She didn’t leave anything out.
Rebecca Mills, a 27-year-old mum to 4-month-old Warren, has taken to Reddit to explain just how difficult the first few months of parenting are.
In the Reddit post titled ‘”Having a newborn is hard” they say. (Things I wish moms actually told me about how having a newborn is hard)’, she explained that other mothers need to stop sugarcoating their day to day lives.
She starts the thread by pointing out that these are her own experiences and she understands that everyone goes through different things.
She starts off by saying: “Getting up every 2 to 3 hours didn’t sound so bad to me when anticipating LOs arrival.
“For the first few weeks, that was so far from reality and it was exhausting. What really happened – baby would nurse for 30 to 40 min and then I’d spend another 30 to 60 min rocking him back to sleep. This would leave me with an hour of sleep, maybe two if I was lucky (and could immediately fall asleep again), before baby was up again to do the same thing.”
Another thing Rebecca points out is “obsessive behaviour,” in which she says, “I think all moms have at least one thing they constantly obsess over with their baby – whether it be how much baby is eating, baby’s weight gain, sleep patterns, or if their baby is hitting developmental milestones.”
She writes that it was her baby’s sleeping that got to her the most.
“I cannot believe how obsessed I have become with making sure my baby is sleeping enough. It really is an exhausting obsession and so incredibly stressful. I cannot even imagine what it would be like to have a baby who ‘just falls asleep when they’re tired”‘ I’m pretty sure my baby has serious FOMO and getting him to sleep is a circus act.
“Whatever your obsession ends up being, it will consume you and it will feel like parenting is just getting your baby to do X, and nothing else.”
After she wrote the thread, which you can read in full here, she told Popsugar: “When I was pregnant and people were making general comments to me, I was always left wondering specifically why I’ll never sleep again, why things won’t be the same, and why parenting is the hardest but most rewarding job I’ll ever have.
“I know some people have rose-colored glasses on and prefer to keep them that way, but for me, I need a little sh*t stain on them because it’s easier for me to wipe it away knowing what’s coming; rather than be blind sided by the challenges, which I totally was.”
