears when you creep into their bedrooms at night to tuck them in, and that's what I felt was sad - that my friends only saw the drudgery part, and didn't know about the joy.

Err, the thing is I am happy and fulfilled and I can see myself having a happy and fulfilled life right into my twilight years even without having children. Not having children doesn’t men you are some kind of saddo who fills your life with empty stuff or indeed some selfish sod who only thinks of themselves. I just don’t feel an overwhelming need for children. And I don’t feel an overwhelming need for anything else either- I don’t feel my life is lacking. I have a great dh, loving family, great friends. I don’t feel lost or need something to love or need someone to love me nor do I need to ’find’ happiness as I am happy already. So my slight bewilderment over children is because I don’t feel the need to do it ifykwim. It’s kind of a ‘yeah whatever’ but chuck in all the hard work and it’s more like hmme well…….As I say the moments of how great would that feel (to look at my dh with our kid, to hold my own child blah blah) I don’t seem to have (or I’ve had very fleeing little glimpses in my 30 odd years of life). I just don’t seem to have any overwhelming drive to do it. Does this have any resonance to any of you? Or once you’re a mother does this all sound like a foreign language?

I was the same, Hettie - never had any strong maternal urges, I always preferred dogs to children! I sort of drifted into having children. I certainly don't think having children automatically makes your life 'fulfilled' - but it certainly gives it a whole new dimension.

Hettie, you sound like a very healthy, happy, balanced person! To have children because you "feel a need to" as i said before, isn't the best reason to do it. I had to become a mother before I balanced out iykwim hence not wanting to become dependent on dd for that. I want to be happy & balanced on my own terms not because I had to grow up and be responsible for another being.

I would conclude therefore that you are in a very good position to have children. ppl who have children because they "need" to or are looking for a missing piece or to complete their lives don't actually find it that way, in fact they find a whole host of other stuff. You on the other hand can probably only gain from it!

I really hope that makes sense i'm not so sure myself!!

What a great thread. My ds is now 2. I don't think a day goes past where I don't miss aspects of my childless life and long to do frivolous, meaningless (??) and spontaneous things. I loved my childless life. The last two years have been exhausting, terrifying and, at times, bleaker than anything I have ever known. Never a dull moment though. I had a frightening birth, trouble with MIL, doubts about DP which nearly ended in a split, financial hardship as a result of giving up work, immense difficulty finding decent part-time work, total exhaustion and overwhelming depression about feeling like a trapped housewife permanently washing clothes, cleaning bottles and wiping up shit.
To top it all, I lost a great friendship with a mate I really cared about - a woman - childless - whose frequent mantra 'your life doesn't have to change when you have a baby' when I explained how hard I was finding it all started to really offend and depress me.
I am so delighted to have come out the other end with this amazing and beautiful little boy who I will totally and utterly cherish until my dying day.
I think it's really important to be honest with mums-to-be about how hard it CAN be. It's OK to talk about exhaustion and feeling trapped and unable to go to the cinema for two years.
The mums who paint the rosy pictures, I think, are being dishonest and unsisterly. Perhaps they don't want to admit that their lives as mothers are less than perfect. Perhaps being a mother is the only thing they think they've REALLY achieved so they loudly proclaim how great it is, how important and fulfilling.
I think we should all be a bit less insecure and competitive and support pg women about to embark on this frightening, wonderful journey.

It was important for me to be able to talk about exhaustion, feeling trapped and unable to go out because I had a boyf who was continuing in his own independent life and I don't think he always understood that I simply couldn't. Well, he did understand but ykwim, we could have so easily lost each other along the way if I hadn't been honest about my life and what i needed/what i was capable of doing or not doing etc.

Having said that, he used to come to mine in the night sometimes after a night out when i was already up half the night with dd, spoiling any precious sleep i might have had, but tbh when he stopped doing that off his own bat having decided it was unfair on me, i missed it (him coming i mean)! :)

I'm not painting any rosy pictures, of course it is bloody hard work, but my life is better now I have children because I now have the motivation to make it better. I didn't have children to fill a childless void, I didn't think there was anything wrong with the way I was living my life, but personally, for me, having children was the best thing I ever did.

Also, I think that if you feel you have really achieved something, what is wrong with being proud of that? Nobody accuses you of being unsupportive of people who hate their jobs if you happen to love yours and say so.

I can't say that motherhood can be a relentless grind, a misery and a bore, because although I know many people find it so, I don't. It isn't in my realm of experience, it's not being unsisterly, it's being honest.

Interesting colditz, my initial reaction was to agree that i am motivated to make my life better now. But having thought further, I actually feel unable to make it better because of dd, and that it is rather ironic that it took having dd to make me realise what it was i really wanted to do with my life. I feel like if I could only turn back time and not have her, knowing what i know now, I would achieve all those things i should have achieved but didn't, and can't now. I'm not talking about a career, although i do feel like my life is having to stall in that respect even if i did have a career as an ambition (never did have).

god don't anyone ask me what because you'll all tell me i still can ! i know i could if i really worked at it but....well.....i'm still just adjusting to motherhood to be able to take anything else on right now! Don't have the energy either and i do wonder when i ever will!

Neither my dh or me thought having a baby could be so hard and since we were the first in our group of friends to have a baby no-one warned us. I didn't read any parenting books when I was pregnant either. I wish someone had prepared us - the ante-natal classes were a total waste concentrating almost exclusively on labour.
Ds was incredibly hard-going for the first 5-6 months and dh respnded by really backing off much of the baby-care. Friends from ante-natal class had much eaasier babies and the hv made me feel abnormal for struggling so much. I was quite tearful a lot of the time and resented ds turning my life upside down quite often.
Now I love him to bits, but I wish I'd discovered this site and the chance to speak to some people in the same boat 2 years ago. I think I'd have coped much better if I had already had that mindset. The thought of a second one doesn't phase me now because it can't be any worse than I've been through.

