Parenting: R E S P E C T the children

Children come into the world programmed to learn, to learn fast, and particularly to learn by copying what they see around them.

Many a hapless parent has been caught out by a small child’s tendency to brightly repeat in public places words and phrases that were not intended to be overheard.

Imitation learning is so central to child development that it’s relevant to pretty much every aspect of childrearing.

Want your children to eat healthily? Replace cupcakes with apples and pears in your own diet.

What your children to have great body image? Say things to yourself in front of the mirror like “isn’t the human body fantastic? How lucky I am to have this one! Look how incredible it is”

Want to encourage your children to be confident around (say) dogs, or spiders, or when dealing with wasps? Ruthlessly crush any fear you might be feeling and pretend nonchalance in front of them.

Teaching by living your ideal is often great for you, too. I know my diet’s improved dramatically in the three and a half years since my first son was born.

So what does this have to do with respect?

Well, I want my children to learn to respect others, and to respect themselves. I’ve been realising that the most powerful tool in my parenting arsenal in this case is going to be how I show respect to them.

Respecting children looks a bit different from respecting adults. I would not seize an adult I respected, throw them onto a changing mat, and strip off their underwear regardless of their protests.

Babies are not equipped for bodily autonomy. They have needs that can only be met by manhandling them. They also don’t have enough grasp of human communicated to understand explanations.

However, it’s possible to start respecting personal space at a very young age. Here are some things I’ve been trying:

1. Ask “can we have a cuddle?” and accept the answer “no”, even if that’s just delivered as a squawk of protest. The question doesn’t have to be verbal – you can hold out your arms invitingly and watch for the response. With a baby too small to communicate, you can still watch how they react to your cuddles and follow their cues on what they want as far as possible. As they get older they might enjoy chase-and-cuddle games, but it shouldn’t be past the wit of an adult to detect when the game goes from being fun to being frustrating for them.
2. Give warning when I’m going to override a baby’s physical autonomy to do something to or with their body. “I’m going to put you on the mat and change your nappy”, perhaps. Or “you’re going in the buggy”.
3. Always tickle gently, allowing plenty of breaks so that the baby can catch their breath from the laughter and show you their underlying emotion. Tickling can make a child laugh even when they hate it. If they seem unhappy after the laugh, or say “no!” stop at once. You can always start again a minute or so later if it seems like they want that after all.
4. Count to three, out loud, before picking up a child that needs to come with you. This one kind of started by accident as an echo of the “I’m going to count to three and then there will be a consequence if you haven’t done X”. It’s turned out to be extremely useful, though. It’s not an either-you-do-this-or-I-do-that routine, it’s just a way of giving warning before I swoop in to pick them up. Since they’re less startled, and feel less rushed, they are also less likely to cry and protest when they are then picked up.
5. Discuss plans that are going to affect the child, with the child. This is more relevant for older toddlers, but even with a little baby I’ve always tried to run through, in the morning, the things that are going to happen that day. It doesn’t have to be detailed – a classic version is “Daddy’s taking you to nursery and will pick you up, but Mummy will get home from work in time to put you to bed.” Or, “we’re going to play in our house this morning, boys, and then we’ll go to Grandma’s house for lunch.”
6. When you can, let a child make meaningful choices about what they do with their bodies and their time. Hold up three t-shirts and let them pick which one to wear. As if they want to go to the park or to the library. Have two or three cereals on option so they can decide what to eat for breakfast. It’s easiest if you make sure that you offer only options that are ok with you, so that you’ll be happy with whatever they plump for.
7. Give warning when an activity is about to end. The magic words are “it’s time for one last thing” before we go home / have dinner / go to bed. Giving five minutes’ warning makes your control of their lives feel less arbitrary to them, and giving them a choice for the final activity helps them assert a little bit of control within the bigger picture of doing what you’ve decided should be done.

