Hi Sophie, it’s Future-Sophie here.
I’m taking this time out of my incredibly hectic schedule of eating Nutella and calculating how many hours to go until bedtime to offer you a few sage words of wisdom. You’re welcome…
10 things I’d like to tell my new-mother self, two years on:
1. SOAK IT UP!!!!!
I CANNOT stress this enough. It may not feel like this right now because you are very, very tired, and you have been sweating and leaking and bleeding pretty much continuously since this whole motherhood thing hit, but honestly it will FLY BY. I know that’s a cliché, but it’s a cliché for a reason. It’s the TRUTH.
2. Stop trying to clean the house.
You’re fighting a losing battle there; I might as well tell you. Two years on and the house is still not clean so FORGET IT.
3. Stop saying “But the book says…”
Forget about the book. The book is not your friend. Wine is your friend, the Good Wife boxset is your friend, chocolate is your friend. The book is NOT your friend.
4. Go to bed and breastfeed for as long as it takes and stare at that baby all day, every day.
It’s the luxury of having a newborn. SEIZE it and stop trying to be so proactive all the time, there’s plenty of time for that later when you’re chasing the baby around Ikea and wondering “why the eff did I think Ikea with a two-year-old would be a good idea?”
5. Set up an email account for the baby.
Send photos and videos of the baby to the email account every day. You will regret not doing this when in March you drop your phone into the toilet and are unanimously berated by friends and family for not backing up all the baby photos to The Cloud (whatever that is).
6. Stop worrying about the sleep
It will not improve the sleep thing and it will make you obsess and feel like the sleep thing is some kind of inherent flaw in the baby, which it’s not, it’s just a thing that babies don’t do along with tap dancing and long division – they’re just not up to it yet. Know that it will happen eventually… teenagers sleep through the night, adults who are not parents of small children sleep through the night, it will come.
7. Stop trying to diagnose the baby out of the baby
I was always looking for some reason behind whatever happened to be going on with my son, frantically googling colic and reflux. Obviously lots of babies do suffer from these things and investigating is important but there are plenty of babies that have nothing particularly wrong with them, they’re just getting used to life – so to my new mother self I say, “Stop trying to diagnose the baby out of that baby.”
8. Wear the baby as much as possible
The Child is now a fiercely independent, non-cuddling, rowdy, fun-loving two-year-old who is way too big for the sling or cuddles. *Sob* I really, REALLY miss the sling.
9. Go to dinner or a café or the cinema
As far as you can, treat yourself to these things with The Man or with friends. It may seem like a logistical nightmare heading to a restaurant with a newborn, but, believe me, it is a logistical IMPOSSIBILITY once that newborn is a running, shouting, mischief-loving toddler. Sidenote: Stop stressing about the baby crying in the restaurant, sound people will understand and mean people are mean and don’t matter. And if all comes to all: RUN.
10. ASK. FOR. HELP.
I don’t know why I was so averse to this back when I was a new mother. People who offer help actually do mean it; they want to help. So take them up on the offer of sitting with the baby while you get out for an hour. It’s not a luxury, it’s a sanity-saver, and anyone who’s ever been a new mother knows this and genuinely wants to give you a break and also she wants to smell your baby’s head.
P.S. Sophie, go to the GP if you think it’s more than just the baby blues. Stop holding out and pretending everything is fine, this is not helping anyone.
