When I was pregant, I found it really hard to imagine a real live baby inside my tummy. Looking back, I sort of imagined a ‘thing’, or a little soul, without making the connection that it was the same thing I was looking at on the ultrasound screen. It really did feel like a part of me, not a separate little entity.
Now that my child is born and is definately his own little entity, I still can’t make the connection - I cannot imagine him swanning around in my belly. Very strange.
If the first few months were about hanging in there and just getting through, from week 16 I have really felt we have come into our own. My little team - me and my bubba. We do everything together. In the early days I would relish getting out of the house, just for half hour to pick up take out food or get the paper, but now, oh now I can’t bear to be away from him!!! I will find any excuse to make sure I am the one staying home and playing with him while DH gets the take out!!
Even now as I write this I am looking forward to the moment he wakes up so I can spend time with him, cuddle and love him and teach him about the world. Show him new things and make sure he gets a little bit of everything in his day. A bit of love, a bit of stimlation, new things and playing with his familiar toys. I just cannot get enough!
I love it that he is able to stay up for 2 hours now after each feed, so that I can bundle him up and take him into town, for a walk or go do the shopping. I take him out to my mum’s so she can spend some quality time with him. It is just great!
This is what being a mother is all about! And is what I thought it should be like from day one, little did I know you have to go through some tough times to get to the reward!!
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Tough work if you can get it
Being a new mum is really hard - don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. The more and more I talk to mums I realise that what I went through was competely normal. Shame I didn’t know that at the time!
The thing is, when you are pregnant, all anyone focuses on is ‘when’s the baby due’, ‘how are you feeling’, ‘have you been getting sick’, it was only towards the end that I got the ‘are you planning to breast feed’ and ‘ask you scared of labour’. Even at antenatal classes they don’t say - the next 3 months of your life are going to be like nothing you have ever experienced. Think of the most difficult thing you have ever done at work or in your life, and multiply it by ten. This is how hard it is going to be.
We all know about the sleepless nights, but its the problem solving, the questioning yourself, at times feeling competely alone and isolated - even when you are in the hospital! I remember the nights at hospital were the worse, being along in the dark with a crying baby who I could not get to attach to breast feed. I would ring the bell and wait for a nurse who would manhandling my breasts to get my child to attach - some of them even ask if its ok!! Although I hated being in hospital and just wanted to get home, it was pretty easy to be able to press a button any time the baby wouldn’t attach or get someone to wheel him away to the nursery when I needed some sleep.
Being at home, all by yourself with this little thing, is like the biggest shock to the system you will ever experience. YOU and only you are in charge of the tiny creature. If you are breastfeeding then you are totally on the line each and every time that baby cries for food, and if you cannot get it sorted out, then battling with a now screaming baby with arms going everywhere is only cause for tears. I cannot remember the amount of times I called the Parent Help line or the hospital to get help with feeding. All around me mothers were stopping breatfeeding and going to bottle, either becuase it was too hard, baby wasn’t gaining wait etc. My sister in law’s bub who was being fed bottle and breast each day when she returned to work all of a sudden rejected the boob and so she had to stop feeding. Ladies in my Mothers Group were giving up as it was all too hard. Not only was battling with attachement with engorged breasts, but to top it off my bub was a ’sleepy baby’ and we were going out of our minds trying to wake this child to feed - I swear we tried everything except putting him in a bucket of water! I would finally get him on, then he would fall asleep again and pop off. I would try and try and keep persisting till I knew he had enough. Then I would weigh him incessantly to ensure he was getting enough. Over this period I had countless trips to the local nurses centre, the doctors, called the helpline, rang Australian Breastfeeding Association, read so many books, reasearched on the web and joined chat rooms and forums, had so much advice from other mums, my mother and the midwives at the hospital. At the time I just wanted answers, and in the end, I found it easier to just go with my gut instincts.
I gave myself 4 weeks. I said to my husband that if it didn’t improve then I would be going to the bottle. I didn’t want to, but the alternative I was faced with was so much worse. So I stuck with it. But by god I am so glad I battled on. 4.5 months on, the baby is thriving on breast milk.
The nighs were a slightly different story - as I had been told that babies start to sleep through from 3 months, i was really hanging out for this. When I was getting up twice a night to him at the start, I would say to myself, only 10 weeks to go, only 9 weeks to go, just hang in there. Sometimes it seems like all you do in just hang in there, and I found numerous times over the first months questioning things and wondering when the actual enjoyment of having a baby would start! All around me, my family, my husbands family, friend, they were loving this little thing, saying how wonderful he was, and then when they would go home we would be left to do the real hard work with this, and I would feel juped. I was working my guts out to keep this little one alive and happy, and wasn’t getting that much fun out of it - and someone else would come into the house and goo and gah over him and say how wonderful he was!! They would get to enjoy him, not me. But come 3 months, and he was sleeping a consistant 9 hour block after the last feed, and I was getting 8 hours of sleep a night, things looked up! At 6 weeks when he started smiling, at 11 weeks when he was interacting more, at 12 weeks when he was really holding objects - I thought to myself, this is the time when you can start enjoying your baby!!
