I am not here to slam NCT classes. There is a lot of great stuff going on in NCT classes and the NCT is a fantastic organisation. Going to NCT classes is great for preparing you for pregnancy, delivery and the first week or so after the birth. It is also great for getting to know a group of mums-to-be who are going through the same thing: you need these people in your life.
But I went to those classes and I read the books to be prepared. I was prepared for being tired. I was prepared for rainy days, dirty nappies and cradle cap. I was prepared for having my marriage put under strain. I was prepared for a lot of things. But I wasn't prepared for this:
The realisation that being a mother is HARD! Really hard.
Sometimes being a mother will make you really, really unhappy.
Sometimes you will not like your child, at all.
Feeling almost constantly guilty.
Resenting your child for taking away past freedoms, spontaneity and lifestyle.
Resenting your husband for understanding nothing and doing nothing about it.
Not recognising who you are anymore. Not knowing your place in the world anymore.
Feeling the need to justify every childcare decision or parenting method to strangers in the street.
Disbelief at the unbelievable highs, complete unconditional love and overpowering pull on the heartstrings.
The emotional rollercoaster that can occur within a 10 minute time span.
Being consumed by the concept of 'mother' and losing the concept of 'me'.
The difficulty in not understanding any feelings or emotions and not being able to commnicate them to anyone.
The realisation that motherhood is not completely fulfilling.
Today I wanted to write about this as there seems to be an unwritten rule that these things are wrong or that you just don't talk about it or that admitting these things make you a bad mother. Well, here is the expose:
This is all ok. This is all normal. It is healthy to feel these things and it is even more healthy to admit it, share it, talk about it and work through it. I have also recently learnt that giving yourself permission to feel it all and accept it all, with no guilt or recriminations can also be extremely helpful and healthy.
What is not ok though, is not doing anything about it.
As mothers, we need to give oursleves a break. We need to let oursleves off the guilt/perfection/expectations/super-earth mother-working mother hook. It comes back to the standard airline steward's instruction: do not attend to others, without first attaching your own oxygen mask.
We need to learn to attach our oxygen masks first. We need to learn to take care of what we need- for ourselves, for our children, for our relationships. We need to recognise we are ultimately better individuals, better mothers, when we are taking care of ourselves as equally as we are taking care of others.
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