Close observation and restraint is the key, remembering that babies and toddlers are full people even if they’re still developing personalities.

How about times when you have to do things your way?

It’s obviously not always possible to respect a child’s wishes about what they do with their body. A three year old might want to get dressed by themselves, but if you’ve got to rush out of the door to get to nursery and on to work on time for an important meeting, you might have to say no.

When overriding a child’s wishes, I try to ensure two things:

1. Consistency. I want my boys to know what to expect from me. I set general rules where I can: we don’t go near a road without me holding your hand. If I need you and you’re not coming, I’ll count to three before picking you up. Stinky nappies get changed as soon as possible, even if you’d rather keep playing.
2. Explanation. I tell my boys why I am doing something they don’t want. If I don’t change this nappy soon, you might get an ouchy red rash. We need to go now because otherwise we’ll be late for nursery, and Mummy will be late to work. You can’t wear that top today because it’s got avocado on it and it needs to go in the wash.

This approach is one I’ve been feeling my way towards since my oldest son was born late in 2014. Some elements have been in place almost since then, and others have evolved over time. It’s only recently that I’ve started to realise the underlying principle I’ve been working towards.

I want my sons to know at a bone-deep level that they matter and that other people matter. I want them to have an instinct to check that the other person also wants to cuddle.

In short, my goal is to respect my children, so that they learn to respect themselves and to respect others.

Obligatory Aretha Franklin:

What I wish I’d known before giving birth, Part II

Part I of this list was published last week.

Fair warning: detailed discussion of the physical impact of a difficult birth follows.

6. Even if your waters seem to have broken, there may be some trapped that the midwife can break manually.

This was another feature of both my birth experiences. The waters had definitely gone, but on closer examination the midwife told me that they could see a bubble of trapped waters, which they could pop in a highly uncomfortable manoeuvre using a special hooked tool.

Turns out in both cases that that was the trigger my body needed. Once the trapped waters were gone, birth came extremely quickly. If I’m ever pregnant again, I will definitely ask the midwives to hunt for trapped waters at the earliest opportunity in order to short circuit the 48 hours sit-around.

7. Do not let yourself be wired up to a drip or fixed in place by a monitor until and unless you really, really need it.

Both times I gave birth, the midwifes expected to induce. They put a cannula in my hand and, the first time, set up a drip with nothing but fluids before artificially breaking my waters. Both times I then went into labour extremely quickly, so fast that I was in late stage labour before the midwives thought it was possible.

The first time round, due to the drip, my mobility was severely limited and I ended up on the bed on my back for most of the process. Because babies have to pass down and towards the front of your pelvis, lying on your back means that you are fighting gravity to get the baby out. I knew this, but was in too much pain to move and accepted the midwife’s say-so that I couldn’t possibly be that far along yet.

For the same reason I was persuaded to keep the drip in ‘in case we need to induce’ even when I was at the most painful, near-final stage of labour which normally lasts half an hour at most. The midwife then attached a monitor to the baby’s head at this point, preventing me from moving at all.

I spent a couple of hours at this stage, with the baby’s head just about visible, until I was exhausted and in stirrups (special straps on your legs to help you push). Then the monitor on the baby registered distress, and somebody pushed a panic button, and the room filled up with people. I saw two medical figures sweep down my right side with something shiny in hands, and heard the words “we’re going to have to cut her!”, and I was for some reason inspired to new efforts.

I pushed hard enough to tear skin and muscle, and the baby was born in a heartbeat. The intensity of the pain and the length of the experience, plus the last minute panic, left me with PTSD.

8. Take music and dance.

The second time I gave birth I was determined that things would go better. As I talked with the midwives during my pregnancy they diagnosed and explained my PTSD, and were extremely helpful in suggesting ways to vary the experience so that it would not be so difficult a second time round.

Home birth was the first option, but due to the waters-breaking-no-contractions the risk of infection was too great. I couldn’t have a water birth for the same reason – the midwife wanted to be able to monitor the baby’s heartbeat throughout my labour so I couldn’t take off the sensors and hop in a pool.

