You can do anything.
After giving birth, you can do anything. You’ve paced up and down a hospital ward for 12 hours, you’ve pushed out a head with a scarily large circumference. You’ve eaten copious amounts of buttered toast between breathing in more gas than air. You’ve experienced a severe amount of pain and at times wondered if you could do this but now, you can do anything.
Motherhood does that to you. Before giving birth stubbed toes, splinters, toothache, period pain, they all hurt. After giving birth you get on with them. You stub a toe and somewhere in your sub conscious know it happened but you’re invincible.
In your invincible painless state you feel on top of the world. So why would you need any help? Help?! What is that? I didn’t get any help when giving brith… pfft.
Wrong.
You need help. I needed help. But I didn’t ask for it, I’m too proud to ask for help, it made me feel like I’d failed.
Wrong again.
Just because you can’t do everything does NOT mean you’ve failed.
That’s a lesson I had to learn. I think I’m a fairly proud person. A fairly proud person who wasn’t very baby confident. I’d never had a baby before so I wanted to do everything myself, that way I could feel like a successful mother. If Holly cried and someone else picked her up and she stopped she might not like me as much? We’re they better with my own baby than me?
I know now that no-one will ever be better with your own baby than you. No-one else has eaten copious amounts of buttered toast, paced up and down a hospital ward and experienced that amount of pain for them. Plus you have your mother’s instinct that kicks in, top tumps.
I know now that letting my mum take Holly for a day a week means I keep my sanity and our house doesn’t become a dust farm. It doens’t mean I’ve failed. I should have learnt that lesson earlier. Better late than never.
Plus, chances are she might actually think other people are amusing too. You’re not that only one that can pull stupid faces you know.
The Arber A – Z First Year Survival Guide.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
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