17 Things I Learned in My First Year of Motherhood
Becoming a mother has been a steep learning curve
I had my son just over a year ago and it’s safe to say that the first year of motherhood has been the hardest year of my life. Here are some of the things I’ve learned along the way…
1) Always bring a spare pair of clothes (for them and for you).
The one time you don’t will be the one time you both end up covered in vomit / food / excrement.
2) There’s no such thing as too many wet wipes.
I bulk buy them in boxes of fifty packs.
3) If you could really do with a break that day your baby will nap for approximately 45 seconds.
Especially if you are at all hungover. It’s just the law.
4) If you have any plans or timings you need to keep to, your baby will nap for three hours.
Of course. Babies hate plans.
5) Headbands are great for hiding unwashed hair.
I own several.
6) Even if you think you’re prepared, you’re not.
I read all the books. I did the NCT course. My baby was planned and deeply wanted. And then my son arrived and I realised I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. The absolute shock of it all, of how drastically my life changed, felt like being dropped out of a plane with no parachute and being expected to land on my feet.
7) Sleep deprivation doesn’t kill you (but god, it’s hard).
I remember googling ‘can I die from lack of sleep?’ in the middle of one particularly endless night. When my son was very small he needed feeding every 45 minutes. Twenty-four hours a day. The first time I got a block of two hours sleep it felt like such a treat. Four hours was pure luxury. Before having him I would have told you that, no, I could not survive on that little sleep.
But the thing is, you do. It’s awful and you feel like the walking dead and even basic decision making becomes difficult to the point that choosing what socks to put on in the morning can make you cry, but somehow you get through it. I suppose because you just have to.
The sleep deprivation of those early days was definitely one of the hardest parts of my first year of motherhood but it also taught me how resilient I am. I may never have run a marathon but I have survived that.
8) Babies are just as different as adults.
Maybe it was naïve of me, but I really used to think that babies were just babies. They would all follow the same kind of developmental journey and be broadly similar. But watching my son and the babies of my NCT friends develop quickly made me throw that idea out the window. Babies are similar in the same way that chips and strawberries are similar: both food but that’s about it.
9) You need to book childcare while you’re still pregnant.
It feels mad to think about nurseries when all you’ve ever seen of your baby is a blurry black and white scan, but this is one of my biggest parenting regrets. I wish I had booked childcare sooner. We viewed nurseries when my son was a few months old which felt early to me, but by then the only slot we could get was for a start date when he was 14 months and for the dregs of whatever hours were still available. I had to go back to work when he was six months old (one of the downsides to being self-employed) so since then have been looking after him during the day and writing in the evenings. I would not recommend it.
It’s hard to think about childcare when you don’t know quite what you’ll need but nurseries and childminders are so oversubscribed that the reality is, if you don’t get on it early you may well miss out. I now know that a lot of parents book their unborn baby into full-time childcare and then work out how many hours they’ll actually need closer to the time. It shouldn’t be this way, but unfortunately in many places in the UK it is and if you don’t play the system you lose.
10) You have to do a lot of singing and a lot of small talk.
I was just not prepared for the amount of public singing that would be involved in motherhood. It’s constant, from mum and baby classes to the sing-narrating you find yourself doing all day to keep your baby from crying. Often, the only way to keep mine quiet on a car journey is to sing Old Macdonald loudly on repeat. By the end of a particularly long journey there are some pretty unusual animals on that farm, let me tell you.
Then there’s the small talk. You’ll be quietly pushing your baby on the swings at 7am, barely awake and in unwashed clothes, and then another child will appear on the swing next to you and you will find yourself having to start a conversation with their equally tired parent. Sometimes, it’s lovely – that sense of camaraderie and community. But sometimes, I just want to play with my child and not have to speak to anyone else. Please tell me it’s not just me…
11) ‘Trust your instinct’ isn’t such a stupid thing to say after all.
