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?

Satine - i did ask people and I read loads, but all the books talked about was pregnancy, birth and the baby, but not how hard it would be and not about physical recovery, barring a bit in the baby whisperer which was enough to say to DH maybe I shouldn't agree to doing that after the birth... But no-one told me the specifics, just generally - oh its hard etc. No-one told me midwives would come round every day after the birth so I couldn't even lounge around in my dressing gown and lie in after I'd fed ds, no-one told me its quite normal not to be able to sit down without pain, no-one told me that even the best babies wake up twice in the night for food at first (I knew once) no-one told me that I wouldn't want to leave the house cos its too complicated etc.!

great thread thank you everyone!

I must admit that one of my favourite things is when friends become parents for the first time and they suddenly realise what you have been on for the last year or two!

some examples:

1. One couple moaning about their friends with new baby taking so long to leave the house. Same friend now takes ages, loses keys, toys etc - just like the rest of us!

1. One dad-to-be saying 'we are not taking pain relief for labour'. Wife later very pleased to have had a bit of everything that was on offer!

1. A friend who got very cross when a baby cried in a cafe now taking over wherever they are with buggies, high chairs cups, toys etc

Thank god for this outlet so i don't have to say 'i told you so' to them!!

I think that practically all that can be said has been said here. I won't try to add anything new but I do envy those of you who have found it relatively easy. Like Greensleves, having a baby was like being 'hit by train' for me also. Not only was the birth itself an utter trauma, but about four months later, just when I thought I was over the worst, I found that the pg had unleashed a whole host of health problems that hadn't been there before. No one and nothing had prepared me for that possibility. I felt like a freak woman whose body couldn't be relied upon to produce a baby without packing up in the process. Having said that I adore DS. And I do think it's amazing that the hardest and most devastating experience of one's life can also produce the most intense love one has ever felt for another human being.

I remember being very angry with all Mums when ds1 was born because no-one had told me how bloody hard it would be! It hit dp and me like a train aswell and I thought it was an awful conspiracy that mothers in particular hadn't warned me. But in a way it's so hard that you can't begin to tell a new Mum how hard it's going to be.

Now I tell parents to be (if I know them fairly well!) that the first 6 weeks are hell and by 12 weeks you start to see the light at the end of the tunnel. A colleague of mine actually told me a couple of years ago that when she had her first baby she thought of what I'd said re: the first 6 weeks and it really helped get her through it - gave her something to cling on to!

Dotty dot - wish somebody had told me that - it would have helped!

When my DS was a couple of months old I was walking home through the park with a former colleague who was visiting us. We crossed the road with lots of other mums with pushchairs having collected kids from school - so it was all quite hectic. My colleague turned to me and said 'ooh, what have you done!'. Its still rings in my ears. I felt she was seing the all equipment and the noise and the chaos, comparing it with the me she knew at work and seeing a negative. But what she couldn't see were the all relationships! Does this make sense? It seems common for babies to be portrayed in our society as needy things that come with alot of kit and alot of hassle. But babies are individuals -and what I have now is the honour of having the closest of bonds with such a very special individual who has let me into his little life wholeheartedly. And for that I feel the luckiest person. I think our society is missing so much that the parental relationship isn't more publicly cherished. I wish books like Naomi Stadlen's were more widely read - maybe it would help improve the status of mums..... and kids.

I certainly tell my pg friends about the first 6 weeks too. It really does help to know that after those first weeks everything does settle down.
I wasn't told about it and I remember a conversation my DH and I had - the subject being why does anyone have a second child?
Then when you think you've got it all sussed with no.1 (DD, now 3.5) and life seems easy, in a moment of madness you have a second!! (DS).... and another conversaion, subject:what have we done?.
Then after about 18months when DS starts to be more independent and likes to wind-up DD with ensuing tantrums/crying/etc... 3rd conversation only last week why did we have children?. Then my DH said, "when I watched our DD have her first swimming lesson, I was so proud of her - she was fabulous!". It is moments like those that make it all worth while.

Anyway enough of the soppy stuff ... I tell my non-pg friends Travel first, get it out of your system, then have children...but not too late (that has it's own problems!! won't go into the arguments between local hosp & Kings with little old me in the middle...another thread me thinks !)

ps why am I still up...I should be sleeping!!!!