So although it is hard, and at the time I found it hard to see this, they do grow, things do get better. But my god steel yourself for a bumpy ride, and when come out at the end of it with a happy, smiling baby, you will know it was all worth while. Infact, you may think - it wasn’t really that bad, I could do that again!
The thing is, when you are pregnant, all anyone focuses on is ‘when’s the baby due’, ‘how are you feeling’, ‘have you been getting sick’, it was only towards the end that I got the ‘are you planning to breast feed’ and ‘ask you scared of labour’. Even at antenatal classes they don’t say - the next 3 months of your life are going to be like nothing you have ever experienced. Think of the most difficult thing you have ever done at work or in your life, and multiply it by ten. This is how hard it is going to be.
We all know about the sleepless nights, but its the problem solving, the questioning yourself, at times feeling competely alone and isolated - even when you are in the hospital! I remember the nights at hospital were the worse, being along in the dark with a crying baby who I could not get to attach to breast feed. I would ring the bell and wait for a nurse who would manhandling my breasts to get my child to attach - some of them even ask if its ok!! Although I hated being in hospital and just wanted to get home, it was pretty easy to be able to press a button any time the baby wouldn’t attach or get someone to wheel him away to the nursery when I needed some sleep.
Being at home, all by yourself with this little thing, is like the biggest shock to the system you will ever experience. YOU and only you are in charge of the tiny creature. If you are breastfeeding then you are totally on the line each and every time that baby cries for food, and if you cannot get it sorted out, then battling with a now screaming baby with arms going everywhere is only cause for tears. I cannot remember the amount of times I called the Parent Help line or the hospital to get help with feeding. All around me mothers were stopping breatfeeding and going to bottle, either becuase it was too hard, baby wasn’t gaining wait etc. My sister in law’s bub who was being fed bottle and breast each day when she returned to work all of a sudden rejected the boob and so she had to stop feeding. Ladies in my Mothers Group were giving up as it was all too hard. Not only was battling with attachement with engorged breasts, but to top it off my bub was a ’sleepy baby’ and we were going out of our minds trying to wake this child to feed - I swear we tried everything except putting him in a bucket of water! I would finally get him on, then he would fall asleep again and pop off. I would try and try and keep persisting till I knew he had enough. Then I would weigh him incessantly to ensure he was getting enough. Over this period I had countless trips to the local nurses centre, the doctors, called the helpline, rang Australian Breastfeeding Association, read so many books, reasearched on the web and joined chat rooms and forums, had so much advice from other mums, my mother and the midwives at the hospital. At the time I just wanted answers, and in the end, I found it easier to just go with my gut instincts.
I gave myself 4 weeks. I said to my husband that if it didn’t improve then I would be going to the bottle. I didn’t want to, but the alternative I was faced with was so much worse. So I stuck with it. But by god I am so glad I battled on. 4.5 months on, the baby is thriving on breast milk.
The nighs were a slightly different story - as I had been told that babies start to sleep through from 3 months, i was really hanging out for this. When I was getting up twice a night to him at the start, I would say to myself, only 10 weeks to go, only 9 weeks to go, just hang in there. Sometimes it seems like all you do in just hang in there, and I found numerous times over the first months questioning things and wondering when the actual enjoyment of having a baby would start! All around me, my family, my husbands family, friend, they were loving this little thing, saying how wonderful he was, and then when they would go home we would be left to do the real hard work with this, and I would feel juped. I was working my guts out to keep this little one alive and happy, and wasn’t getting that much fun out of it - and someone else would come into the house and goo and gah over him and say how wonderful he was!! They would get to enjoy him, not me. But come 3 months, and he was sleeping a consistant 9 hour block after the last feed, and I was getting 8 hours of sleep a night, things looked up! At 6 weeks when he started smiling, at 11 weeks when he was interacting more, at 12 weeks when he was really holding objects - I thought to myself, this is the time when you can start enjoying your baby!!
So although it is hard, and at the time I found it hard to see this, they do grow, things do get better. But my god steel yourself for a bumpy ride, and when come out at the end of it with a happy, smiling baby, you will know it was all worth while. Infact, you may think - it wasn’t really that bad, I could do that again!
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