I did manage to make a few significant changes, though. I brought along my laptop with a six hour playlist of calming music – a mix of classical favourites and the chiller kind of classic rock. Some songs I could sing along to and some sweeping music that could help calm and distract me from the pain. It made a huge difference.

I had a cannula inserted early on, but instead of being attached to a saline drip I kept my hands free. I had a monitor around my belly, but it wasn’t physically attached to the reader so I could walk around and even dance around the early contractions. The energy of movement, and the ability to shift around, made things far far easier. Highly recommended.

9. Before you get an epidural, get the midwife to check how far things have progressed.

The second time you give birth everything happens far more quickly than the first. However, the long wait I’d had between my waters going and contractions starting put everybody off guard a bit.

When the midwife artificially broke the trapped waters, I asked her not to start the induction just yet. She didn’t believe me when I predicted I’d go into labour and it would all be over within a couple of hours, but she was willing to give me half an hour to see what happened. Sure enough: boom! Massive regular contractions, almost at once.

Within an hour, I was saying things like “I kind of want to push”. I was strongly discouraged by my midwife. The same thing happened in my first labour, and there’s a good reason: if you get worn out pushing when the baby isn’t ready to come yet, that can make the rest of your labour far harder. However, in both cases my body was moving faster than the midwives guessed.

The second time round I wasn’t sure enough of myself to say ‘take a look, I think he’s coming’. After all, I knew what had happened in my first labour had been a big surprise to the midwife then because it was so unusual. What were the odds of the same thing happening again?

Since it was the same body, pretty high, actually. What happened the second time was I said “this pain is unbearable, if this is going to go on for a long time then I need an epidural”.

It took about twenty minutes for the epidural specialist to come through from another lady he had been helping. I leant on the side of the bed, struggling to keep still through huge body-shaking contractions so that he could get a needle into my spine without damage. It was basically there when I realised that I needed to push again.

This time around I knew enough to insist on it. I rolled myself back up onto the bed, up onto my side (instead of lying on my back), and I pushed. The midwife jumped forward. “I can see the baby!” she cried, surprised.

“Can you see his hair?” I asked my husband.

“She means all of the baby,” he said, and so she did – he had shot straight out.

So the lesson here is that it’s never a waste of time to check how far along your dilation is, particularly if you’re thinking of having an epidural, even if the midwife tells you it’s not possible for you to be ready to push yet.

10. Talk, talk, talk.

Nobody knows what’s going to happen when somebody goes into labour. Birth is a tricky thing, and we can’t monitor it too closely without making it harder. You aren’t going to know as much as the midwives about what it’s like to watch somebody else giving birth, but you know infinitely more than they do about what it’s like to be in your body, in the process of giving birth.

Talk. Discuss as much as you can with the midwifery team while you’re still in the mid to late stages of pregnancy. Tell them how you feel, what things you’re worried about, and what’s important to you. Ask if you can get a specific midwife for the birth, if you find that makes you feel better. Ask about the equipment you want. Ask them what to expect, and explain what you’d like to see happen.

In the end many of the plans I made came to nothing. That’s going to happen a lot: this is a process we can’t control, and safety comes first. But since I’d got to know the midwives and explained my preferences, they were able to give me the support I needed.

In the end, the second time I gave birth, the hardest thing was having the cannula put in. That triggered my PTSD like nothing else. I needed someone to hold me while it happened, and a constant stream of reassurement, and to have the wretched thing taken out as soon as the birth was done and it was no longer needed. All of that happened because I took the time to explain my situation to the midwives and they understood where I was coming from.

What I wish I’d known before giving birth Part I

Pushing a grapefruit out through your pelvis? Fun times!

Newborns aren’t exactly grapefruit shaped, but a newborn human is basically a huge head with a little body tucked in behind it. Once the head gets out the rest just sort of flows through. If you’re lucky, that is.

