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<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
\n Niamh O’Reilly<\/p>\n
HANDS UP IF,\u00a0as a new mum, you were told, \u201cEnjoy every minute,\u201d while you simultaneously sported dark circles under your eyes so large that it was probably clear from the International Space Station that you were, in fact, not enjoying every moment of the newborn phase.<\/p>\n
In reality, you may have felt more like a Marine who was being put through an extreme sleep deprivation challenge, only to find out there was no medal waiting for you at the end.<\/p>\n
Well-wishers who lob out phrases like this to new parents, of course, mean nothing but the best. However, when you are functioning on zero sleep, have a colicky baby, are finding breastfeeding a challenge, or have a disgruntled toddler thrown into the mix, gushing about the sheer and constant joy of new motherhood is often a step too far into toxic positivity territory.<\/p>\n
Telling an exhausted new parent, who wonders if they will ever sleep or feel like themselves again, that they should lap up every single second of this endurance test with nothing but delight, risks invalidating what they might really be feeling. And I hate to break this to you, but some days it\u2019s not the unbridled nonstop joy train you assume it is from the outside.\n<\/p>\n
\u2018Precious moments\u2019<\/p>\n
Clich\u00e9d phrases like this are used to remind parents to cherish those precious, fleeting early years and even shame those who don\u2019t. However, I\u2019d argue statements like these need to be flung in the bin forever, along with some other hackneyed gems such as- \u201csleep when the baby sleeps,\u201d or \u201cenjoy the newborn bubble,\u201d or \u201cwait until he\/she is a teenager, you\u2019ll look back on the newborn phase and wish you were there,\u201d which are not just irritating; they are tone-deaf most of the time.<\/p>\n
Someone who sounds as if she is as fed up fielding these comments as the rest of us is Vogue Williams. In September, she gave birth to her fourth child, a son, Remy Valentine, and has recently been making her way back to small bits and pieces of work, including her podcast with Joanne McNally, My Therapist Ghosted Me.<\/p>\n
In a recent episode, she told listeners that while she was delighted to bring her new baby everywhere with her, she was tired of hearing the same old worn-out story about the complete and constant joy of motherhood.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor people telling me to enjoy him, I am enjoying him, and I know that the days are long, but the years are short. Stop saying that to every new mother when we\u2019re completely wrecked,\u201d she told listeners.<\/p>\n
True to form and quick as a wink, her co-host, Joanne McNally, replied, \u201cOh yeah, they\u2019re saying enjoy the sleep deprivation and the tit-mastitis, because we\u2019ll all be dead soon.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t believe the comments haven\u2019t changed either. It\u2019s like Jesus Christ, can we come up with something new please?\u201d Vogue said, adding, \u201cWe are enjoying them. We\u2019re enjoying them as much as we humanly possibly can, but you also have to enjoy yourself too.\u201d<\/p>\n
Like her or loathe her, Williams was spot on. Why are we still pretending that getting up for the umpteenth time at stupid o\u2019clock in the morning for weeks on end is a joyous thing to celebrate and file in your memory bank under \u2018good times\u2019? Why can\u2019t new mothers safely acknowledge that sometimes it\u2019s so bloody exhausting or overwhelming that they can\u2019t enjoy it, nor should they have to.<\/p>\n
Parents need to be able to say these things out loud without being met with shame or tut-tutting by the why-did-you-have-children-if-all-you-do-is-complain brigade. By pushing a Lego movie-style narrative of everything is awesome all the time in new motherhood, all we\u2019re doing is piling on the mum guilt from the get-go for those who don\u2019t, and trust me, there are bucketfuls of guilt waiting for them down the road. They don\u2019t need to feel it from the outset.<\/p>\n
What parents actually need<\/p>\n
What exhausted parents, who might not be loving every moment of their new reality really need to hear is that two things can be true at the same time. You can feel burned out by the demands of early motherhood, but you can also love your baby. So why don\u2019t we tell them that more often, rather than pretend every moment is joy on steroids? Because hearing it really does matter.<\/p>\n
I can remember my mother\u2019s neighbour running out to the car to give me a new baby gift a couple of weeks after I\u2019d given birth for the first time. To me, she seemed like she was a glamorous, well-put-together young mum, with two brilliant boys. As I struggled with the car seat, and my emotions, which were already overwhelmed by new motherhood, I remember wondering if I\u2019d ever get to the point where she seemed to be at. Well rested, happy and pretty much flying it.<\/p>\n
I turned to face her and prepared myself for the litany of familiar questions and statements I\u2019d heard over the last few weeks from family members and strangers \u2013 \u201cIs he sleeping for you? Are you doing breast or bottles? Is he a good baby? You\u2019re so lucky. The days are long, but the years are short. Enjoy every moment\u201d and so on.<\/p>\n
But to my surprise, she looked at me, clearly clocking the giant dark circles under my eyes, slightly crazed hair and pale complexion, and put her arm on my shoulder and simply said, \u201cIf you can just get through these next three weeks or so, I promise it will get so much better.\u201d<\/p>\n
I could have cried. It was exactly what I needed to hear in the moment. Pure honesty with a hint of hope, from someone who had done it and survived. It was one of the few times in that newborn phase when someone told me, it\u2019s okay not to be happy right now. She made me feel seen and validated my reality, instead of giving me the standard positivity script: \u201cYou should love every moment of new motherhood, isn\u2019t it great, and so on.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s only with hindsight I realise that this woman was probably not \u2018well rested, happy and flying it\u2019; she was simply in another phase of motherhood with its own invisible challenges I didn\u2019t yet grasp. And while I didn\u2019t want to hear it in the moment, I now fully understand the expression, \u2018the days are long, but the years are short,\u2019 especially as my firstborn hurtles towards 10.<\/p>\n
But as much as I\u2019m now able to look back on those foggy early days of motherhood and wonder how I got through the absurdity of it all, I know simply pretending it was all easy street at the time was not in any way helpful.<\/p>\n
Yes, the days are long, and the years are short, but maybe today isn\u2019t the day to remind that tired or burned-out new mum of that fact; maybe today is the day you tell her she\u2019ll get through this phase and things will get easier.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Niamh O’Reilly HANDS UP IF,\u00a0as a new mum, you were told, \u201cEnjoy every minute,\u201d while you simultaneously sported…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":652402,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[33557,93,61,60,387,1786,276565,3187],"class_list":["post-652401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-column","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-opinion","tag-parenting","tag-raising-them-right","tag-voices"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=652401"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652401\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/652402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=652401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=652401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=652401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}