I'm thinking EVERYTHING about caring for a baby is about acceptance. Accept this baby has to feed every two hours. Accept that babies cry. Accept your responsibility. Accept their relentless growing up. Accept that you had a routine down yesterday and today you have nothing but chaos. Accept regression. Accept the fact it's 3:00am and you are not asleep. Accept being tired. Accept your baby has a dummy and is wearing ALL pink and this is so not the earth mothering non-gender-reinforcing avenue you'd imagined. Just say, to whatever is happening, yes this is happening.
So much about this whole process is made harder when we fight it. Fight the growth spurt that has your baby screaming for hourly feeds. Fight the night feeds. Fight the noise. Fight the dirty nappies and puke. Fight the endless dirty washing. And fight the image that looks back at you in the mirror. I do it. We all do it.
My sister once told me her health visitor told her that she found it was rarely the teenage mums with no income and surprise pregnancies that got post natal depression. She said it was more the mums with planned babies of 30+ year olds in stable marriages with good careers. Why? Because of the expectations the older mums had had time to build up. The books they'd read and course they'd taken etc all helped to build this fixed image of how everything would be with a baby and of course NOTHING in life and especially with a baby is ever what you think it's going to be. So they have a much harder time accepting the reality when you have a firmer idea of what "should" have been. (FTR NOT saying I agree that this is where PND comes from just an interesting point.)
HAVING SAID THAT... saying the lesson is we need to accept everything all the time is dumb. I can't do that. You can't do that. I even doubt my baggy trouser wearing, seed eating, soft speaking, "zen-ed out", bare footed yoga teacher can do that. BUT it's good to keep at the back of our minds. Good to remember sometimes. Every so often. Mostly at 3:00am. And 4:00am. Well between the hours of 12 and 6:00. And when we're covered in vomit. You know, when we need it.
Peace out.
Absolutely agree with you here - it's so easy to wish away the moments and get bogged down when we're in them. Mostly because we've put far too many expectations on ourselves to be perfect. Interesting point you make about older mums and post natal depression.Thanks for linking up this week with oldies but goodies :)
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