Human newborns and human maternal pelvises are right at the edge of tolerance for a successful birth. As a species we’re running on a tension between pelvises that let mummy walk upright and heads that are big enough to hold those stinking huge think boxes that we love.

The result is that birth is a mess.

Fair warning: detailed discussion of childbirth follows.

Here’s a short list of things I wish I’d known before giving birth:

1. It is not always easy to identify the moment you go into labour.

On the screen, the woman always knows. That’s often because her waters have broken before contractions start, because waters breaking makes a big dramatic moment. Except it turns out that that isn’t always the case either. When I had my first child, my first clue was when my waters broke only a tiny bit. A trickle rather than a splash, just as I got out of bed in the morning. I went in to the hospital where they did an uncomfortable and invasive procedure to collect any liquid they could from (ahem) just inside. This confirmed that yes, my waters had broken. Which brings me on to my next point.

2. It’s possible to be fooled about your waters breaking.

About a week before I gave birth the second time I climbed out of a bath, was towelling myself dry, when a similar trickle burst free. Oh-ho, again! I thought, and phoned the hospital. This time round they didn’t test things because they just assumed that, since I’d given birth before, I’d know what I was talking about. However, since I’d had the rarer tiny-waters-breaking experience before, I didn’t.

Turns out that being in the bath can lead to bath waters being sucked in – after all, your body is getting ready to squeeze a baby out, so there’s a lot more space and give in your vaginal passage. Then, of course, when you stand up and shift around to towel yourself off those waters come sputtering out just as if your waters had broken. In the end I was in hospital for half a night before we all realised what had happened and I was sent home.

3. Your waters can break without you going into labour.

That is, when no regular contractions have started. This happened to me both times I gave birth. The second time round I’d come home after the embarrassing little false start and had a few days of nothing happening. We’d prepped for a home birth with a big hired birthing pool. We were also cutting it fine on getting a new bedroom fixed up for our older kid, and had a big Ikea order on the way.

That morning my husband had dropped our older boy off with my parents and gone on to work, so I had a day to rest up in the house. An unexpected knock on the door mid-morning sent me scrambling into more clothes and waddling downstairs as fast as I could manage – the Ikea order had come early.

I showed the delivery men where to put the various boxes, thanked them, shut the door behind them, walked to the kitchen to get a drink and – whoosh! The waters went in full cinematic flow, fortunately all over a washable floor. Still no contractions, though.

4. If you haven’t gone into labour but your waters have broken, there’s risk of infection and labour must be induced after 48 hours. 

Let me tell you, sitting around the house waiting for strong regular contractions to start is a stressful state to be in.

You know that this time is risky, for you and for the baby. You’re on hyper alert for any change that might send you hurtling in to the hospital. You’re hoping against hope that labour will start naturally – getting induced tends to lead to a more difficult experience and a higher risk of tearing.

You have no control over the situation at all. You can eat spicy food, drink pineapple juice, bounce up and down on your exercise ball all you like, but even if that triggers more contractions and they’re getting stronger you can’t be sure that they’ll keep coming.

The midwives generally don’t want to come out to you or accept you into the hospital until your contractions are strong and regular, eg coming every two minutes or so over a decent length of time.

It’s a tricky judgement to make – when my second baby shifted position at one point I went from mild to extreme contractions in a few minutes, but when I lay on my back they went away again.

5. Your waters keep replenishing themselves, but you might not want to think too much about how.

I worried, when I saw how much liquid I lost over the 48 hours before going into the hospital for induction, about the space around my poor wee man drying up and leaving him uncomfortable. It turns out that this doesn’t happen.

The liquid around your baby is continually renewed, you see, as he takes what he needs from your bloodstream and, um, discards the rest as waste product. Babies don’t produce solid waste in the womb unless they’re in distress (any sign of dark newborn poo before birth is a flashing red warning light for emergency action), but they produce a great deal of liquid.

