Dearest Zo,
First of all, I don’t care what anyone says: I think those tracksuit pants look lovely. I like how you’ve teamed them with a knit (and a bra! Fancy!), so that people will take you seriously.
Now. How are you?
I gather from the tears and the chocolate that you’re maybe still getting your head around this whole newborn thing. Zozo. This is perfectly normal. But I think that maaaaybe that is part of the problem: you didn’t know what would be normal. In fact, you had no concept whatsoever of what this first three months would be like! Who friggen does? No one.
Here’s why:
A. It’s impossible to adequately articulate the astronomical upheaval that a newborn brings with him or her. Friends with kids just kind of look at you with their eyebrows raised and say, “Life will never be the same again, that’s for sure!” before laughing nervously. This is partly because they know it doesn’t help to say that it is FULL ON but also because they have completely forgotten what it’s like. Just as nature intended; B. You were too tunnel visioned on labour/birth to pay any of this shit any mind; and C. You figured it would all come naturally, like in documentaries about tribal mothers who just intrinsically know what to do once they give birth.
Don’t worry. Your charming ignorance is classic first-time mum stuff: you spent the bulk of your pregnancy reading up on calm birth (yes), water birth (maybe) and perineum massaging (no) in preparation for fifteen hours or so of labour and birth. And you spent zero time researching what to do once you get home with a small, helpless human who wails for milk every three minutes, and a vagina with PTSD.
Remember how cute that midwife thought you were when you said how you were gonna sleep all day once they’d taken freshly born Sonny off to be cleaned up. She was wiping away your vomit, because you had asked for toast even though they said you would probably vomit it right back up, but you REALLY needed some toast. Oh, how she giggled.
You weren’t to know that your new son would demand to be fed every two hours (yes, even through the NIGHT) and that you wouldn’t get a block of more than four hours sleep for many weeks. You were simply shattered from the most enormous and athletic endeavour your body had ever undertaken and you wanted some goddamn shut-eye.
Surely the reward for pushing a human out of the vagina is a nap? But sleep would have to wait.
As you soon discovered, you had more important stuff to do! Like learning how to make your enormous nipple fit into your child’s teeny mouth and dispense milk, and also you needed to cry a lot. Joyful crying, frustrated crying, overtired crying — all the flavours of crying.
Your birth experience was a happy and positive one, and you are right to think of it fondly. But the direct aftermath was
a bit fucked, wasn’t it? You were foggy from the drugs, freshly stitched up below, and copped a bitch of a nurse who yelled at you about how cold the hospital room was, and snapped that Sonny should be in a wool, not cotton, blanket, and if you didn’t figure out how to breastfeed him soon, his blood sugar levels would drop dangerously low. (Since you had gestational diabetes, your baby’s blood sugar levels were crucial those first few days, but, weirdly, being bullied and panicked into learning how to breastfeed wasn’t a super effective teaching technique.)
Once she left, things got way better.
A kind, funny, patient midwife (like 99 per cent of midwives) showed you a latch technique that worked and that didn’t make you cry or feel hopeless.
Gestational diabetes wasn’t all bad, though. Since you hadn’t had any sugar for months (before then the sweet, golden crutch helping you through a busy and stressful pregnancy), you were nutritionally in good nick. And now you had permission to undo all of that in one sucrose-dense banquet.
Cue the post-birth reward you’d been talking to your husband about for months: cupcakes, croissants with jam and butter, Haigh’s freckles and, to replace some of the energy lost in childbirth, a giant, hot meatball brioche sub. Not a slice of sashimi, soft cheese or champagne in sight.
That first week with Sonny was bliss. He seemed to think he was still in utero. Life was good. You had your darling husband by your side, lots of lovely visitors, no pressure to be doing anything other than looking after your child, and the powerful hormonal love bubble protected you from sleep deprivation madness.
Do you remember how once you were home — and the swollen, puffy, foggy aftermath of your labour drugs had finally worn off, and you were able to stop putting ice packs into your big, saggy black undies — how happy you were? You’d made
a baby, but you’d also made a family.
It was unseasonably warm for May, the house was dappled in sunshine and bursting with blooms … even the cat seemed more affectionate than usual. You sat contentedly on the couch, breastfeeding your boy, wolfing down tea and toast, curious as to who he was, and how life would be now, and just how you had managed to pack his hospital bag so hopelessly wrong. (Next time: Bonds Wondersuits only. No fancy shit.)
But all too quickly, shit got real. Days and nights rolled into one, showers became a luxury, and as you struggled to deal with a baby who cried always and slept never, you sent your husband out to buy every book about newborns and sleep routines available, and proceeded to drive yourself, and him, mad by attempting to force a ten-day-old baby into a feeding and sleeping routine. IDIOCY.
