8 THINGS I WISH I HAD KNOWN ABOUT BECOMING A MUM

Becoming a mum has surprised and shocked me in so many different ways.

I expected to be thrust into a golden hued baby-moon. I expected that I would just miraculously adjust to the sleeplessness, that my needs would melt away so that I could give myself fully to my son.

I thought I wouldn’t need time for myself like I did before, that my baby would just fill me up, and that would be enough. I imagined that I would ooze maternal goodness. That I would be happy and calm and patient and together all of the time (hah..).

Unsurprisingly, this couldn’t be further from reality.

The truth is, since becoming a mum, I’ve felt simultaneously more happy, in love, frightened, lost, low and lonely than at any other time in my life.

When I say things like that I worry that people think I’m not in love with my son. I am. Every inch of him. Sometimes I look at him and I cry at just how much I feel for him.

But despite that, I’ve also really struggled since I became a mum. And not because of my son, but because of the myth of motherhood that made me feel like I was failing.

I’ve spoken to so many women about this and I keep being told the same thing over and over again: I wish I’d known just how hard it would be.

Cause it is really, really bloody hard.

I’m not sure why it’s only when you’re already knee deep in sleepless nights and baby vomit that other people tell you this.

This myth that life with a baby is all bliss is, quite frankly, cruel. It creates so much guilt and shame, that most women I’ve spoken to have said they are afraid to say they are struggling.

If you’re about to become a mum, I want you to enter that journey with your eyes wide open.

You’re about to be thrust into the single most wonderful, but also hardest, experience you’ll probably ever have in your life.

Here are just some of the things I wish I’d known…

1. Miscarriages happen to 1 in 4 pregnancies.

I was pregnant before I had my son. But one night, I started to bleed and everything I’d imagined for the life in my belly just came to an end.

It was awful. Truly, truly awful.

After the initial shock of the loss sank in, I was left with an agonising feeling that it was my body that was the problem. And because we don’t tell people until 12 weeks that we’re pregnant, I felt so alone.

Your risk of a miscarriage is sadly still influenced by your socio-economic background, ethnicity, and where you live, but most experts agree that 1 in 4 pregnancies don’t end in a baby.

They end up in a blood and pain and agonisingly sympathetic looks from a doctor. They end in a broken heart that changes you for the rest of your life.

Women need to know that before they are the 1 in 4.

My experience of having a miscarriage totally screwed up my ability to enjoy my subsequent pregnancy. I spent almost every moment terrified that something would go wrong. I also worried about how that worry was going to affect my unborn son. I worried about being worried and the cycle went on and on and on.

I really, really wish I’d known that I wasn’t an anomaly. That what happened was tragic, but also normal and didn’t mean there was something wrong with me.

I hope with everything I have in me that you never experience a loss, but if you do, I want you to know that you’re not alone.

More importantly, I want you to seek the help you need to process your grief. Here are some useful resources to do that:

• The Miscarriage Association (UK)
• Tommy’s Support After A Miscarriage (US)

2. There are days you really won’t enjoy being a parent.

What kind of mum did you imagine you would be?

What I imagined for myself was, in hindsight, hilarious. It was all virtuous and endless patience and calm acceptance.

In reality, babies are like tiny little army drill sergeants. They scream at you, deprive you of sleep, take away your every freedom and dictate when you can eat, pee, shower and go out.

No matter how hard you try, you will not enjoy it all the time. You just won’t. You’d be an absolute saint if it didn’t get to you at times, if there weren’t days that you didn’t hate it.

I felt awful when those thoughts crept in. I questioned what the hell was wrong with me: I’m supposed to enjoy all of this. Why can’t I cope?

Those thoughts led me down a really dark path, and I really wish I could go back and give old me a hug and tell myself it’s normal.

The problem is not that you will find days, weeks or maybe even months hard. The problem is that society sets us up to think we’re supposed to love every moment.

In all honesty, there will be periods where you will love your child but really not enjoy parenting.

That’s okay. I promise you that almost every other mum is feeling exactly the same.

Remember that when you start questioning yourself.

3. You will change. The old you simply isn’t coming back.

When I was pregnant, I thought that eventually I would be able to live the same life as before, just with another layer of loveliness in the form of a baby.

I thought I’d be able to work at the same level, maintain my social life, keep up with hobbies and carve out time with my husband. I knew it would take time, but eventually I thought I’d come back to my old self.

I didn’t. And I won’t.

It took a long time for me to accept this, but the truth is that the old me is gone.

My priorities have shifted. My friendships have changed. My identity will be in flux for some time. Rather than put pressure on myself to recommence my old life, the challenge I’m setting myself now is to redefine who I am alongside being a mother.

I wish I’d known this much earlier. Again, it was something that just made me feel like I was failing.

I grieved for the old me, willing her to come back.

6 months in I’ve learnt to let go, and accept that the new me is everything she was, but also so much more.

4. It’s existentially lonely.

One of the most shocking things I found about maternity leave is just how damn lonely it is.

Once the initial wonder of it all wears off, day after day after long, long day with only a cranky baby for company really gets to you.

I’m not a particularly extroverted person, but I’ve realised that new mothers need a village.

Being alone during this time (which I think even without a lockdown would be really common) is existentially lonely. You need people to anchor you when you’re floating around in anxiety and uncertainty.