I havent read all the thread but I was told loads of things when I was pregnant. I was told all the negatives of being a parent "thats it, no sleep for you" "you'll never have any money" "be prepared for your relationship with your DH to suffer" etc etc. Not one person told me anything positive. I remember telling my Aunt I was pg and she proceeded to tell me how her relationship with her husband changed, how she never wanted sex etc (stuff I really wanted to know about my Aunt ). My mums reaction was to say "oh, you'll have to quit work!" and "you need to move to a bigger house!". Everybody seemed to have one horror story or another to tell me and I began to wonder what the hell I had gotten myself into.
I have found motherhood the best thing that I have done in my life. Me and my DH are still very close, okay so we have to plan our sex life around our DD (she's 21 weeks) but it is a small sacrafice. My DH does fab as well, even if he'd never even held a baby before our DD (he always maintained he wanted the first baby he held to be ours, and would avoid holding our friends babies).
I guess I must be lucky. My DD sleeps through, has done from a very early age, so perhaps that makes a difference. She's a very chilled out baby, maybe if I had one that had colic, wouldn't sleep, trouble feeding etc then I'd think very differently. And maybe its because I had an elective c-section (DD being breech and me having mild pre-eclampsia).
One thing I think I was a bit miffed over was breastfeeding. I watched an Avent DVD thingy I got with my expresser. I remember sitting there, watching this DVD of women feeding their babies and wondering where the hell I was going wrong. Then my DH pointed out that the "babies" were around six months plus old so what did I expect? Once I told myself it was a skill both me and my DD was going to have to learn, it seemed to start working a lot better.
Okay, so we'll probably have some tough times ahead, teething, crawling, walking, school, boys, developing etc etc, but I try not to worry about the future, whatever happens we'll tackle it. Even now if I have a bad day when DD wont sleep and gets overtired and cranky, or poops every five minutes, or seems under the weather, at night when I'm giving her a feed, we lay on the bed together and I'll feed her and hold her little hand in mine, and its all forgotten.

Ask me again in five years when I have had another, hopefully a natural birth, and maybe I'll sing to a different song sheet, but at the moment, I'm loving it :)

Blondie said that 'What Mothers Do' by Naomi Stadlen was the most useful book she read on preparing for motherhood. I'm currently reading it when I get a free moment (not so often with a 14 week old baby), and I have to agree - it is a far more useful read than any of the GF/ Baby Whispering type of books I've read.

Last year I thought that maternity leave would be like a holiday - oh, how niave !!
However, in my experience, nothing worth having comes easy, and it's the same with having a baby.

Basically, I realise now that my old life is effectively over - but my new one is different, sometimes harder, but in many ways richer.

noone warned me enough about the high levels of constant anxiety that descend on you when you give birth and the fact that i have gone from being a relatively sane, reasoned woman to being a complete bag of neuroses about the future of my girl, her health, development etc. i have shocked myself.
i find myself talking to mums-to-be and reeling off the same stuff people told me when i was pregnant: really tiring, but really worthwhile...but i fail to say anything new and profound about the experience and i'm sure i have new and profound thoughts during the hours and hours of bf?

i tell them, though, that they should be more clued up about the nuances of having a csection, as this in one area so little covered by antenatal classes and , lo, so many of my chums had emergency ones.
also, 'baby blues' is a misconception for the attack of fear and loathing and general misery i sank into on day 4 after dd was born. goodness me, that hit me like a brick wall. but, again, it's hard to tell a mum-to-be about the reality of this, it's just such a negative element to burden a glowing lady with. and then maybe she doesn;t experience it and wonders what all my fuss was about!

perhaps the hard times are best experienced first hand, as long as there is a good outlet for moaning! i would love to emphasise the joys more, but it's hard to express the deep love and adoration... but, when i was ttc, those were the words i really appreciated, to know that i was doing the Right Thing.

How about this one - my parents conveniently "forgot" to tell me that there was a fair genetic risk that I would get puerpal psychosis - post-natal manic depression. When I quizzed them about this, after 6 completely unexpected weeks in mental hospital (two of them well out of it and 4 recovering), they said (in a roundabout way)that I might have been too scared to give them a much desired grandchild!! Maybe, but to me it seems downright irresponsible not to pass that on - at least in the run up to the birth, so that everyone concerned can look out for the signs. Apparantly the medical team can even tell during the birth through uptake of painkillers, if they know what they are looking for. Also, the NHS could barely cope without good advance notice, & I would have been stuck at the other side of London without DS if my hubbie hadn't had private health insurance through his job. My mum was a social worker, who has always espoused openness in such matters, so she should know better in my view.(But I forgive her).

Satine - tbh i didn't know many mums when i was pg, just my mum, family friends & other family who had had children 6 or more years ago. Even my mum who is fairly open about it all didn't say much to me, I think she was too busy being excited about being a grandmother!

I too don't understand how you can be pg and NOT want to read up as much as you can. I remember overhearing at the baby clinic a mum with a 2 month old baby asking the HV if she could give her baby soya milk, and also if she could give him some solids before bed to make him sleep through. I was so bemused that she wouldn't have looked it all up in a book first, and also that she seemed to have no idea that it was normal that a 2 month old baby wouldn't sleep through the night!