As you soon realised, before they are twelve weeks old babies don’t give a fuck about routines. They do whatever the fuck they want and you are helpless to do anything about it.
Witching “hour” is the perfect example. When you read that part in a psycho sleep book about the period from five to nine each night, when babies cry nonstop and suddenly develop the appetite of a fifteen-year-old boy, and the author said to only feed the baby twice in that period so as to ‘train’ them, and you and Sonny both ended up wailing, because of course that shit didn’t fly, because, as you now know, witching hour is just the baby loading up on food so he or she can sleep longer overnight, or, in other words, there is a REASON for it, but you were trying to fight that very real reason, and getting more and more upset as he lay there bawling in his bassinet, hungry and distraught.
Oh, but you were so desperate for some normalcy to return to the house! In shock and grieving for nights when you could have some dinner with your husband and watch Survivor. Instead you now had a wailing, confusing mini human in the house that you were forbidden to feed or settle, according to some obnoxious author tyrant.
You googled ENDLESSLY. Was it reflux? Was it your milk making him unwell? Should you be cutting out dairy and onions and garlic? What was the answer? Why did none of those fucking forum mums have the answer?!
Best thing you did was bin those ludicrous books, and get offline, and ask a real, live midwife for actual advice on your actual baby. It was gas, like most babies that age. The digestive system is deeply unsophisticated before six weeks, and fast and furious milk flow combined with your sweet pig of a baby’s appetite meant he was full of big gulps of air and unable to sufficiently expel it. Hence: upset and uncomfortable. (Willby’s, Infacol and Infant’s Friend were of great help: remember to tell all other new mums about it.)
Anyway. I guess the lesson was: there are no rules in the first six, or even twelve, weeks. You do whatever works. All that eat-sleep-play shit comes in later. There will be months of sleep training and routine stuff
to come. For now, flop out a boob, grab a snack and get comfortable.
Now. Regarding your daily almond croissant habit. It might be time to go easy on the treats. I know you’re rebelling against the taste deprivation that GD brought with it, and you’re VERY VERY HUNGRY ALL THE TIME, but don’t let cheese toasties and muffins and cakes and milkshakes do all the heavy lifting. It’s horseshit, all that stuff about breastfeeding burning millions of calories. In most cases, lingering post-baby weight gain will be nothing to do with the baby and everything to do with the cookies. (Yes. Even the lactation ones. They’re still cookies.)
Another reason to eat well is that your immune system needs a hand. Case in point: the mastitis you had when Sonny was two weeks old. And didn’t it swoop in like lightning!?! The swollen, hot boob, the fever, the instant and intense melancholy … you were just shy of being hospitalised, and all because you thought you could skip a feed and not express. No.
That nasty mastitis will keep coming back, unfortunately. It’s a Foster woman thing. Our tits can’t take the heat, apparently. Don’t be afraid to talk to your doctor about antibiotics, but try not to use them unless shit gets really bad/the fever kicks off. Next time you feel your boob getting warm or hard: feed that baby, feed, feed, feed, and massage the boob as you do to help unblock the duct causing you trouble. Also, use a hot compress before feeds, then a cold compress afterwards. Take Nurofen and powdered Vitamin C and good probiotics and rest. Fuck the washing. Fuck emails. Just rest, you sweet goose.
People say that at six weeks it gets easier, and it does. It also gets easier at twelve weeks, six months, and then again at forty years.
Hang in there! You’re doing great.
Make no mistake: this is VERY hard, and a huge adjustment. You’re a woman who is used to being in control of your day, your time, your sleep, your workload, your home, your body and your boobs, and now a small, cute, loud child has come in and wiped his sweet yellow shit all over that. It will take time to adjust. Years! And he will keep changing. Just as you think you’re mumming good, he will wake up a completely different beast.
I know right now you are feeling the failures hard, but just ask any Instagram quote or tattoo: this too will pass. You and your boy are in good health, every day you learn something new and helpful (mostly from texting other mums), your new business is just fine without you helicoptering over it 24/7, you have discovered a new concealer that kindly grants you the illusion of a pulse, and you and your husband are still (mostly) civil to each other despite the utter destruction of your sleep, house and life as you know it.
There are lots of golden moments. Lots. This is parenting.
You are DOIN’ IT! Be proud of yourself. Go easy on yourself. Love and look after yourself. Don’t be a hero. Don’t be a martyr. Don’t be a jerk. Ask for help. Take the wins when they come. Cuddle and sniff your son nonstop. Don’t assume everyone else is having an easy time of it, or is better at it than you, or is having WAY more fun than you. And don’t be unkind to your husband because you’re tired. He is parenting too, and he’s very good at it, actually.
I love you.
You’ve got this.
Also, your hair could do with a wash.
Zoë xxx
