Credits:
https://the-lilypad.com/store/COLLAB-Bloom-and-Grow.html
Not sure if you can read the journalling, but here it is:
"
Now Bean is 18 months old, I am beginning to see and question some of the decisions that we made when he was a newborn, and the state we found ourselves in. Though I had a relatively easy pregnancy, I was fairly naive to the entire mum thing, and I guess I just thought that I would understand and figure it out on the way - After all, all the literature and all the people I knew were telling me that ‘mother’s instinct’ was a thing, and that the prep we needed to do was mostly for the baby and where he/she would be in the world in terms of space.
What I didn’t do well, looking back was making enough mental headspace or being able to figure out ways to look after myself when the world was going to be turned upside down. I hadn’t had much experience with young children, and then our birth story turned out to be a little different than I anticipated, with an induction that took a long time, and eventually needing some assistance. Straight after, Bean caught an infection that turned into sepsis and we ended up having a 7 day stay after the 2 day induction.
Hindsight is 20/20 - We had not prepared for having a rocky start - We had focused most of our attention and preparation on getting ourselves home but Bean getting ill and needing chest xrays, lumbar punctures and intravenous antibiotics were not part of any plan. I now know that that is why the next few months were even harder, and why we internalised a lot of the discussions around weight gain, his food intake, and of course, the breast vs. bottle thing. Looking back, I can say I made the right choice for my family at the time, and I wish I’d given myself a bit more grace and understanding.
18 months later, and Bean is a happy, smiley toddler. I have had a few rounds of CBT to assist with some of the perfectionist thinking that got wound up with anxiety, and forms of ptsd when you go in to have a baby and that baby then ends up fighting for their life. I am so far from that person that I was when I gave birth, and when we think about having a second child, there are thoughts that come back to haunt me about being better prepared and how we could do better next time, but the thing is, we couldn’t have done any better, and we are all healthy, happy and so grateful for where we are right now. Right now, things are great in terms of how we feel as a family, and I know that next time I would have to do a lot of work about the decisions I want to make around feeding, birth preferences and visitors after the fact. I feel I learned so much about what it means to be a mother, and that ‘mothering instinct’ I do have in many ways shapes and forms but it might not be what the instagram perfect picture of a mother is. When Bean was young, I beat myself up a lot about the fact that neither of us enjoyed skin-to-skin and now looking back I can see that is because it was in the middle of a heatwave of one of the hottest summers on record and we didn’t have air conditioning, because really, when does the UK hit 35 degrees on a normal summer? I was berating myself about the amount of milk he was drinking and now I think, what a strong healthy boy we have that sleeps well and that is energetic and full of life. I worried about baby led feeding and whether we were doing the right thing by waiting until six months and then letting him decide, and it turns out that he loves food, all types of food and wants to try everything. I worried about sleep training but it turns out that surprisingly enough, if the whole family sleeps, the whole family is more able to enjoy themselves during the day. I worried about my screen time policy (i.e. none) when others were bringing their children and showing them phones etc. I worried about reusable nappies and the extra pressure of washing and drying that places on us as a daily chore, along side raising a vegetarian child and worries about protein intake, but it turns out, Dan and I as life long vegetarians are completely fine.
There are so many choices in motherhood that we sometimes get judged for, or we place a lot of judgment on ourselves for, but looking back, I am proud of the mother that I have become over the last 18 months and that I have learned its a job title in which you’re constantly earning your stripes and learning new things about each day. I am proud of the person that I have become as a whole with motherhood adding to my identity. I am happy with the work that I put in day in day out to make sure my little family is loved, well-fed and happy and though those first few months of motherhood were really tough, I think I needed to go through them to understand what I can deal with, and when I need to ask for more help. I have learned that all mums are facing battles of all kinds and there’s no reason to judge anyone of the choices they make because everyone is trying to make the best choice they can with the information and resources they have at the time. We’re all in this together, we’re all trying to make the world slightly better for our children and though we don’t always get it right, I want to be a role model for my child to know that you just have to turn up and try."
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