Everyone knows that the first months after giving birth are quite, er, hectic. That you explode from underneath – which will never be completely okay -, that you never have time and energy for sex anymore, and that your breasts start leaking at the most inconvenient moments (usually on the subway or during an important meeting). But somehow that information only reaches the target group when it is already too late and the baby is already struggling in the crib. And by the target group I mean the people who are considering whether they would like to have a child.
At least that’s how it was with me nineteen years ago. I had vaguely heard something about “broken nights”, broken nipples and “maternity sorrow” – but that must have been something from the 1950s, I thought at the time.
Because everyone had children anyway, my parents had had children after all, so it couldn’t have been difficult, and so I skipped into my pregnancy, just like millions of women all over the world guilelessly skip into the trenches only to be terrified.
And so I thought: what this country needs is an extremely short ‘crash course in babies’ that covers everything, absolutely everything you would need to know before you wanted to have children. Such a crash course that should be legally required. Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport, are you paying attention?
1. Childbirth is hell, but still doable.
Women, you can do this, most of the time. Giving birth at home is not mandatory, take a puffing course in advance and go for it. In fact, be glad we have to do it. It would be cruel to leave this to men, the darlings. With their man flus.
2. Some parents find babies boring.
Sure, most are immediately hopelessly in love with their newborn, but sometimes it takes a while for the spark to fly. Don’t feel guilty about that – you simply have more interest in toddlers, preschoolers or teenagers. That really doesn’t make you a bad father or mother.
3. The pink cloud does not exist.
That term alone, ugh. I fear that it was once invented by an office clerk from an SGP or CDA-like background, a man anyway, who fled back to work shortly after birth with a starched collar and briefcase and left his wife with the mess. . Because reality is a boot camp with those big black, deep mud puddles in the beginning, and has nothing to do with pink clouds. At most with the pink clouds you see when a tanker carrying hazardous substances has overturned.
4. There is no point in catching up on sleep beforehand.
Haha, no way. In the first months after the birth of your baby, you reach “a state of fatigue that would earn you a medal in the Marine Corps,” as someone wrote on the social media. So feel free to still sleep late in the last years before your pregnancy. There is no such thing as ‘a buffer of sleep’.
5. It’s a phase!!! It’s a phase!
I wish I had known this myself during the first few months: that it will get better. And easier. And, in my case, after four months, every day is more fun.
6. You don’t get a manual.
You get instructions for use with every simple thing. How to turn it on, descale it, turn it off, care for it, clean it and what the dangers are, wrote a father. With your baby you have to figure it out all by yourself. So everyone just does something. That’s normal, it makes the baby bond with you. What helps: take a pediatric first aid course in advance. Furthermore, you stand with empty, or well, rather full, hands.
7. You can’t do it alone.
At least two people are needed. And preferably a whole city full of extra helpers. I have immense respect for parents who do it solo. So calculate now who will be a student when your child is at school and have them sign contracts. Check whether maternity care is included in your health insurance package and whether it still exists in your region. Apply for childcare ten years before conception and take unpaid leave for eighteen years after birth. Then it will certainly work.
8. Start having children as young as possible.
Preferably around the age of eighteen. But really, don’t hesitate for too long. All those people who still want to travel the world, have a career or other unnecessary projects that are not important at all – a child can make you happy and people always say ‘I wish I had started it earlier’ about things that make you happy. Moreover, when you are young, you bend over more easily after four months without sleep, your knees do not creak when you have to get out of bed at night and you are not yet wise enough not to start.
9. Because that is of course the most important thing you need to know before you can start having children: start it.
It’s the best thing that could ever happen to you. The most beautiful.
The little hands, the little words, the little shoes, sing on their bikes, together on Table Mountain. The guitar lessons, the jokes, the texts saying ‘I miss you’, the pride, the debilitating nostalgia of everything that inexorably passes by, the total coolness of that entire being that keeps growing – the intense happiness of just knowing that it exists.
10. Sure, 80 percent of the time you are worried and constantly afraid that something will go wrong.
But the other 80 percent is realizing without stopping that you are a lucky person, the ridiculous gratitude that you can experience this. If you’re lucky, they’ll live at home until they’re 32!
11. I also had tips like ‘breastfeeding is not mandatory’.
‘You never get used to poop’, but fortunately the romper can also be worn down over the shoulders (!), ‘buy a spare cuddly toy’ and ‘always keep the Lego booklet because you are the one who has to put it together’, but those are more tips for when the baby is already here. If you need that, let me know and I will write a separate crash course about that.
12. And oh yes: usually everything works out fine.
I almost forgot to say! When you have a child, you need 100 hand-rubbing angels on your shoulder. And preferably A LOT more. But usually it works out fine.
Generally.
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