Unfold the great conspiracy of silence
by Andreea Lofgren
There is a great rule in parenting: never tell new parents how it really is! This is mostly applied in early stages: pregnancy and pre-school years.
So let’s take an example:
Your best friend, who just got pregnant, takes you out for a coffee. As you order a double espresso , because your children kept you up all night , she tells you that she wants to know everything. So what she thinks…
And you begin:
1. you shouldn’t be worry if you get fat, you will drop it in no time, especially if you breastfeed
2. giving birth is not so bad, and anyway your body is programmed to forget about the pain
3. breastfeeding can be tricky in the beginning, but it’s so natural that you will get the hang of it so quickly!
4. you’ll get used to not having so much sleep like you use to
5. taking care of a baby can really bring two people together
But what you really want to say is:
1. your stomach will never be the same, even if you go to the gym every day (which you won’t be able to because you won’t have the time) or try to breastfeed until you baby will start university
2. giving birth is quite terrifying, gas and air doesn’t work all the time. There will be blood and other fluids, that you will think you’ll making a CSI Miami scene and having people that you don’t know staring at your most intimate parts doesn’t leave you feel, empowering.
3. Breastfeeding can be hard; you will feel completely helpless when you can’t do it, people will look at you in disgust if you’ll try to feed your baby in public, it’s possible to get mastitis(which feels like pulsing headache, only in your breasts), you’ll leak in public, your nipples will feel like sandpaper, and just like your stomach, will never be the same…
4. You will loose your mind from lack of sleep. Even experienced military men were reduced to wrecks after three day of no sleep. You will have days when even putting some clothes on you will be a great achievement.
5. After the euphoria has passed, you and your partner will become shift workers and you will find yourself dropping off to sleep when he’s awake and the other way around. When he will leave in the morning to work, in the back of your mind you feel a sneaking suspicion that he spends longer and longer at the office, while you are dealing with milk bottles and endless diaper changes. Sex will be a distant memory, not so much because of physical changes after birth, but more because both of you are so tired and you won’t feel like having any. And don’t forget the smell from your baby sick…
This is one part of the story …the chaos. There is another side though; the part of endless love that you feel for this little bundle. For many women, the love they feel for their child surpasses anything they felt before. At first you don’t notice it, because you are still getting used to each other. But suddenly, one early morning, while the radio is on and this little milky person is asleep beside you, you will realise, that you will live this child more than life itself.
This is a new kind of love, and in it’s sense truly unconditional. But it can be also very frightening, not only for you as a mother, whose happiness depends of this unstable pink human bundle, but also for your partner. It’s a big change, from being the centre of your universe, to become a distant satellite. This can be very hard, especially if the ego inside is male.
So this is the reason, as an experienced parent you don’t tell the truth. She won’t understand the strange feeling when, once you feel completely elated with love for your baby and at the same time hopelessly trapped, until she will give birth. And you want for her to understand everything through her own experience.
So until then, my child is an angel, source of endless joy, I am so happy to be a new mom, my partner and I have as much sex as before and of course we don’t miss out our holidays abroad, going out with friends and spoil ourselves with consumer expensive and actual freedom.
Sarah Vine and Tania Kindersley 2009. Extracted from "Backwards in High Heels", to be published by Fourth Estate
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