One of the lovely things that has happened to me along the way of new Motherhood is staying connected with the other Mum's from my birth class that went through the RBWH Birth Centre. About a week after my husband went back to work I had all of the Mum's and their new baby's over for an afternoon. When the first one came to the door I was out the back feeding. Again. As everyone slowly started to arrive I couldn't help but notice baby's sleeping soundly in capsules, bouncenettes and Mum's arms. I had bunny rugs out and some baby's got put down on them and laid there peacefully. WTF??!! The Mum's would feed their baby and put them down and they'd go back to sleep or just happily lie there while their Mother talked. I just kept feeding Anika because I didn't want to go through the palava of trying to get her to sleep in front of the other, obviously more competent, Mothers. I was crying on the inside.
We all shared our birth stories with one another (this was the one thing that I felt competent at- I was a 'birthing Goddess' after all!), tended to our babies, ate the shared food and thoroughly enjoyed one another's company. This was my first real attempt at socialising since Anika was born. I felt scattered. My words were disjointed. I couldn't think of simple words to hold a normal conversation (those of you that know me, know I rarely have problems talking- some say I can talk under water or with a mouth full of marbles!). I'd jump from one unfinished conversation with one person to another conversation that would also remain unfinished. I'm guessing it was the insane sleep deprivation, hormones and general jumbled brain syndrome that I seemed to pick up post birth. But I couldn't help but notice ALL of the other Mother's seemed to have it ALL together. Why was I the only one not coping??? They were all dressed nicely, had their hair brushed and some even had makeup! I felt like the biggest, acopic frump.
One of the other Mother's put her baby in a sling and started walking up and down our back stairs. OMG........ did I have an ally? I needed to connect with her. Maybe she understood what it was like. Maybe she had some answers. Some help. Was she to be my saviour? It turns out that that Mum lived just up the road from me and another one of the Mum's lived right on my street. The three of us had some bumper long sessions at my house with the baby's. I remember one day we all went out for a walk with darkening thunder clouds over head (Anika was in a sling as she still didn't like her pram) and not one of the three of us had the thought to take rain gear or stay close to home (once again, baby, sleep deprived brain at work!). Of course the heaven's opened and we got saturated. We all looked at one another and just shook our heads wondering where our intelligence had slipped away to? But even then, my slinging friend was able to put her baby to bed overnight. No one seemed to have got themselves into a situation where they couldn't put their baby down at all. How did we get to this point? Oh right, silly me, I look over my previous posts and I know exactly how we got to where we were! But what were we going to do to change it?
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