When my son was a newborn I wanted to shout at people who went on about trusting my gut. ‘But I’ve never had a baby before! I don’t have any instincts! Just tell me what to do!’ But one year on I realise I am the best person to know what’s best for my son because I’m the one who spends the most time with him. When I google some problem to do with my child often I’m not looking for answers, just reassurance. Like when his sleep pattern went awry at 10 months and I spent days asking people online at what age their child dropped from two to one nap. I just wanted to hear from other mothers who had made this transition at this age (earlier than the books advise you), but deep down I already knew it was the right choice for him. I’d tried persevering with two naps for a while and it just wasn’t working for us – I knew that something had to change.
Once I’d had sufficient reassurance I went ahead and changed up the schedule like I’d been planning on doing anyway and do you know what? It worked.
I don’t believe my instincts are because of some innate maternal wisdom, though, instead they come from experience. When you spend each and every day with your baby you get to know them so well that you really do know better than Google.
12) Children’s TV is there for a reason: use it.
I think of CBeebies like a cool aunt who can take over when I’m feeling just too exhausted to play another game of Peekabo. Hey Duggee can thankfully be relied on for a boost of energy when you have nothing left to give.
13) Motherhood is the hardest job in the world.
And not just something we say to make mothers feel better. It really, really is. A lot of my mum friends have recently gone back to work in a range of really serious grown up jobs and have all said that a day in the office is a relaxing break compared to a day of parenting.
14) Your house will never be tidy again.
And that’s OK. (And, if you can afford it, get a cleaner.)
15) You will never be the same again.
And that’s OK too. I spent far too long trying to hold on to the idea of the old me. The old life that I missed, the old body, the old career… But trying to cling on to something in the past meant feeling constantly exhausted and disappointed.
It’s OK to miss your old life – I think it took me about a year to mourn mine – but the fact is as soon as you have a baby that life is over. The person you were does not exist anymore. You can still hold onto things you loved about your old life - I’m trying to get back to swimming and other things for myself that make me happy - but life fundamentally changes when you have a child and so do you. I think it took drawing a line under my old life to be able to move forwards and fully enjoy the one I have now.
16) It is OK to fall in love with your child slowly.
Everything I had ever read or watched or been told about motherhood led me to believe that I would fall in love with my child instantly. That he would be handed to me and it would be this instant lightning bolt of emotion, a love unlike anything I’d ever experienced before that would bring tears of joy to my eyes. So when I looked down that first time and saw a stranger, it rocked me.
Since then, I have learnt how common it is for women to take time to bond with their babies, especially if they’ve experienced difficult births. Sleep deprivation, dealing with trauma, looking after a person who can only communicate by crying at you… There are so many reasons why it might take a while to fall in love with your child and that’s OK.
I think of my love story with my son like a sunrise rather than a lightning bolt. Just as bright and arguably even more beautiful – it just happened in our own time.
17) You are not a bad mother.
There will always be ways that society or that woman in the supermarket trying to give you unsolicited advice will try to make you feel like you’re a bad mother. But the truth is the perfect mother doesn’t exist. There’s just being the best you can be for your specific child.
You don’t have to be perfect, you just have to be theirs. And that? That I’m pretty great at.
What have been your greatest parenting lessons?
It's not just you who sometimes doesn't want to make smalltalk... I feel this a lot. Actually, I sometimes wonder if this is a specific introvert-mother problem. Those low-level interactions can add to the exhaustion, I think. I also wonder if naturally introverted people struggle more with the loss of time to yourself? Not in the bubble-baths and lie-ins luxury sense of time to yourself, just that basic level of needing to not be talked to/touched/on display. I once saw another mother at softplay who was reading a book at a table on her own while her child played - and I genuinely considered asking if she'd be my mum-friend, on the understanding we could just sit there and read together in silence....
Yes to all of these! I just finish some PP therapy and point 15 is resonating with me right now.
I would also add - currently in the context of the childcare jigsaw that we're playing with at the moment - that if you're lucky enough to be raising a child with another person, that it's ok to say "I need you to share the mental load of this with me". It felt like the stress of finding nurseries and childminders was all on me, even though it would benefit both of us, but it's been helpful to convince my other half to see it as a team effort. Applies to everything shared in life, of course, but it can so often seem like the responsibility of anything child related is on the shoulders of the mother, not the parents.