When your waters keep on breaking, perhaps you could think of it as pissing for two?

This seems to be growing into a super-essay, and there’s only so much birth-gore anybody can take at any one time, so I’m cutting no.s 6-10 for next week.

To be continued!

 

Travelling with toddlers: felt craft project

Two adults, two toddlers, two flights. This summer we took our first big trip as a family, with the boys aged 18 months and three and a half years.

I knew we needed a ploy. Something new and diverting that could keep a toddler engaged without leaving his seat for at least a few minutes. And I remembered when I was little we used to have a felt board with a set of colourful shapes that made various scenes. I think there was a nativity one, and possibly a circus. At any rate, the animals surrounding the Christmas cot were occasionally balancing balls on their noses.

Materials

• A4 cardboard sheet (I used the card backing from a pad of A4 lined paper)
• A4 decorative cardboard for backing (I used a sheet of mirror card)
• Large felt piece (I used an old pink jumper that went through the wash too many times and shrank. I checked that the felt pieces would stick to it before getting started.)
• Trim (I used some spare pom pom trim I had lying around)
• Smaller pieces of variously coloured felt
• Hot glue gun & glue

Method

First cut the large felt piece down to a rectangle roughly an inch larger than the A4 card in all directions.

Pipe glue from the hot glue gun across the thick A4 card in lines roughly two centimetres apart. Try to get an even coverage but don’t worry too much about being neat.

Quickly, before the glue has time to cool, spread the felt across the cardboard and stretch and smooth it down. You want the surface to be flat and smooth.

Turn the felt-and-card over. You should have a broad lip of felt along each side of the cardboard. Before glueing these flaps down at the back, fold them over to see how they’ll lie and trim away any excess. If it looks as though the corners will be too thick, you can cut away a triangle of fabric at each corner to make the fold neater.

Next you’ll need to fold the felt down and glue it along the back of the card on each side. Again, focus on keeping this smooth.

Take your decorative A4 card and glue it on top of the folded felt/back of the card. You should now have a board with one side covered in smooth stretched felt and the other side covered in your decorative card.

Mirror card works well here because it means that they can turn the board over and make faces at themselves in it.

Alternatively, if you had enough felt you could make two card-and-felt boards and put them back to back for a double sided felt board.

Once the board has been put together the next task is to tidy up the edges with some trim. I went for pom poms because I had them lying around and I knew they’d be an interesting tactile addition – anything to help grab a toddler’s attention!

Start in the middle of a long side. Make sure you fold the very end of the trim over. Run the hot glue gun along the end of the board leaving an even bead of glue for a few inches, then press down the trim along that length, then add some more glue and repeat until you’re nearly back where you started.

Take your time about this stage, as it can be really annoying if the glue gets smeared on the felt and you’ll want to scrape it off at once.

When you’re nearly at the end, you should be able to cut the trim to length leaving a short excess to fold back neatly under the last length as you stick it down.

Ta da! Felt board.

Next, you’ll want to cut out some shapes that the kiddo can use to make pictures with. I tried to make a combination of circles, squares, triangles, rectangles, and more interesting shapes such as hands, feet, faces, and whole people.

When we came to get the felt board out on the plane, though, the winning combination was something I threw in almost as an afterthought – four long stripes in blue and enough yellow playing pieces for a game of noughts and crosses.

We played several rounds and then I read my book while he carefully set the pieces out on the board in various different patterns. Score!

Breastfeeding and the NCT

My husband and I attended NCT classes before our first child was born. The NCT is a charity with the streamline ‘new parent support’. Their antenatal classes are a sine qua non of middle class parenting in the UK.

The usual line is ‘we’re basically paying for this class to buy friends’, as the NCT class will introduce you to a small group of other local couples who are also expecting their first child. I know a few people for whom that worked out exactly as planned. The friends they made have stuck with them, bringing a much needed new community during those difficult days with a newborn, but also going on to meet again and again as their children grow.