Whether it’s enlisting friends to pop round for hugs and cups of tea, or setting dates in the diary with literally anyone you feel comfortable to see, make sure you prioritise social contact.

Believe me when I say that you’ll be vulnerable and in need of reassurance and distractions to get you through some days. That’s not a reflection on you, it’s just the way nature designed us to be. We’re not supposed to do this alone.

5. Don’t even bother trying to make concrete plans

I can’t tell you the number of meltdowns I’ve had about plans that went out the window. Babies seem to know exactly when you plan to leave the house, and to pick those times to either sleep or lose it.

I would drive myself crazy trying to control nap times so that I could make it somewhere for a specific time.

In fact, one of my worst days was when I had to give up on going to our first baby class cause my son literally would not sleep and then was hysterical from the tiredness.

The best advice I can give you is to give yourself windows where you can show up to things.

Arrange for friends to be on standby for that coffee or walk during a window of a couple of hours, and just take the pressure off being there for a specific time.

I felt so guilty for doing this, but (of course) people will understand that your plans just have to be more fluid these days.

If you do have to skip something you’d planned, let it go.

No matter how hard you try, babies will do what they want when they want 😁 There’s nothing you could have done differently, so don’t sweat it.

There’s always a next time.

6. Breastfeeding is hard, even when it works.

I was incredibly lucky in that Hugo took to breastfeeding right from the get go. His latch was great, my supply was perfect, we were in a good flow.

And yet, even though it worked, it was just so much harder than I’d anticipated.

One thing I hadn’t appreciated is that exclusive breastfeeding leads to a whole host of choices that will be really tough on you.

It means never, ever sleeping for longer than a few hours. It means engorgement and infections and teething babies that bite you and pretty much daily discomfort. It means not really being able to go out for longer than a few hours without a pump unless you want to leak all over yourself.

It’s tough, and a massive commitment.

For me, the positives outweighed the challenges for some months but there was a point where I had to accept that breastfeeding was a huge contributing factor to my post natal depression.

I needed a break, and while I was too afraid to introduce a bottle I simply couldn’t get one.

If you’re planning to go the breastfeeding route, my advice to you would be two-fold:

1. Combi-feed. I promise you your baby won’t reject your boob overnight so don’t be afraid to introduce a bottle early once breastfeeding is established so that you can get some help.
2. Speak with a lactation consultant, even if you think everything’s fine. Breastfeeding should never hurt, and if it does it means that something’s not quite right. A lactation consultant can help to make sure you’re using the right latch and position for your baby and body, and from personal and anecdotal experience, can offer so much more help than a midwife to set you up for success.

7. Your life will revolve around sleep (just not your own)

Wake windows. Naps. Sleep training. Huckleberry. These are words that will absolutely define your daily life for the foreseeable future.

Baby sleep (or lack thereof) can be torturous at times, and there’s a ton of pressure on parents to try and counteract poor sleep by controlling things that are, quite frankly, uncontrollable.

I spent months desperately trying to get my son to nap at fixed times during the day, and it was making me absolutely miserable. Even when he did sleep when he was ‘supposed to’ (according to the many, many apps I was using), he still slept horribly at night.

I think it’s inevitable that you’ll become obsessed with your baby’s sleep for a while. I’ve come to realise that that obsession stems from how much you need a break rather than how much your baby needs to sleep.

That said, try to keep your urge to control sleep in check. It wasn’t until I deleted all the apps and tried being a little more intuitive that things fell much more into place.

8. You’ll be overloaded with (mostly unhelpful) information.

At no point in your life will you be more bombarded with information that when you have a baby.

From what they should eat, to how much they should sleep, to how they should be developing: the internet is just exploding with conflicting guidance. Throw in all the hours you have while feeding with nothing to do other than look for answers to your many worries, and it’s a recipe for disaster.

The truth is, no-one knows how to parent. Every baby is different. Every parent is different. Every family set up is different. What works for one person and their baby almost certainly won’t work for you (or even for them 2 days later…), so try and block it out and just follow your instincts.

One of my biggest sources of anxiety was feeling that I didn’t know how to look after my son. I had no experience with babies and I worried that I was missing really big and important things.

What I’ve learnt is that knowing how to parent is a myth.

If you simply love your baby and do your best every day, that is enough. That’s all your baby needs, and it’s all that you can realistically do.

Try to block out all the forums and internet noise, and just focus on what you and your baby need.

If you want to co-sleep, do it (but safely). If you need to sleep train for your sanity, that’s ok. If you want to go for Baby Led Weaning and home cook lots of foods, amazing, but also all power to you if all you can commit to right now are pre-made baby foods.

There will be so many things that make you feel like you’re not doing enough. Try your best to block it out and focus on the baby in front of you.

It won’t be easy, by my God will it be worth it.

The thing that I hadn’t appreciated before becoming a mum is that you’ll be reborn, and when your baby is here, a different person will be looking back at you.

There will be a softness. More wrinkles. Sometimes tears. So much joy. A love that you just don’t know what to do with.

It definitely won’t be easy. You’ll be pushed to your limits and then some, day after day.

But then your baby will look at you and smile. Or reach out for you when they need comfort. Or do master some new skill right out of nowhere, and you’ll forget how hard it is.

Even if just for a second before it all begins again ☺️