Are you pregnant at the moment? Do you have a birth plan? Birth plans have maybe been around a long time but twenty years ago it wasn't very normal compared to now. It was normal to have your baby room ready, your baby checklist, your hospital bag but not really that you prepared yourself for how you wanted to give birth.
I am all in for preparing. The children's dress up clothes are hanging in their cupboards weeks before they have to wear them, usually the size up school clothes are ready 6 months before they even fit them and books are covered before Christmas presents are wrapped up. But when it comes to myself, I am not so good at it. I did not even think about having a birth plan. I didn't understand how I could plan something for what I had no idea of what was going to happen. I did plan to get pregnant and I did plan the baby room, their beds, cots, blankets, clothes but not how I would give birth. Yes, I wanted to give birth in hospital and not at home, that's all I had planned. But to be honest I didn't even think about the period after giving birth. Have you? I did plan what would happen with my other kids when I would give birth and I did have backup plans for school, in the middle of the night or on weekends but why didn't I plan for the period after? It for sure wasn't on purpose it just didn't cross my mind because I was focused on being pregnant and trying to avoid to think about that I had to push this baby out, by myself, without medication (still don't understand why I did that twice, it's is so unnecessary and doesn't make it any more special trust me) but I did not even think about the period after giving birth, coming home with a newborn. Even after giving birth in hospital you would have had me gobsmacked if you would ask be what would happen with me and baby as soon as I would come home from hospital.
Please tell me I am not the only one who actually entered the house after coming home from hospital, put all the bags down with washing and a bag with stuff I didn't even need, made myself a cup of tea and looked at my partner and newborn and thought "Ok, now what?". I had stayed in the hospital one or two days after giving birth so the breast milk didn't even start yet. I thought I was doing a good job but to be honest, I had no idea if I was. But now I was home. No one to ask, no one to fall back on, no one to tell me what to do and how to do it. Best option was to go to bed and pretend it didn't happen and then wake up when our newborn could talk and tell us what s/he wanted. But before I could even step in my own shower our newborn was crying and I never forget the look on the face of my partner. I probably had the exact "Oh, shit" face and hoped that after my partner would pick our newborn up it would stop. But of course it didn't help. Luckily I did remember to do the checklist. Hunger, Nappy, Temperature (too many clothes or too few), Comfort and Cramps. If it wasn't any of them, start again from the top of the list. We did this with three kids and they all survived because they are still alive. But to be honest, when our second and third ones were born I thought "why did we do this again. I finally know what the other child wants because s/he can speak and now I have to start all over again".
When I ask pregnant mothers now how they prepare, they do tell me about their maternity period. We now live in a time were we don't live around the corner from our parents or best friends anymore. I am meeting a lot of families that have moved interstate or expat families that have no one around and even have to bring siblings to the hospital because the have no one to take care of them. But why are we doing this to ourselves? Why are we treating giving birth like a walk in the park? Why is there a care plan for an adult who has had their tonsils taken out but not for giving birth which is not even on the same scale of the impact it has to your body. And why are we not planning how we need to treat and heal our bodies for after birth?
What I am wondering is if this all has to do with a lot of mothers putting themselves second instead of first. We know to put the oxygen mask on first in the airplane and most of us are starting to realise why it is so important to take care of ourselves so we can take care of our loved ones. But not with were it all starts. The birth of a child and the birth of a mother.
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