Several people have asked recently what advice Mummy would
give to new, or newish parents.
Obviously the most terrifying thing about this is that there are people
out there who are under the impression that Mummy knows anything at all about
parenting, and is in some way a responsible adulting type of person. Mummy can hear the derisive laughter from
pretty much everyone she knows at this notion.
But here goes anyway.
Obviously, if you are now a parent, it’s too late for the
most useful piece of advice, which would be “Get a puppy instead.” Puppies are
lovely, and a lot less annoying and expensive than children. But, since you’ve decided to take the plunge
and have a baby instead, you will have to make the best of it now. And doing your best is really all anyone can
ask. There are vast swathes of
conflicting advice out there, from the ‘cry it out’ camp at one end of the
scale to the home schooling, anti vaxxing parents at the other. Most parents, Mummy assumes, fall somewhere
into the ‘muddling through, thinking what the devil have I done?’ group,
somewhere between the two extremes. As
long as your baby is fed, clean, warm and loved, nothing else much really
matters.
Mummy is quite glad really that her precious moppets were
babies before the whole social media thing really took off, as new parents
these days seem to be endlessly bombarded with articles telling them how to
parent, as well as the photos of everyone else having a fabulous time with
their clean and tractable offspring, for they are #soblessed, while you are
still in your pyjamas at 3pm with sick in your hair (Mummy’s main foray into
social media when the children were tiny was a Facebook group called ‘People
Who Park In Parent and Child Spaces Without A Baby Should Be Shot’- it was a
very good group and a sentiment Mummy still stands by as she spent a lot of
time in supermarket car parks in those days shouting at inconsiderate drivers,
and the group meant she could continue with
her self righteous rage at home). It was
bad enough when the Girl Child was a new-born and Mummy used to look up at the
prams passing her basement flat each morning and wonder how on Earth anyone
with a baby managed to leave the house before lunchtime (practice, and learning
not to care about whether the house was tidy turned out to be the answer).
With the benefit of hindsight though, Mummy has come to the
conclusion that the best thing you can do for your baby is what feels right for
you (except for vaccinations- GET YOUR BABY VACCINATED). If you want to breastfeed, love breastfeeding
and want to carry on until they are older- fabulous, do it! If you hate it, or you find it really
difficult and you just don’t think it’s working for you- then actually, the world
won’t end if you put your baby onto formula.
They will be just fine. A bottle
fed baby with a happy mummy is much better than a breast fed baby with an
exhausted, stressed out, miserable mummy.
Breast feeding is great, but if it’s not for you, that’s OK, and don’t
ever let anyone tell you otherwise.
Likewise, weaning- do what works for you. If your OCD kicks in at the very thought of
baby led weaning, then spoon the mush into them. It’s not that big a deal. Also, despite all the health professionals’
diktats on when to wean- all babies are different. The Girl Child was almost seven months before
she would even think about solids, but the Boy Child was ready at four months-
luckily Mummy had a sensible health visitor who realised this.
So, that’s the looking after the baby part- but what about
looking after you? Again, there is such
pressure on mothers to be perfect, such expectation that this baby is now their
entire life. Personally, Mummy doesn’t
think this school of thought is very helpful to mummies or babies. Mummy would die for her children in a
heartbeat, obviously, but that doesn’t mean they are her life. Mummies are still the same people they were
before children, only with less money and worse hair and more dubious
stains. Having a baby doesn’t mean you
have to give up your personality and everything you were before. For a few weeks, yes, everything centres
around this smelly, squawking bundle of joy, but after that, when the baby is
less physically dependent on you, it’s OK to be you again; to take time for
yourself if you can; to do things that you enjoy. This isn’t selfish, it’s sensible, because
the happier you are, the happier your baby will be. And if you really feel you aren’t coping, then
get professional help as soon as you can- it’s OK not to be OK, but if you
think there is a chance you might have post natal depression, then you don’t
have to try and be brave, or strong, get the help you need, and get it sooner
rather than later, if possible.
Although there is every chance you will (justifiably) want
to kill your partner, try not to do that; not least because it is illegal and
you will go to prison. Despite the
seething, gnawing resentment burning deep inside of you that they get to leave
the house, alone, in clean clothes and spend the day talking to people whose
primary goal is not to smear them with as many different bodily fluids as
possible (unless they work in a very niche sector), try and make some time for
each other. If you can get a baby
sitter, and you can afford it, in the unlikely event the baby is not draining
your bank account faster than a Nigerian general trying to pass on your
unexpected inheritance, go out. If you
can’t go out, try and do something nice together in the house occasionally. At the very least, agree that you will have
one night a week where you don’t refer to each other as Mummy Pig and Daddy
Pig.
And partners, since the mother of your beloved child has so
graciously agreed not to stab you through the heart, try not to be a pain. Don’t play the competitive tiredness game- yes,
you may well have just worked a long shift, but she has had a whole other
PERSON extracted from her body by one unpleasant means or another, her bits
will likely never be the same again, and nor will her boobs and she is also
chronically sleep deprived to boot.
Telling her how tired you are is likely to result in her attempting to
pulverise your testicles with the Contented Little Baby Book, because the
wretched thing might as well be useful for something. Daddy only retains a working set of equipment
because he wisely made this remark to Mummy down the telephone from several
hundred miles away, so he got off lightly with a perforated ear drum after she screeched
“I’ll give you ******* tired, you ******!” down the phone at him.
Finally, the baby groups.
Go to them. Yes, you will endure
the worst coffee you have ever tasted in your life. Yes, there will be an awful lot of smug
annoying people there, who practically have #soveryblessed tattooed on their
foreheads and will be dying to tell you how much better their revolting baby is
than yours. Yes, there is a high chance
you might be licked by someone else’s child (top tip- apparently it is frowned
upon to visibly retch when this happens).
Yes, you will almost certainly have to sit in a circle and sing
irritating songs while your indifferent offspring find something more
interesting to do, like trying to eat a chair leg. But there will be kindred spirits lurking in
there somewhere, and once you have found them, everything will become much,
much easier, once you know you’re not the only one who thinks that certain
children’s presenters look like paedophiles (you know which one), and that your
baby is not the only one who enjoys drinking his own soapy bathwater, and that
there are other parents who also subscribe to the theory that blowing on a
dropped dummy or toy is pretty much the same thing as sterilising it, and who
also sometimes wonder why they didn’t listen to that mad woman off the internet
and just get a puppy instead.
And allegedly, one day, your precious moppets will actually
grow up and have children of their own, and then oh, how you can laugh. So Mummy is told anyway.
