My very best friend recently had her first baby, a very lovely little boy who is just four months younger than Billy. She lives about a four hour drive from me and so I saw him for the first time the other week aged four weeks old. And even though it has only been a few months since I was in that position myself, I was struck by how incredibly tiny and fragile a four week old baby is!
And it got me to thinking, wow, what else have I forgotten already in just these last short few months?
A lot, actually. Or if not forgotten, have pushed to the back of my mind. Having a baby is meant to be a rapturous, wonderful occasion. While it’s hard to admit now, feeling so incredibly in love and enamored with my little boy, it just wasn’t quite like that for me.
The first sense I really had of how different I felt was when the hospital sent us home with a DVD of women speaking about their experiences with their new babies. And while it warned having a baby would be tough, what I remember most clearly was the interviews with women who all spoke about having these amazing highs after having their babies and how it was a thud to come back down to earth. While these women were experiencing soaring highs, I felt more like I’d started somewhere towards the bottom of the mountain and faced a massive climb up. I felt, well – ripped off. Where was my motherhood high?
It probably didn’t help that I had a fairly tough labour ending in an emergency caesarian and an extra whack of drugs. When the initial anesthetic didn’t kick in properly, the anesthetist requested of the nurse a bunch of other drugs and I recall at one point asking drowsily “Isn’t that what Michael Jackson used to take?” (it wasn’t).
While I felt a sort of happiness after William was born, it felt rather more like a drug induced wooziness. There was a sense of affection, a sense of protectiveness, but not really the head over heels in love sensation other women talk about. Once home we were beset with a bunch of feeding problems that persisted despite home visits from midwives and lactation consultants. And not long after arriving home, the crying began (no not mine, surprisingly, Billys). Not typical run of the mill crying, but hours and hours on end. To be honest, I can’t bear to think about it even now!
When my husband said he might have to go to Perth for a week when Billy was six weeks old, my mum, a former midwife, mother of five children and lover of babies, suggested I fly home for a week. I knew what she was thinking – “I’ll sort this baby out”. And in my heart I hoped she would. If anything, however, William was worse that week and I left with my mother saying “I’ve never seen anything like it!”.
What I found fascinating though, were the women who came out of the woodwork with their own stories once I started talking about our problems. Two of my mother’s friends visited me while I was staying with my parents and provided tales of their own. Between them they have seven children and for each of them it was with only one child they had experienced similar sleeplessness. When I spoke of my hope for the three month mark, that things would change then, they cautiously responded, “Well… for us it took about a year…”
And you know what? It wasn’t depressing at all. It was rallying. If my mum couldn’t “fix” him, then it wasn’t our parenting skills. It was just little Billy. And if other women had similar problems, he wasn’t the only baby who had a hard time adjusting to the world – there were plenty of other babies like him.
One more thing made me feel a little better. It was in a book by neonatologist Dr Howard Chiltern called Baby on Board. It said: “It can take time to bond with your baby.” So if you read this and you’ve experienced the ripped off feeling too – don’t worry. Its okay to feel that way. When the loving feelings come, they come in spades.
A week or so after I arrived back home, one of my mother’s friends sent me a card in the mail. It said simply “Things will improve.” And so they did –spectacularly. Consider me one head over heels in love mum.
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