The biggest piece of advice I would give pregnant/new mums.
If you dont want advice then scroll past and ignore, but this is something I’d love to say to all my friends and family but you unfortunately can’t because it will be taken the wrong way.
Don’t mammy your partner/husband/wife. Pregnancy is the last chance you have to stop if you dont want to become an overtired, burned out mum. I see it time and time again with friends and family and I wish I could do something to stop it. Then I see all those TikToks and instagram reels with the Labour - The Cacophony about how mothers dont have a choice like fathers do. We do, its about your partner being a partner.
But lets get into what I mean. Pregnancy is very hard for some women, its a breeze for others but newborn stage is definitely really really tough for everyone. You’re learning how to be a mum, what your baby is trying to communicate, they are up every 30mins-3hrs for night feeds, same during the day so you’re exhausted and you just pushed a human out of your vagina or had your stomach sliced open and are expected to do everything like nothing ever happened, lets not forget struggles of breastfeeding and sore nipples if thats what you chose to do to feed your baby.
Add another person to take care of on top of that and you’ll drown. If you’ve been the main meal maker up until now - its time to teach them some quick meals. Even if its boiling some pasta and adding sauce to it, sometimes thats all you’ll need. If they dont know how to do laundry - again, teach them. I didnt do any laundry for the first 3 weeks after my emergency c section because I just couldnt bend down low enough to do it and last thing you want to do after sleepless nights is standing over someone and telling them how to do basic household chores. Same goes for hoovering, dusting, changing sheets, cleaning the shower and toilet, basic things you might need someone else to do for you and the baby in the first couple of weeks.
But most importantly, he needs to learn the baby too. I dont know what its like in other countries but here dads are allowed in the hospital from 8am till 9pm and then they need to leave. My husband was at the door at 7.30am waiting to be let in and he has not left once at 9pm, he was always thrown out by one of the midwives because he wanted to be there with our baby. Now that we’re having another one it will be definitely different as he’ll have to be there for him too but if its your first baby, if you’re the one spending all this time with the baby alone in the hospital you will learn how to take care of them, you’ll learn their cues etc. If your partner is there for couple of hours a day, how could they? So when you get home and its time to take care of the baby, and they’re crying and your partner can’t soother them I can assure you it will lead to two scenarios:
- they will say I dont know what to do take them
- You will take the baby away after a while because you’ll get frustrated at the crying.
And the endless cycle will beging of ‚she/he wants mammy’, ‚ I dont know how to do it’, ‚she/he wants the boob’.
And if your partner is going back to work quickly, try to find things that they’ll always do. Ie. Bath time is my husbands job when hes home. Its a lovely time they have when they bond and play together and laugh and then we both put him to bed. Try to relax in that time. If you have to clean, do a quick 15min clean.
And if theres people saying ‚oh but he needs to rest after work, he can’t provide and take care of the house and child’. Yes you’re right but sometimes he will need to pick up the slack because thats how partners work. Is it 50/50 that my body changes, I feel extremely sick and awful while pregnant, I go through a major surgery that I cant fully recover from because I’m always sleep deprived and need to stay active to take care of this child, also take care of the house while he goes to work?
Not really, if I could I would 100% pick work over pregnancy and taking care of the house again but unforunately they haven’t figured out a way to make men pregnant yet 😂
You are also tired. If you can’t ask husband to do full nights because his work is too risky to do sleep deprived (like mine), have him get up couple of hours earlier and take the baby. My 10 month old has not slept through the night yet and I’m in my first trimester of my second pregnancy and I am EXHAUSTED. My husband always takes him 2-3 hours before work, takes care of him while he gets ready and then wakes me up 2 mins before he heads out the door. And I’m not saying here that he doesn’t get any rest. I often take our baby and head out for the day with him while my husband has a day off just so he can relax. Its about finding balance. And thats the biggest piece of advice. Make sure you find that balance and the load of motherhood and household is not all on you, because in this day and age most of us will have to go back to point sooner or later and what will happen is you will be the one worrying about your children, house and also pay the bills.
Best of luck and I wish all easy pregnancies 💕