Hmme something to think about BV…… You may well be right (I might well be in the right place to take the plunge). I am thinking of it (not that I’ve really sounded like it up until now on this thread!). Just makes it a little harder to take the plunge without an overwhelming urge, plus when I talk to other people about how they’ve come to the decision they seem to have come at it from a diff perspective. On the conspiracy of silence thing, my own experience is that people will tell you about the bad stuff if you ask. I think about things a lot before I do them (can’t you tell!) so find it weird that people wouldn’t think of all the things that having a kid might entail before committing to it. I assumed lots of people would try and imagine what it might be like for them and their partner/life and then decide whether they want to do it and that part of this imagining process might involve asking those with kids what its like (or observing others- what lead me to start reading stuff here on mnet in the first place)

Yeah I really wish I had other mums as support, either in RL or on here, in baby days. I kept telling myself I ought to join groups etc but never had the guts to do so and undervalued i think the importance of it.

btw everyone this is turning out to feel like a counselling session for me! I had no idea i was so dissatisfied if not miserable, i'm sorry i've come across so negative most of the time and thank you all for reading & contributing! :) I think it has motivated me (i hope!!) to actually do something about it, i think i have just got myself stuck into a rut somehow! I have said time & again to myself, to friends, family etc that I am happy, that I love being a SAHM on the whole, etc (apart from the complaining I've already talked about having done!) but i now think it may be a cover-up for how i am really feeling inside, and also for fear of actually doing something about it (eg taking the leap into part time work or even getting involved in some voluntary type thing where dd could be involved) and i think I've done that because I actually believed there was nothing i could do about it so therefore i should just get on and be happy. Plus, when I went through a really bad patch when I really was openly miserable & exhausted, my relationship with boyf really suffered, i know he is happier when i'm happy (goes without saying!) so again, a reason to try and be seen to be happy iykwim. - and also tbh when i come on here reading about other ppl's lives i feel really ashamed for feeling the way i do cos i have it SO much easier than such a lot of ppl.

anyway i'll shut up now! it's like the floodgates have opened!

hettie - i would still make sure you really do want to do it before you do though! Although, actually having a kid is almost impossible to regret I think...
I'm like you, hence my post about passion & commitment and how do ppl reach that decision! I think too much and doubt my own decisions too much!

Satine - thanks for the reassurance. BTW I always preferred dogs to children too. But now I have a baby dogs really bug me because they sniff at hime all the time! And I love my baby (not anyone elses though!).

It's very hard to put into words how it affects your life. People who are pregnant listen, but childless people, well, it doesn't seem to register at all.

I think it hit home to one childless friend when I said "imagine your wardrobe of clothes...none of them fit anymore....Imagine your makeup bag...you are too tired to apply any...Imagine your eyes flaking with lack of sleep, yet it's 6.30am and you have the whole day ahead of you with a baby that won't nap"

That seemed to hit the nail on the head for her!

for her, maybe! clothes was the least of my worries. I hardly ever wore make up anyway! :)

what would've hit hardest at the time for me was someone telling me that i wouldn't be able to go down the pub with my work mates whenever i felt like it. Funny, cos I knew that, but at the same time i was under the illusion that I would still be able to do it "sometimes". (I had visions of the lads teaching dd to play football )What actually happened was, most of them moved away or stopped working there, the rest i lost touch with. They had been "drinking buddies", and all of a sudden i had absolutely nothing in common with them! took about a year to get over it, now i don't miss them at all. I learnt who my real friends were.

One very weird thing was when i was pg there seemed to be a whole host of ppl offering babysitting services and support etc, but once dd was here they all disappeared, apart from my close friends! apart from the ones who actually moved away, i have no idea what happened there!

for her, maybe! clothes was the least of my worries. I hardly ever wore make up anyway! :)

what would've hit hardest at the time for me was someone telling me that i wouldn't be able to go down the pub with my work mates whenever i felt like it. Funny, cos I knew that, but at the same time i was under the illusion that I would still be able to do it "sometimes". (I had visions of the lads teaching dd to play football )What actually happened was, most of them moved away or stopped working there, the rest i lost touch with. They had been "drinking buddies", and all of a sudden i had absolutely nothing in common with them! took about a year to get over it, now i don't miss them at all. I learnt who my real friends were.

One very weird thing was when i was pg there seemed to be a whole host of ppl offering babysitting services and support etc, but once dd was here they all disappeared, apart from my close friends! apart from the ones who actually moved away, i have no idea what happened there!

catching up with this thread a bit...
I hope nobody (lazycow?) thinks I meant that people who choose/are forced not to have children are unfulfilled or not doing anything worthwhile.

All I meant was that, for me, hearing my 4yo read or taking my 2yo swimming are much more worthwhile things to do that reading the Guardian or browsing round clothes shops, which is what I used to do on a Saturday.

There's nothing wrong with doing those things - I just happen to enjoy what I'm doing now, more. I posted before (and firmly believe) that while my own experience may be a guide, may even be helful to others, it is my experience, and there's nothing to say that anyone else's will be the same. Even my experience of 3 children has been different.

So someone else may be very happy to laze about all weekend reading the papers, and that's fine, of course (hmm, sounds quite tempting to me, actually! )