THE FIRST MONTH OF MOTHERHOOD.

Mum, mother, mam, mammy, whatever you want to call it; I've been rocking this motherhood lark for a whole month now, and wow what a journey it's been! There have been ups and downs & it’s been the hardest, yet the most rewarding month of my life to which I’m still trying to get my head around. I definitely feel like I’m winging motherhood, but here’s what I’ve picked up so far.

Sleep.

There's no question about it, the sleep deprivation when you have a newborn is real & whenever we've introduced people to Amelia it's always the first thing they ask. That's of course after cooing over her for a good twenty minutes, because (and I don’t mean to boast but) she’s definitely the cutest baby ever. The thing with Amelia is that when she gets into bed she's such a good sleeper, it's just getting her in there which can be tricky. During the night she can go 4-5 hours without waking, meaning Dan & I are still getting a decent amount of sleep. Heck, some nights I'm getting more kip than I would when I was at work, which I’m definitely thankful for. Five weeks in & I feel like we're finally sussing out the best way to get her in the Moses basket as she seems to be settle much easier, however we're both very aware that this could change at any given moment. Babies can be very unpredictable!

My relationship with Dan.

Seeing Dan being a father is honestly the best thing - I love it! Last week while I was in the bathroom mid pee, I overheard him singing to Amelia downstairs and I had a little moment to myself where I was thinking 'how on Earth did I get so lucky?' I must have been a saint in a past life! We're still at the stage where we're being very polite with each other, which to be honest I thought would be long gone by now, I thought we’d be screaming and getting frustrated with one another, but we make the best team… And fingers crossed, long may it continue that way.

Routine.

We've read that newborns are unable to get into a routine until they're around 6 weeks old, so when it comes to it we've been living our lives dictated by Amelia... You could say that we’re slaves to our baby. From day one we’ve written down times of feeds, how much she was feeding and how many bum changes we’ve done. It’s been super handy as first and foremost as new parents we’ve suddenly become the most forgetful people in the world, but secondly its super interesting to see correlations, and even though we haven’t lived each day by a routine, if you go by our notes it seems we are already sort of on our way there. Over the next couple of weeks I’m wanting to get a little bit stricter with feed times and a sleeping routine as the dream would be to put Amelia to bed a couple of hours before we go up. We absolutely love the bones of her, but it’d be nice for Dan & I to have a couple of hours to ourselves on an evening. If you have any tips for this please holler them my way.

Finding time.

I think I was quite naïve pre-Amelia, I had it in my head that I was going to girl boss maternity leave & it was going to be time for me to finally get my shit together. Now however I’m five weeks in and I can already see it being totally unproductive and flashing before my eyes - it’ll be over before I know it if I’m not careful. My days go super quickly as I’m constantly thinking when the next feed or nappy change will be; I don’t particularly look at the clock anymore as my day is more judged by how many bottles Amelia’s had, for example 5:00pm is now ‘5 bottles in’, six if she’s been particularly grizzly. I’ve also found that everything takes ten times longer with a baby in tow, if I’ve got to be somewhere I’ll make sure I set off an hour in advance, firstly because I hate lateness, but secondly because you never know when the next poo explosion is going to happen. Baby butts are unpredictably deadly.

Juggling the baby & the dog.

If you think finding time to do your own thing with a baby is hard, imagine having a super energetic, super boisterous lemon beagle to contend with too. Willow’s taken to Amelia so well though and I’m so pleased it came so naturally for her as I was really worried to begin with. Worried that puppy would feel left out or pushed aside. And worried that she was going to resent this new bundle of joy we were bringing home. Truth is I needn’t have worried, I just needed to get smart. Iordered a baby wrap from Joy & Joe which has been an absolute Godsend forwalking Willow, and if there’s one thing I could recommend to new parents or parents to be it’d be that! I just wrap it around myself, slot Amelia in and away we go, not only is it super handy for getting shit done, it’s also a way for me to sneak a couple of extra cuddles.

Meltdowns.

In honour of being 100% honest about motherhood, I wanted to just touch upon how difficult I’ve found it at times. There have been a handful of moments where I’ve sobbed uncontrollably because I’ve had moments of madness where I’ve thought I’m not cut out to be a mum. I’ve only had a handful of meltdowns, and said moments of madness have always occurred during the night, when Amelia’s trying her best to scream the house down and I’m feeling shitty about myself through sleep deprivation and exhaustion. Understandably it just all gets a bit much sometimes and the only thing I can do is let go, get all of my emotions out, have a damn good cry and start over again. I don’t know about you but when I need to cry, I NEED to have a good cry. There’s something about totally letting go & succumbing to your emotions, heck it almost feels like cleansing. Once that’s done with though I find it really easy to get my head back in the game and tackle whatever life has to throw at me. But yes, there have been hard times, ridiculously hard times, but they’re all 100% worth it for our sometimes spawn of Satan, sometimes angelic little girl.

Like I say, I definitely feel like I’m winging this whole motherhood thing and yes some days are easy and what I’d call a piece of piss, but others have been really hard, and I think it’s good to talk about those really hard times. I’d like to think I portray a really real life online when it comes to being a mum, my Instagram photos are super cute yes, but the messages behind them are really real and it’s amazingly heart warming to get a conversation going because truth is, we’re all in this together. Nobody really knows what they’re doing, and if they say they do then they’re lying, so reach out to your parent friends, ask for advice & talk about the hard times. We’re all here to help each other.

What do you think is the hardest thing about being a parent?

Claire.X

Have you read my child birth posts?
My labour story - Welcome to the world Amelia May Chircop.
Did hypnobirthing work for me?