Our experience was a mixed bag. I did appreciate the pre-packaged support network. We didn’t make any lifelong friends, but the group supported each other over the difficult time before we all went back to work, and I’ll always be glad of that.

The NCT course itself was disappointing. Some of what we were shown and told was helpful, but other lessons were confusing or just plain wrong. It didn’t help that our instructor was a keen homeopath with a poor grasp of the scientific method and a haphazard teaching style.

For example, our instructor ran through a list of ‘things that happen just after birth’ with big laminated cards that we laid out in a line on the floor. There were too many ‘things’ to remember, and it wasn’t clear which were most important. I was left unsure about what to expect, and probably less confident to ask questions of midwives and nurses than if I hadn’t been given that lesson.

Another issue that came up was breastfeeding. The NCT is extremely supportive of breastfeeding, and all the lessons were presented from a perspective of ‘you will want to do this thing because it is absolutely essential; here is how you can stand your ground against those who will try to stop you’.

We were told again and again that breastfeeding is easy because it is natural, that it’s not something to be scared about, and that also here are tons of tips on exactly how to make it work.

Your baby will know how to latch on and will naturally be drawn towards milk, and also here is the one true correct motion to help your baby latch on and if it doesn’t look like this you are Doing It Wrong.

The net result of this teaching was a strong pressure to breastfeed, a sense of guilt if anything goes wrong (because, of course, Baby Knows How so it must be Mummy’s fault), and a creeping paranoia about whether it would be possible at all.

The way that the benefits of breastfeeding were framed, we were essentially told that failing to breastfeed (and it would be a failure) would cost our child health, IQ points, and a future.

The funny thing is, that the scientific evidence is not as clear cut or straightforward as this recommendation suggests.

To illustrate the difference between what we were told by the NCT and what the evidence actually says, here’s part of a summary of findings from a meta analysis of research on breastfeeding that was looking specifically at duration of breastfeeding:

The results of two controlled trials and 21 other studies suggest that exclusive breastfeeding (no solids or liquids besides human milk, other than vitamins and medications) for six months has several advantages over exclusive breastfeeding for three to four months followed by mixed breastfeeding. These advantages include a lower risk of gastrointestinal infection, more rapid maternal weight loss after birth, and delayed return of menstrual periods. No reduced risks of other infections, allergic diseases, obesity, dental caries, or cognitive or behaviour problems have been demonstrated. A reduced level of iron has been observed in developing-country settings.

In this analysis, the authors found only three advantages to six rather than four months breastfeeding, and only one of those related to the baby: the lower risk of gastrointestinal infection.

I don’t want to pretend that that’s nothing – obviously no new mother wants to expose their child to a potentially serious infection in their first months of life. However, this study of studies is specifically put together in the context of World Health Organisation guidance that applies internationally. It is therefore considering both developing and developed countries; places where it is easy to sterilise baby equipment and provide clean water and places where that is difficult.

This all reads somewhat strangely for those of us who were threatened with:

• increased risk of other infections
• increased risk of allergic diseases
• increased obesity rates
• increased dental caries
• increased likelihood of cognitive problems (ie, losing IQ)
• increased likelihood of behavioural problems

if we didn’t keep breastfeeding for at least six months, ideally a year, and probably longer than that. Turns out that the evidence doesn’t support those claims for anything beyond four months.

So hey, fellow mummys of the 2010s: you were lied to. And guilted and shamed and bullied too on the basis of that lie.

The trouble with all these powerful arguments for breastfeeding is that they are, many of them, based on fairly thin evidence. Only one study, say, with a relatively small sample size. When data from lots of different studies are combined, sometimes the findings from smaller studies turn out to be just random chance, the apparent effect vanishing in the bigger sample of the meta analysis.