I was pleased to have read all about the baby blues, i was in tears several times a day for the first week over stupid little things and me & my family were able to just laugh about it. If I hadn't known that would happen, I would have got very worried about what the hell was happening to me. I do remember worrying about feeling dizzy and sort of sick every time I breastfed at first, hadn't come across anything like that in books (and had sorted out the painful latching on phase). The feeling went away, but came back when I had weaned dd down at 14 months to only a night feed, so I was (contrary to what i expected) very happy to give up breastfeeding by then! I really wish I had got in touch with a breast feeding group like La Leche or something, the HVs at the clinic, and visiting early on, were useless. That's one piece of advice I would give a mum-to-be planning to breast feed. I have a friend who has joined some group or other, and they even have a different growth chart - my god i'd've had a much less anxious time around weaning (to solids) age if I'd had that!

Lemurinthesun - that's awful!!! So glad you're through it now :)

Nobody believes me here, but this is how I ended up with 3 under 5......

My first boy was a terrible baby and in hindsight I had bad PND - moved to Manchester when he was just 6 wks old and knew no one. Very scary and had thought I would never have anymore as just so shook up. Got pg by accident with ds2. DS2 text book baby. Had m/c when ds2 only 8mnths old and then desparate to get pg again, had dd1. It is phenomenally hard work and I have been very low and had very bad patches. Sometimes I feel quite trapped, but I think I'm so glad that accident which resulted in ds2 did happen because I really think I would have stopped at 1. Now, very occassionally, think of no4.........hung for a sheep as a lamb as they say.

TBH, I don't think it would have made any difference to me! My clock was ticking and I'd had 3 miscarriages before DS arrived. So, I was just glad to have him even though he's a crappy sleeper - but then, I don't think anybody really decides to have a baby because they want to get some more sleep!

I think that telling people about the hardships that come with having children can be helpful, as long as they are also told that there is plenty of help available. Its a fine line between being informing someone and just scaring them.

When i fell pgnant at 22 i heard it all from the horror stories of labour, the endless sleepless nights, to how hard raising a child is. The worst comments by far were from my partner's mother, i had everything from 'your trapping my son' to 'she'll neva cope, she'll get depressed'. Enevitably, three months after giving birth to my daughter i became very depressed. Lack of information lead me to believe that pnd only happened within the 1st week of giving birth, and the dreaded 'mother in law's' comments made me feel as though it was just a personality flaw rather than an actual medical condion.

I think that for me being told how hard it was going to be (and more importantly how hard i was going to find it) just made me more determind to be 'supermum' and when i found things hard i felt like a failier. Thankfuly after two years of being 'mum' i realise that its ok to find things difficult and asking for help doesn't make me incompetant, nor does addmitting i need a break every now and then.

Rasing children can be hard at times but the good times make it all worth it.

I would be better if we were told that anything worth having in life takes time, commitment and energy, that if you want to be happy you need to understand how to give and not expect anything back (which is what you need to do for your kids) - but we're constantly flattered by advertising that tells us things are easy and that 'we're worth it' - I always wonder 'worth what exactly?' If we all had a clearer idea about life as a whole, becoming a parent wouldn't seem so scary at all. We've just no perspective in this day and age.

Well first off everyone's way of parenting and everyone child is so different. What 1 parent finds easy another struggles with.
Also you can hear all the stories you like but without the magic of unconditional incrediby strong and powerful maternal love that you only know about when you know, then none of it makes any sense or amtters anyway.

My DD1 has Down's syndrome and if I had been given a list of all the things that go hand in hand with a special needs child, then blimey I would have spent my pregnancy absolutley terrified. I'm so glad I was ignorant as her special needs don't matter a jot now that she's here and I love her so fiercely it hurts.
People did tell me that it totally changes your life having a child and I also thought that was a negative thing, I didn't realise that yes it changes forever, but ultimatley all said and done it changes for the better.

Every time i see this thread title i think one thing.

'There would be no point as it's kind of unexplainable'.

How could you explain that even though you go all day with someone glued to you, crouch in the bath with the showerhead to have a wash whilst singing polly put the kettle on for the zillionth time, never get to drink a cup of tea, are permanatly shattered and always get interrupted when E.r's on and never ever get any privacy......through all that it's worth it.
I don't think non Parents could quite get how that could be. (Although even when i'm writing that i'm thinking there are people who would give ANYTHING to experience it!)

It's like the other day, my lovely G.P was saying how she would give all the vaccinations to her children when she has any. I didn't get into it with her but i told dp afterwards. You just cannot imagine how you are going to feel after that baby.
When i had dd1 my Mam said, "Your life has just changed forvever!"

They wouldn't beleive you anyway!

I think there's a difference between the kind of comments like 'no more sleep for you' which are not terribly helpful, and a frank explanation of what is to come to prepare you - like 'they wake up in the night to start with, but will start sleeping thru around 3mths' or whatever.

I agree totally Beartime! The stupid ooh no sleep comments are just annoying, but the more detailed what it "could" be like, and when it could get better would have been hugely usful