Your prenatal and postnatal parenting ideas may be completely different!
When I gleefully discovered I was having a baby I rushed out and purchased virtually the whole pregnancy section of the local bookshop. I read loads of books and magazines and as a consequence had strong ideals about motherhood. Sure they said it wouldn’t be easy but I was going to be a mum!
I worked in a large corporation and lived and died by my things to do list. I subconsciously planned to mother the same way. Now there is the word that causes the most angst: plan.
It was when I was driving my baby around the suburbs at 3pm to try and get him to sleep that I realised I was doing something I swore I would never do. As I thought a little harder about the current situation I realised I hadn’t had a shower, I was wearing old tracksuit pants and thongs. I was leaking milk for goodness sake. The funniest thing was I was actually ok with it. At what stage did this become ok?
The following is a list of things I had proudly asserted in my prenatal days, “I will never do that’.
It is pretty much safe to say that my' to-not-do list' was thrown out the window - I will do near anything that keeps my little one happy.
Prenatal ideals to postnatal reality...
1. I will never go a day without a shower
I should say one thing upfront. Nobody plans to not have a daily shower, it just happens. You get to the end of the day and you think to yourself ‘I haven’t had a shower today’. I remember hearing this from friends and thinking that it was disgusting.
How hard is it to nip into the shower for fifteen minutes of the day? That, there and then is the problem. With a newborn you have so little time to yourself that it becomes about priority. The little man has finally nodded off, do I have a shower or should I eat? Perhaps go to the bathroom for the first time today. This makes me wonder, how I have gone from visiting the bathroom ten times a day to a few times a day which is a whole new topic.
2. I will not let my baby watch television
I should define ‘watch television’ for those imagining a baby propped in front of the television every waking hour watching everything from ‘Sunrise’ to ‘Days of our lives’. By television I mean 15 to 30 minutes every now and again.
I had read the child psychologists quoted in the newspapers stating that television for children under three years of age would have detrimental effects later in life. My baby will not watch any television I had said to myself. That is until I discovered that my little guy loves In the night garden even if I had no idea what it was about and suspect I never will unless I am heavily medicated. A happy gurgling baby rolling around watching a kids show for 20 minutes equates to a happy mum sitting on the couch and having a coffee - and that cannot be a bad thing.
3. I will not let my baby scream in public
I have, in the past, been guilty of looking at parents of screaming children and wondering why they do not do anything about it. It's only now that I realise there are times when there is actually very little you can do. I will never forget something a friend said to me ‘Sometimes a baby that is fed, has a clean nappy and is warm cries’. With this in mind I began to accept that sometimes my little guy cried just because. The number of times we have arrived at a shopping centre/a function/a friends house with all the boxes ticked (has slept, fed and has a clean nappy) yet the cries come. Somehow I have become use to it and funnily enough it happening less as he gets older or maybe as I chill out. I will never forget my husband's face when he first saw our son let loose and I just kept doing whatever I was doing.
4. I will not breastfeed in public
I have never had anything against women breastfeeding in public. In fact, I don’t think I had ever notice a women feeding in public or though about whether it was right or wrong, except for a fleeting moment when a lady politician wanted to feed during a parliament sitting.
When it came to me it was personal, I didn’t feel comfortable feeding in public. The few times I tried early on were disastrous. We were both still learning how it was done and this became more complicated under blanket when neither of us could see what we were doing. As time has gone my little boy has become an expert feeder, with a detective like ability to track down and attach to his feed source in record time. I can’t be bothered expressing anymore, can feed discreetly and have moved on … never say never!
5. I will never tip toe around my sleeping baby, this way they will learn to sleep through anything
I have visited friends before only to be greeted at the door with an urgent ‘ssssh, the baby is sleeping’. ‘How ridiculous’, I commented to my husband on our way home. ‘That baby needs to learn to sleep in all conditions’. These are the sweet words of a childless couple.
If my baby is asleep after being up all night or sleeping for 20 minutes all day, everyone who enters my house must be quiet. The phone volume is turned down low and the television is on mute. I may even take my shoes off as walking around barefoot is quieter! I do quiet things, like fold clothes or make the bed. I give the dogs a treat each. Of course, the best quiet activity is to have a sleep yourself!
6. I will not take my baby for a drive in the car to get them to sleep
Only once have I purposely put my son in the car to encourage him to sleep but the number of times I have taken the scenic way home, ran a few unplanned errands (one parent in the car and the other picking up some groceries) or left a little earlier than I needed to are numerous. I don’t know why but my son loves to sleep in the car. Even if he has just woken up he will go back to sleep in the car. I have had mornings where my son had refused to go down for his morning nap yet he is asleep in the car before I have even started the motor. Sleep is good so work with it I say.
I could write for days about things I do that aren’t supposedly good according to many, alongside all the things that I actually planned NOT to do.
The moral of the story is you work out what is best and what works for you.
What did you swear you'd never do? Chat with Essential Baby members in our What do you think? forum.
