Birth is just the start. This post is about planning for your birth and beyond in the context of planning for the fact that birth is just the start of the rest of your life. It's a bit like a post on planning your wedding that is mostly about planning for your marriage. Your birth and parenting experience is a journey into the great, exciting, unknown. You can't control everything, some things will happen that you're not expecting but you can give yourself the gift of support and knowledge that allows you to not just survive but thrive.
There's a saying: "It takes a village to raise a child" and that used to be naturally built into our daily lives. But modern-day parents are increasingly finding themselves coming into parenting with the expectation that it's all on them. We see parenting reflected in the media and on social media as something done inside a small nuclear family. We get the impression that we're expected to be able to meet all our children's needs by ourselves and even, if we're doing it "right", to find that experience blissful and fulfilling.
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You and Information - Best Friends for Pregnancy, Birth and Beyond. 1. Information is Not Advice.  Everyone has their own life experiences and opinions which may colour the way they present information and make it seem a lot like advice. Sometimes our own understanding of the world, or previous experiences, can make us feel pressured to make choices that feel implied by the information someone has selected to give us. An important thing to be aware of, and a skill to learn during pregnancy that will serve you very well as a parent and through life, is how to filter what you hear so you can spot the information and separate it from the advice so that you can decide what the right choices are for you. One example of this might be when you’re offered an induction of labour. You will be given information about why you are being offered an induction of labour by your care provider. Some of this may be in the form of advice to take up the offer. You might then think "I’m not sure if this is the right choice for me" and want to chat through with a friend. Your friend may have had an experience of having labour induced and may have negative memories from that. The information about her experience may also feel like advice. You might then also look up information on the internet about induction of labour (if you decide to do this, you’re very welcome to ask in our Facebook group if anyone knows any reliable sources of accurate information) and you may find that information is presented from many different perspectives. Ultimately, however, you will find some things resonate with you and this information is useful for your own decision-making process. Then you are able to discard the other information and advice which isn’t helpful or relevant to you. This can help you feel really confident in your own decisions and is a life skill which can help with your confidence as you learn to parent and throughout life.
6/3/2024 0 Comments Normal for a new parent The original title of this blog was normal infant behaviour. But as I started to write it I realised that it’s not enough to just know what to expect your baby to be like. As a team when we talked about what we would include in this post many of us reflected on how it feels to be a new parent, especially for the first time. What would we like expectant parents to know? That parenting is hard & however prepared you feel, it will still potentially hit you like a juggernaut. You feel what you feel - There's no such thing as a perfect parent In modern western society, we're often not really used to being around small babies. When you find yourself pregnant, especially for the first time, there’s so much information on what you should and shouldn’t do it can be very overwhelming and feel like you’re being expected to achieve some kind of perfect parent status without any actual practical support.
You might be one of these people to whom parenting seems to come easy, you might have an instant rush of love as soon as your baby is placed in your arms, feeding your baby may go just as you hope, your baby may sleep for a good four hours every time and they may laugh and gurgle on their play mat whenever they're awake. Or any one or all of those things might not happen and that would also be perfectly normal. When we see parenting represented on TV or social media it can seem like there are two extremes. People are either hashtag blessed with a perfect baby and life or they are comically hopeless at everything. But the reality is everyone struggles sometimes. Everyone is trying to find their own way of parenting. It's completely normal to have some amazing moments and some moments when you just want to crawl back into bed and cry. |
AuthorPosts by team members who are doulas, antenatal teachers, placenta specialists and birth nerds among other things. Archives
September 2024
CategoriesAll Birth Birth Plan Mental Health Peer Support Postnatal Postnatal Plan |
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