"Ooh you do look tired my lovely..." The checkout assistant at Tesco told me as she handed me my carrier bag, bursting with nappies, wipes and various teething remedies..."Don't worry, you'll soon bounce back!"
If I'd heard that expression once since my first baby was born 3 months earlier, I'd heard it a million times. I was exhausted. Tearful most of the time. Struggling to keep on top of the housework and keep all of the health visitor appointments. Riddled with guilt whenever I even thought about asking anybody for help.
But yet all I heard, from family, from the health visitor, from Drs...was that I'd soon "bounce back".
So I kept waiting for that to happen. And I muddled
through as best I could.
The same went for my appearance…I suffer with a
thyroid condition that is sent haywire during and after pregnancy, and this
meant that each time I gave birth I was put on steroid medication to recover…which
came with a huge weight gain.
While everybody around me seemed to be losing their
baby weight at a steady pace, and every new-mummy magazine I read focused on
how to achieve that goal…I felt like a failure. I was getting bigger instead of
smaller.
That first baby of mine is almost 5 now, and I've had 2 more babies
since...it took me until my 3rd to finally realize that "bouncing
back" probably wasn't going to happen. At least not in the way people
seemed to expect it to.
I was a size 16 when I gave birth to my first born,
and a size 20 by the time I’d given birth to my third…yet somehow I felt less
concerned this time than I did before. Because I’d come to realize that my body
was doing its very best…it may not look exactly how I wanted it to or how
everybody else thought it should, but it gave me three beautiful children and
it coped with those births as well as it could.
The difference was that third time around, I
stopped expecting to bounce back...I learnt that my way of adapting to
motherhood might be a bit different to other peoples.
That maybe 6 months in I would find myself wearing
my pajamas 90% of the time. That maybe the level of clean in our home might not
be quite as high as usual. That maybe we'd have a couple more takeaway nights
each month than usual.
But that it was all fine.
Because motherhood isn't easy, and it takes time to
adapt. Bringing a new human being into your home, especially one who is
completely dependent on you, is challenging in many ways. You do what you can
to make it work...and sometimes that might not be the prettiest of pictures.
When I learned to stop worrying so much about
whether or not my baby was hitting all of the milestones exactly when the apps
said he was supposed to, I relaxed and enjoyed watching his progress
more...confident that he'd get there in his own time.
When I learned to stop fretting about getting all
of my housework done, I finally managed to relax and enjoy the comfort of our
own home...knowing that things would be done when the chance arose, and that 5
minutes relaxation was far more important to my mental health than a perfectly
scrubbed floor.
When I learnt to stop trying to force my body to
look how I thought it should and accepted the stress and the changes it had
been through, and became grateful for all it had done…my perspective changed.
When I finally stopped trying to have it all, do it
all and be it all....and stopped trying to bounce back...I found myself
enjoying my life and my children a whole lot more.
New research from Bepanthen has shown that almost
half of all new mothers have admitted to feeling lonely, or abandoned in the
weeks after child birth with many feeling that they are struggling under the
pressure to “bounce back”.
In response to this, Bepanthen has launched a new
online platform www.10thmonth.co.uk which is a site dedicated
to supporting new months in the first month after birth.
The tenth month is a time when attention switches
from the mother to the baby, meaning that the mom can often be overlooked.
Bepanthen want to shine a light on the “forgotten” mom.
The site is packed with useful
articles, tips and advice on the physical and emotional changes new mums will
be going through to help.
To find out more, please visit www.10thmonth.co.uk
*With thanks to Bepanthen for collaborating with us on this post
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