The worst thing about being a first-time parent is that you are not the first person to give birth, and society will harshly remind you. The doctors and nurses at the hospital will remind you that while you are having your special moment, this is a regular occurrence for everyone. The family is ready to drop down the hammer of “you are not the first woman to do this” whenever you complain about difficulties adjusting.
As such, society as a whole has come up with those ‘one-fit-all’ approaches that don't help anyone and are annoying to hear. The top two being: “Sleep when the baby sleeps” and “Eat and drink for two”. There are also plenty of generalised useless tips about babies that clearly do not apply to all babies.
Even though I am not a first-time mother, I was still bombarded with plenty of these ‘tips’ since I was far away from any family or any kind of help, unlike my first birth that happened at home among family and plenty of physical support. Another factor that was clearly different this time around was the fact that I had a toddler running around and even turning the hospital room upside down.
Even though my husband and I worked as a team and he took over the toddler while I handled the new one, I still needed to be present in my firstborn's life. Hearing things like, “Let his father deal with him, you just care for the new one” was not particularly helpful. I was dealing with a lot of mum guilt for leaving my son alone with his father for long periods of time. Sometimes kids just want their mums.
The worst advice this time around was, sleep when the baby sleeps and don't do anything. How possible was that when my husband and I were all alone in a foreign country with absolutely no help? The piles of laundry and dishes, cooking for the toddler, cleaning the toddler, cleaning up after the toddler…
Providing a clean and dust-free environment for both our babies meant we had to do all this work on a daily basis. Even though my husband took on a great deal of the task, I could not lay around in bed healing because I had to help where I could.
For my sanity, I decided to tell people “no, thank you” (the polite version) to their infamous useless tips. Unless they were there suffering with me or knowing each kid's needs, they were in no position to offer advice that could not be applied to my life. I asked each of them if they had ever been in my position before.
Had they been far away from home with absolutely no one else to rely on? Even paid help? No! Then they could not understand my struggles and apply their useless generic suggestions.
While it sounds mean, it was my way of coping and protecting my mental health. I could not make myself crazy by listening to their advice when it clearly did not apply to my situation. I knew early on that I had to tune out the noise of society to adjust to my own little family.
