Your body changes after a baby. It needs support to recover from the huge task of giving birth. You will need to learn how to say YES to this support, particularly if this baby is your first and you’ll be returning to work.
They say it takes a village to raise a child. How wonderful would it be to have a village of help? What my other half and I did have is a wonderfully supportive family and flexible jobs. When writing about motherhood, I often compare it to starting up my book business, Writing for Tiny. These two life-changing events coincided. Starting a business is very similar to having a baby in many ways – you make a choice: you can do it all on your own, but you don’t have to. You need to allow yourself to let go, to hand things over, to trust others.
Let go of control
When you incubate a business or a baby, you’re in full control, but in both scenarios you must allow your baby or business to grow. In the early days of a start-up, you must be everything. You build your business from an idea; that idea may require you to learn code, to network and to literally do it all. You are not the best at all of those things; of course you’re not. So as soon as you can, you outsource. You let go of the control and you stop micromanaging. That is not the case when you have a baby. People want to help you from the moment your baby is born, but it is much harder to accept help, to let go and to learn when to say YES.
Just say yes
It’s difficult to allow someone, even if that someone is very close to you, to drive away with your baby in the backseat. The first time I let Rosie get into a car without me, I cried. Now that she’s 15 months-old I’ve learned that it is imperative for her social development to be away from me from time to time. It also allows me the time to focus on my business.
Trust others
In business it can be hard to trust at times. I’ve had a few experiences that have made me more cautious. Most of the people I’ve met have been amazingly supportive and genuine, so they cancel out the few ‘bad eggs’. It’s much harder to trust people with your child, as any parent will know. I’m lucky that I haven’t needed to send Rosie to crèche; family look after her instead. I found this intensely difficult in the start, I had anxiety and, looking back, irrational fears of being apart from her. I took it day-by-day and it has benefitted both Rosie and me so much. It’s also important for others to bond with Rosie and to give her different life experiences.
Gail Condon is a former nurse and the author behind the hit personalised children’s books, Writing for Tiny. She hails from Cork and lives in Dublin with her husband, Paediatrician Michael Carter and their daughter Rosie. This week she Guest Blogs for HerFamily.ie.
