Mother

 

It's been a while!

In July our son was born at home after a long but amazing birth. As anyone who knows me has heard I am passionate about rewriting the narrative around birth that our media and culture have us believe. I did a lot of reading, research, hypnobirthing, breathing practice and confidence building during my pregnancy to give myself the best chance of feeling empowered during labour. 

People say that you can't prepare or plan for what birth will bring and there is of course elements that you won't be able to predict (because you've never done it before!) but, in the majority of cases, this does not mean something scary or urgent will happen. Now that I have been through the experience myself I am even more convinced that when you have a good general knowledge of what happens during birth, have prepared a relaxing zone to be in during labour, have a great support system around you and feel confident to advocate for yourself you are very likely to have a really powerful and emotional experience!

I would love one day to train to be a doula (my Mum is a doula and attended my birth). However, it is a big time commitment - something I am pretty short of these days! But something that took me by surprise in the first few weeks of the baby's life was how creative I felt. I have written more poems in the last 3 months than I have since my Uni days studying and writing poetry. I also felt inspired to start a journey to becoming a birth coach - I envision offering individuals or couples straight forward, frank and encouraging coaching sessions before becoming pregnant or during pregnancy to address any fears or doubts they have around birth, or just to bolster their confidence and offer insights and resources. 

As the first step towards this I set up @the_confident_birth_coach on Instagram where you can read my birth story in full. I will be sharing inspirational posts and information from birth workers, giving an insight into my journey to motherhood and offering suggestions around coaching and feeling confident going into birth.

So, I felt very prepared and confident about birth but what I was less prepared for (read, not prepared at all!) was actually having a newborn baby to look after! The transition from feeling self-assured, positive, confident and overall 'in my power' during pregnancy to being post-partum, sleep deprived, self-doubting and overwhelmed has been quite the journey!

I share this because I think many people assume that if you really want a baby, are vocal in the 'birth sphere', or simply if your friends and family have always said 'you're  a natural, you'll be such a good Mum!' that the transition will be an easy one. Everyone's heard the endless talk of new parents being tired, but that barely scratches the surface of the truly life-changing, mind-bending effect having a baby has on your life! 

I want to be careful here to not sound ungrateful, but this is also the reason we often don't hear about how hard the first year (18 years!?) of being a parent is. It often feels like, on top of feeling constantly guilty about 50 things that happened during the day with your baby, you also need to feel guilty for admitting that things aren't always rosey. But as well as dispelling negative birth myths I also want to normalise talking about struggling as well as thriving as new parents. 

I have felt more overwhelmed in the last 13 weeks than I have in my entire life. Overwhelmed by love, the responsibility of this new precious life, the all-consuming 24 hour commitment this new job takes, feeling vulnerable and frustrated and worrying about how my relationship is being impacted. In the early days I stayed in, or close, to bed (following the First Forty Days) but when R went back to work I couldn't work out how I would get dressed, not to mentioned showered or brush my teeth, in the morning. I worried constantly about the baby's welfare. 

Nowadays that worry has eased and I now find myself pruning the garden with the baby on my hip, or unloading the dishwasher. And we have an agreement that I have an hour off when R gets back from work so can fit in showers and take some time to myself. But now I worry that I'm not going to enough groups with the baby (haven't been to any yet), that he cries when we're out of the house, that he's not getting enough sleep in the day. I try following a schedule recommended by a friend but it just makes me feel more anxious and a failure when the baby doesn't sleep when the app says he should. 

I realise that I need to get back to feeling as confident as I did during pregnancy, to find my power again. I want to step into that power to meet the challenge of being the baby's Mum and also enjoy him rather than worry I'm not enough, or fixate on what he's not doing rather than see all the brilliant things he does do.

That's my hour off up but if you want to hear more about my journey or are interested in birth coaching please follow me at @the_confident_birth_coach.

Ellen x