An old friend of mine recently had her second child and is asking for advice on how to keep her 2 year old entertained while she’s feeding her newborn. She’s worried that her son will end up watching too much TV while she’s busy taking care of the new baby. Her situation is not unique, I think we all have moments where feel we can’t manage to do everything as well as we’d like and we fall short of our self-imposed perfect parenting standards. It made me realise how much pressure we put on ourselves; why do we think we have to be perfect?
The pressure to be a good mother starts before your baby is even born. Once you find out you’re pregnant your diet and lifestyle are suddenly dictated to you and this is re-enforced by what is seen as socially acceptable. You are harshly judged if you dare to stray from the pregnancy rules. Pre-natal classes talk about drug free births and the importance of starting breastfeeding and bonding straight away. It’s no wonder that when your beautiful baby arrives you already place high expectations on yourself about what kind of mother you will be.
When my oldest son was born I read lots of books and websites about how much sleep he should get and how much he should be feeding; he didn’t seem to fit in with any of it. I worried massively that all my friends were much better mothers than me. When my second little boy was born I was more confident and knew that every child is different; there is no set formula for raising a baby. That’s not to say I didn’t (and still don’t) have my moments. I remember sitting on the bathroom floor crying because I couldn’t get E to go to sleep. Mr C had taken him out for a drive and I felt like a complete failure. Believe me, as I sit writing this I can see how crazy the whole situation was.
Increased access to the internet and social media is surely another factor contributing to the unrealistic pressures we impose on ourselves. We are bombarded with photos of celebrity Mums fitting back in their skinny jeans just a couple of weeks after giving birth, or Tweets about being a ‘natural’ and how amazing motherhood is. And we all have that Facebook ‘friend’ who manages to make us feel inferior with their regular smug status updates about their perfect [fake] life.
As a parent there is always something to feel guilty about, something you aren’t doing ‘by the book’, and there are many, many books out there. If you’ve ever tried to fit your baby into a Gina Ford routine you’ll have realised that it might be workable, if you don’t have to do anything else but take care of your baby. No shopping, no school run, and certainly no working! Real life just keeps getting in the way.
So, my friend definitely needs to give herself a break. I doubt very much that her 2 year old is going to mind an extra couple of episodes of Peppa Pig while she is feeding her new baby. Those hectic first few weeks soon pass. Most of us do the best we can to bring up happy healthy children and now and again we have to admit we can’t do it all, not all of the time. There is no perfect, text book way to raise a child and most of us muddle through, learning as we go. ‘Muddling Through’, now there’s a good name for a parenting book!
Mum's The Word UK 