We have been misinformed and now things feel surprisingly harder than anticipated.
Before you have your first child, you may have dreamed about it. I did at times in my younger life.
I dreamed of having a child that “came out of my body” and that “was of my flesh.” Of bearing a child that was borne from the love between two people. All that is true. But gosh it is hard in that first year at least.
Unless you had younger siblings or hung out with other families that had younger kids, mostly we don’t really have a lot of contact with actual babies until we have one of our own.
Our only reference points for knowing what babies are like usually come from advertisements on tv and images in movies.
All that imagery usually shows a well-rested parent in clean clothes, smiling joyfully at their baby and (usually heterosexual) partner. It shows a happy, clean, joyful baby smiling back at the parent. It shows a clean home, happy family dynamics. New parents having hot sex at times when the baby isn’t there. Having slim, gorgeous bodies and appearing emotionally connected to each other.
When the baby comes out in real life, it often looks & feels very different to what we are shown.
Then we head off to parent groups or hang out with friends with babies and we find that no one really talks about the hard stuff.
We keep up the illusion of perfection a lot of the time.
There seems to be an unspoken competitive edge to parenting. Comparisons about how well we and the baby are doing. The milestones reached, how well everyone is sleeping, and how much we are loving being a new parent.
This adds to the confusion.
Not every new parent experience looks like it does in the movies (many/most don’t).
Not every new parent is loving life like a huggie’s commercial either.
But often no one is really talking.
We live in a culture that discourages talking about our shadows.
We marinade in social media which inflicts us with only the photos of how great life is – for everyone else.
The truth is, new parenthood is hard. Especially in the first year.
It is a major life transition. The biggest in the course of our lifetime.
And we don’t birth an instruction guide after the baby and the placenta (wouldn’t it be great if we did!).
New parenthood can feel bewildering, overwhelming, scary and worrying.
We ask ourselves questions like “Why am I not enjoying this?” “Why does it seem so hard when others seem to find it easier?”
We can feel alone and unsure of many things.
There are also complex layers to being a new parent – the changing relationship we have with ourselves, our baby and our co-parent.
There is A LOT going on practically with the changes to our life and a lot going on emotionally, relationally, psychologically and socially inside ourselves too.
This is why I am here.
To break the silence, to support new parents through this transition.
I called this new parent life a MAZE for a good reason. It is difficult to work our way through it sometimes.
I have been there as a mum. I have also travelled alongside 100s of new parents in my work as a Psychologist.
I have always felt that having a baby is one experience that gets exponentially cooler over time.
To have something as monumental as creating a new human, it has to also come with some monumental hardships too.
Let’s be real. Some things about being a new parent really do suck.
I am here to chat about it and talk about the way forward and through this transition.
Warmly, Mel