When I asked our NCT instructor about the evidence to support some of what she was saying, she told me that it couldn’t possibly exist because it would require experiments on newborns which would of course be unethical. I was able to go away that evening and google studies – observational studies, like the ones drawn into the meta analysis linked above – that proved her wrong.

What does that mean for breastfeeding?

There are genuine benefits to breastfeeding. The study I’m quoting here finds some. There are also disadvantages: lower iron rates is mentioned above, addressed these days with iron supplements.

Personally I’m all for it, when it works. I breastfed both my sons for over a year. I enjoyed it, and I think they did too. However, given the slight nature of the benefits, I can easily imagine other circumstances in which my boys benefitted from formula.

For example, what if your milk flows slowly so that your child has to feed for ages and it cuts into his or her sleep? Sleep is essential for babies too!

What if between you and your child it’s not possible to find a comfortable latch position that allows the child to drink without shredding your nipples? ‘Pink milk’ is the phrase that gets used when blood is flowing along with breastmilk. Has any study considered the effect of that on newborn health?

Stress is definitely bad for babies; stressful early experiences can increase the likelihood of depression and other mental health problems down the line. How far can the ‘desperately trying to breastfeed’ thing go before level of stress (and lack of sleep) builds up for both mother and newborn to unhealthy levels?

What about other practical concerns, like the need to look after other children? Or situations where the mother needs to return to work soon after giving birth? Statutory maternity pay in the UK is not exactly a fortune.

Whether or not to breastfeed, and how long to breastfeed for, is a difficult decision based on a number of individual factors in an area where the scientific evidence can’t provide a definitive best choice for every situation.

Naturally therefore it’s become a hotbed of angst, shame, and the need to police what women do with their bodies.

What I wish I’d known before getting pregnant

Pregnancy. That thing where a human body builds another human body, inside a temporary organ also built on the fly.

I always knew I wanted children. Even when I was tiny, I was excited to see other babies. As I got older I stayed fascinated, and took every chance that came up to spend time with little kids and babies. I learned how to hold them and comfort them and change their nappies.

As the eldest of four, and as someone who reached babysitting age with a number of younger cousins, I felt that I’d got enough experience with kids to more or less know the score. I was right, in a way; basic childcare knowledge does help. I was also laughably wrong: there were so many aspects of having children that were just invisible before I took the plunge myself.

Pregnancy in itself was perhaps the biggest thing I overlooked. It is, of course, different for different people. I talked a few weeks back about the intensity of my menstruation cycle, which should have been a clue that this could be tricky.

Here is what I knew and expected about pregnancy:

1. Pregnancy is not an illness.
2. It does make you throw up, though. Mostly in the mornings.
3. Some people get all the way to giving birth without realising they’re pregnant, because the symptoms are ignored or taken for something else.
4. Trust your body it knows what to do.
5. You know what’s going on in your own body.
6. It lasts for nine months.
7. You get a big belly, and that makes it hard to stay standing up so you get a badge telling people there’s a baby on board and that means you always get a seat on public transport.
8. You get weird cravings for strange foods.
9. You get to see fuzzy ultrasound scan pictures and coo over them.
10. There are vitamins and things to take.

The biggest thing that I didn’t anticipate, and wish I’d known before getting pregnant, is that there is such a thing as pre-partum depression. During my first pregnancy, I was under a lot of stress at work. I ended up having a full-blown break down, largely because I didn’t see the depression coming. During my second pregnancy I was far more careful about watching my mental health and was able to ride out the dark days without going under.

