Throughout pregnancy you?ll read numerous books, attend antenatal classes, ask friends about their labours and visit newborn babies. You?ll be excited and terrified in equal measure, though it?s hard to think beyond the birth towards the reality of having complete responsibility for another human being and the requisite patience and unselfishness. There are many things you aren?t told or that just don?t really sink in - the impact that total lack of sleep will really have on you; the monotony of hour after hour spent rocking, shhing, sitting by a cot just watching, waiting for the dummy to fall out (or be knocked out by a flailing hand), trying repeatedly to get an overtired baby to sleep; the way your baby?s cry is louder, more embarrassing and bone-chilling than anyone else?s.
Once your baby has been born and you are over the shock of labour, there are many more books to read, internet sites and chat rooms, newspaper articles, mostly contradicting each other, telling you how to raise your child. You feel completely clueless and try and read as much as you can but this can make things harder, there is too much information, and you start to think, ?my child should be doing this, sleeping this amount, awake this amount, feeding so and so often? which doesn?t really help matters. The fact there is so much information really goes to show that no-one has the answer, that every baby is different and that endless patience and a stolen half hour nap whenever possible are really all you can strive for.
When it comes down to it though, it?s not the lack of sleep, the repetitiveness of spending day after day with a young baby, the way you seem to have achieved nothing at all all week, the way time has just disappeared and another week has passed and still the future looks dark with no escape. It?s the pressure to get it right; pressure from friends asking ?how is he/she sleeping?, ?is he/she in any sort of routine?; pressure from well-meaning fellow parents saying, ?oh it gets easier after 6 weeks, 12 weeks etc.? whereas you just find it?s getting harder and harder each week, thinking they should be settling now, life should be getting back to normal; pressure to keep the baby quiet at night so as not to wake the neighbours and guilt when you hear them stir; pressure from relatives disagreeing with your muddled attempts to keep your baby happy; pressure to present the perfect baby to visitors; pressure to be super woman, juggling an ambitious career and looking after children; pressure to look good as soon as possible after nine months of eating for two and having an eight pound child tear apart your stomach muscles and make your skin baggy beyond repair; pressure to stay relaxed when all you want to do is creep into a dark space, make yourself as small as possible and cry.
I write this in Cornwall as torrential rain pours down, adding an even heavier weight to my sleep deprived mind. We?ve come away from city life to try and relax, try and instil a small amount of routine into our 11 week old?s day, to interrupt the cycle of hourly night awakenings which have caused me to feel low and depressed for the first time in a relatively sunny existence. Midwives in the UK tell you to follow the baby?s flow, feed them when they want feeding, put them down for a sleep when they are tired, try your utmost to read their signs. Other people swear by set schedules: baby should feed at x time and sleep for two hours at such and such a time?As a new parent, you need to try and adapt your baby into a new life that suits you as much as possible. No-one is entirely honest about the problems they have with their newborns but everyone has them.
It?s not evil or abnormal of you to have doubts and regrets. To look back to your pre-baby life which now seems so simple and free of real responsibility. To wish you?d never gone along this path. To think even darker thoughts, while the baby screams incessantly, and you scream into a pillow in another room. There will be mums reading this who won?t understand, who find the whole process natural and easy, but these mothers are in the minority. I?ve spoken to numerous new mothers and though everyone has different problems to solve with their little ones, the pressure to get things right is the same.
There is no solution to what must have been happening since time began but keep telling yourself you are doing your best and that?s all you can do. Try not to analyse every scenario too much ? often there really is no solution. I?ll continue to muddle through and maybe it will become easier, maybe I?ll look back in a year?s time and have forgotten how miserable certain days were. Like labour, perhaps we?re programmed to forget. One thing is for certain ? I have never admired all mothers like I do now on joining their ranks. The fact they?ve all gone through this and survived is admirable. People say it?s all worth it for the smile lighting up your baby?s face ? that can be true at times but it doesn?t make the hard times any easier. The best you can do is not give in to any pressure from yourself or anyone else and just keep going, one day at a time. Oh, and be honest with friends planning their first pregnancies ? perhaps then it won?t be such a shock for them.