If you’re late to the party, you may not have heard my most recent news – I’m a mum! Whilst the little man laid sleeping on my chest right now is a good 7 weeks old (sorry but WHERE has that time gone?!?), there’s a LOT of things I wish I had known in the first week of being a mum.
I recently discovered that back in the day, and in some other countries, you would stay in hospital for a good few days or even a week after giving birth – even if you’ve had a normal delivery. This time would be spent bonding with your baby, recovering from birth but most importantly – especially for first time mums like myself – learning how to look after your baby. You would actually be shown how to bath your baby. How to make up bottles. How to cut their nails. How to change a poopy nappy. All of the essentials to give you that peace of mind that you CAN look after your tiny little human and you’re doing everything right.
Now, don’t get me wrong, we paid for and attended an NCT class which was excellent but in the great scheme of things – putting a nappy on a doll is NOT the same as putting a nappy on a wriggly, crying baby after they’ve just been forced out of their happy little sanctuary inside your belly. So, the fact we were turfed out of the hospital pretty quickly after birth meant we were literally left to our own devices. The hospital just trust that you know what you’re doing, and all I can really say is thank god we did decide to do NCT, else we wouldn’t have had a bloody clue!
Whilst I do believe it’s true that your maternal/paternal instincts kick in, and there is of course an element of common sense too, there are definitely a few things I wish someone had told me in all the glorious detail about that first week of being a mum. So, here I am, going to tell the world in this blog post what I wish someone had told me…
