Over the past month I have begun wondering what our little boy will be like and what kind of parents we will be. DH and I both have a fairly clear idea about the behaviour we expect in a child and the morals and values we want to bring him up with. It's easy for us at the moment, we're not yet parents. We have this image of a well behaved little boy who is polite, well mannered and a pleasure to be with. Surely that's not so hard to achieve. I'm not going to lie, I know I look at friends, family and strangers with children and I make snap judgements about their parenting methods. I'm sure we all do, but most would never admit to it. DH and I have had lengthy discussions about what we will and won't do, even though so many say how much harder that is to do once you actually are a parent.
I think once our child as it a stage where he understands language and the environment around him, we can start to in-still the discipline and behaviour we expect. I know what I expect a toddler to be like. I imagine the principles of raising children are very similar to those of teaching and training a dog. When I started my career in teaching, I experienced first-hand where taking the easy option, being too soft and failing to follow through with threats leads you, and it's not pretty. It is a mammoth struggle to crawl back to where you need and want to be, I do not want to be in that position with my own child. We have learnt a lot from the mistakes we made with our dog. The poor behaviour he exhibits is down to us. He is a product of us, and although it's taken a while, he has become the most wonderful dog because of us (not perfect, but almost there). At the moment we have it all sussed out, we are the perfect parents. It will be interesting to read this in a year's time and see what I think then.
But before I can apply any of this thinking I will have a newborn baby. Is there really any way of preparing for this? From what I've seen everyone has different experiences and all babies are different. Some find the transition from the womb to the outside world easy, whereas others seem to really struggle with it. Is this down to how the mother is during pregnancy, is it the simple nature and character of that baby, is it the experiences it starts having as soon as it enters the world? How much is nature and how much is nurture? I don't think anyone knows for sure. I for one am happy to look at it all through my rose-tinted glasses. I'm choosing to believe that being relaxed and stress free will help with the birth of my child and the subsequent months, I'm planning to start pregnancy yoga, which I hope will also help. Without meaning to sound arrogant, I find life easy. Some people seem to make an ordeal out of everything and get enveloped in the stress and difficulty of living. I don't. That's not to say I have had an easy life, without stress or trauma, far from it, but I seem to have developed a way of dealing with it where I can remain calm and balanced. I've mentioned before how I live by the slightly clichéd motto of 'everything happens for a reason'. This truly does help me. When my mum died suddenly from a severe brain haemorrhage at the age of 49 (I was 16) I searched for a reason. She had been undergoing treatment for breast cancer at the time, so I found solace in the fact that she died without pain and did not have to suffer a long illness.
I am positive in everything that I do, I seldom feel the signs of mental stress, and I hope this mindset remains once we have our baby. I have been told, many times, how hard being a parent is, how difficult and exhausting those first few months are. But what good is telling me that going to do? Just because you know it will be hard and you will be sleep deprived can't actually make it any easier. I cannot prepare for that, so I am quite content to bimble along in my naive little bubble of what I think motherhood will be, it's a happy place to be.
