Thursday 29 January 2015

Transition to parenthood


We are now one month in to our new lives as parents and in a nutshell, we love it! There is so much I could write in this blog post, I don't quite know where to begin. I guess a good starting point is how I feel, although anything I write simply wont do that justice. One of my fears before giving birth was how DH would cope with the inevetable 'neglect' due to the amount of time I would be giving to little bean. I suppose I'd always assumed that I have a finite amount of love to give and once little bean arrived I would have to take a chunk of love away from DH and share it. Happily, I was very much mistaken. I never thought it would be possible to love my husband any more, but somehow our little bean has acted like an amplifier of love. The strength of my feelings for my husband and son (and even the dog, when he's not trying to steal food) is so intense, my heart could burst.

The bond that develops between mother and baby is so powerful, I have never known or felt anything like it. It is something that you can only comprehend and understand when you become a parent yourself. I find myself 'wasting' a lot of time staring at my baby in my arms, simply feeling the pure love that envelops us. I say wasting time, but it really isn't. I want to savour and appreciate every moment with my son. If I want to spend hours every day staring and cuddling my baby, then everything else can wait, to me there is nothing more important.

Having entered this new chapter of our lives, clearly a lot has changed, but in all honesty little bean has made the transition easy. I think a combination of the unconditional love I have for him, the fact that he is a pretty chilled out little baby and that it was the Christmas holidays, all contributed to our first month being happy and relatively hassle free. I had thought that Christmas would be really bad timing for a baby, but on the contrary, it was perfect. We had an incredible first few weeks showing off little bean to all of our family and friends and the excitement of Christmas helped keep me on a high and carry me through when by all rights I should have been exhausted. So far little bean only cries when he is hungry and being as I am breastfeeding it is easy for me to just stick him on a boob and hey presto we have a quiet baby. I have been both surprised and amazed at how well my body has adapted to the demands of motherhood and how it has coped with the lack of sleep. I must be sleep deprived, as on average I am surviving off 3-5 hours broken sleep per night, yet somehow I am not really feeling the effects of that. I must be running on hormones.


Apart from the general awesomeness of our little guy, the most overwhelming thing of all has been watching DH become a daddy. He is incredible. He has taken to fatherhood in a way that I never even dared to dream. DH is smitten (it's hard not to be in my biased opinion). Both of us had fears about how DH would react to the reality of having a baby, but any concerns I had melted away the moment little bean was born and I saw DH gazing at him for the first time, He has taken to it so naturally and his confidence as a dad is astounding. He has happily taken little bean off on his own for dog walks and trips to the supermarket, to allow me a bit of respite. Without his support as a husband and father I don't think I would have coped with a newborn baby. I've not yet found motherhood a real strain, and that's down to the fact that DH has been there doing everything I need him to; he makes sure I have time for nice long hot showers, he cooks dinner and cuts it up for me when I'm nursing, he tells me what an amazing mother I am, he brings me drinks and anything else I need when I'm sat on the sofa breastfeeding, he gives me foot massages late in the evening when I'm restless and angsty because little bean has been feeding for the previous 3 hours, but most of all he makes me happy and makes me appreciate the life we are lucky to have.