Here’s some more stuff I found out:

1. Pregnancy might not actually be an illness, but it can combine symptoms from a wide range of nasty illnesses – or not, as the case may be. Some pregnant people will be able to keep going pretty much as before, with a few extra medical check ups and a handful of maternity clothes. Others will find they have to drastically change their routines.
2. Morning sickness is a thing, but it doesn’t necessarily happen in the mornings. It varies a lot, from just a tad of nausea to inability to keep any food down at all for days on end.
3. It’s true that some people don’t find out they’re having a baby until they’re, suddenly, HAVING A BABY! However, this is really rare and tends to happen to people who might expect their body to be changing drastically for other life reasons – eg, teenagers – and should not be taken as any indication that pregnancy is easy or unnoticeable.
4. Your body is confused when it is pregnant. It is highjacked by the placenta which is making DEMANDS which must be obeyed. The result is generally to prioritise ‘growing a healthy baby’ over keeping you in decent shape. Most of the time this works out fine, but the reason for all those medical check ups is that it can go drastically wrong quite quickly. Trust, but verify.
5. Hahahahahaha. I have never been so weirded out by my own body as when pregnant. I never had a clue what was going on or why.
6. The classic pregnancy schedule is far too neat and tidy for such a messy biological reality. Pregnancy lasts roughly nine months, but you don’t find out about it until you’re several weeks in and the due date that you get given isn’t so much a single day as the mid-point of a several-weeks-long time in which the baby could be born and would be considered full term.
7. It’s hard to stay standing up when you’re pregnant for quite a number of reasons, and the extra weight is only one of them. The worst time for most people is actually the first trimester before anything is visible at all: some of the most complicated construction work on foetus and placenta happens at a very early stage, and the flood of hormones that’s released is the reason that nausea tends to be worst at this point. Other common symptoms are joint pain (from fairly early on in pregnancy your body starts softening up joints and tendons in preparation for giving birth), dizziness, and exhaustion. If all of this hits you at once, you will definitely need to sit down before you fall down.
8. Cravings are a thing for some people, but they’re not actually that common. I never had any. I did, however, have unexpected reactions to food I liked to eat. The worst part was that caffeine made me throw up when I was pregnant, and I had to stop drinking tea altogether. It was painful.
9. The ultrasound is a weird experience, but cool. Pro tip: the pictures are far more interesting to you than to anybody you share them with.
10. This is true. Many vitamins. What I hadn’t expected, though, is that pregnancy rules out a lot of other medicines. You can take paracetamol, and I was prescribed omeprazole (for heartburn) and sertraline (an anti-depressant) while pregnant. However, you can’t take any kind of anti-inflammatory, which rules out ibuprofen and makes the joint pain difficult to treat.

 

 

Quotes: mothers make us all

It isn’t just that without mothering humans would lack nurturance, warmth, and emotional security. They would also lack culture, history, morality, science, and literature.

Alison Gopnik discusses development in The Philosophical Baby: What Children’s Minds Tell Us about Truth, Love & the Meaning of Life.

Quotes: before and behind

Because we are responsible for the future, we can feel guilty about the past; because we can hope, we can also regret; because we can make plans, we can be disappointed. The other side of being able to consider all the possible futures, all the things that could go differently, is that you can’t escape considering all the possible pasts, all the things that could have gone differently.

Alison Gopnik discusses development in The Philosophical Baby: What Children’s Minds Tell Us about Truth, Love & the Meaning of Life.

Quotes: never before, never again

Inside your baby is a unique individual who will grow to think and feel things that no other person on the face of the earth has ever thought or felt before.

Terrifying and exhilarating, isn’t it? For every new person, everything is new. The universe exists again in each understanding of it.

This is from Ages and Stages: A Parent’s Guide to Normal Childhood Development by Charles E. Schaefer and Theresa Foy Geronimo.

Quotes: butterfly baby philosophy

Children and adults are different forms of Homo sapiens. They have very different, though equally complex and powerful, minds, brains, and forms of consciousness, designed to serve different evolutionary functions. Human development is more like metamorphosis, like caterpillars becoming butterflies, than like simple growth.

Alison Gopnik discusses development in The Philosophical Baby: What Children’s Minds Tell Us about Truth, Love & the Meaning of Life.