When I had my son, I was the first of my friends to have a baby, so I had absolutely nothing to compare my, at times, bizarre new life to except the impossibly perfect-seemingly lives of Instagram mums.
This was a mistake. I needed to get the hell off Pippa O'Connor's Instagram account and watch something a little closer to my reality. Something like Apocalypse Now would've done the trick.
In the first few weeks after the birth of our son, The Man and I were catapulted from our previous existence and into the twilight world of newbornhood. I'm fairly confident that nothing in life (short of profound grief perhaps) ever quite matches the shock of those first few weeks of parenthood.
"What's wrong with me? Are loads of people taking to it like a duck to water?" I wondered. At breastfeeding group, I tentatively tried to broach the subject of what I privately called The Shitstorm with a few of my fellow newbies.
"It's pretty hellish," I said to one girl. She rapidly moved away. On reflection, maybe this wasn't quite tentative enough.
"Isn't it heaven?" said a happy mother at another get-together. "Is it?" I was baffled.
Was I depressed? I quite possibly was. But where the natural response to life taking a completely abrupt and shocking turn into unchartered territory ended, and the quite possibly clinical issue began, was hard to detect.
Gradually, I made more friends, I stopped pretending I was completely fine all the time, and I came to realise that parenthood is WILDLY subjective. Lots of my friends were in the "Isn't it heaven?" gang. It didn't mean they didn't have hard times, but overall they bonded with their infants well, and they didn't seem to grapple with these dark thoughts. Other friends seemed to, like me, be reeling from the shock of no sleep and the seemingly endless demands of a newborn. And I finally accepted that not loving every second of motherhood didn't really mean anything, beyond that I was tired and getting used to a new life.
My oldest, bestest friend just had her first, a beautiful boy and she is boldly navigating that hazy, crazy shitstorm right now. And as much as I want to comfort her and offer her the benefit of my experiences, instead I'm finding that it's she who is comforting me. She tells me what she is thinking, and her thoughts are so familiar because they were my thoughts too. And it's a comfort because I know now that they weren't abnormal and that they pass.
10 MAD Thoughts I had As A New Mum (That It Turned Out Were Completely NORMAL):
1. "That's not the baby surely... is it?"
Maybe the baby is just not what you've been envisioning all this time; my son looked like a stranger to me in those first weeks.
2. "What have I done to my life?"
The effects of sleep deprivation can NEVER EVER be underestimated. It just makes everything seem totally unmanageable and a bit bleak.
3. "When will things settle down and go back to normal?"
When indeed.
4. "Is it bad that I am not enjoying ANY of this?"
Nope, I firmly believe this is pretty normal for a lot of us and it doesn't mean we're 'bad.'
5. "Everyone said the first two weeks would be the hardest."
They were lying. Other parents dangle timelines of returning to normality in front of the new parents like a carrot. This is largely to give you some semblance of hope that all this crazy will one day abate. And it will, the thing no one's mentioning though is that while the crazy will eventually abate, it will also return. The crazy ebbs and flows like an ocean of mania so get ready to ride the choppy waters of parenthood.
6. "I'm going to run away. I have to for the sake of my mental health."
I didn't run away in the end, but I think considering it is pretty reasonable given that you've slept no more than two consecutive hours in two weeks.
7. "How, HOOOOOW do you want more boobs right now, you've been suctioned on to me for three hours, I am literally dry. And my nips feel like they've been grated with a cheese grater."
I never would've believed that eventually, I would come to LOVE breastfeeding, but I did.
8. "This whole parenting thing is NOTHING like Instagram."
True dat.
9. "Does this buggy actually have the power to render me invisible?"
The buggy equation has to be one of the most unfair aspects of parenthood.
Woman + buggy = invisible, irrelevant, to be barged past on the footpath or ignored on public transport.
Man + buggy = lots of "Isn't he great to be out parenting his child!" comments and other women flocking to his new turbo baby-related pheromones.
10. "I don't think I love him."
You will. So GODDAMN much.
