Motherhood lessons learnt
January 25th, 2009 § 2 Comments
Motherhood Lessons learnt
1. Breastfeeding is bloody hard work. The baby is attached to you pretty much all the time, it feels like it sucks you dry.
2. Breastfeeding hurts. When your milk is being let down it’s like pins and needles and if like me you have trouble attaching the baby at first your nipples will feel like they’ve been scraped with sandpaper.
3. You will do anything to quiet a crying baby. All your lofty parenting ambitions go out the window when you’re faced with a baby that cries so hard it chucks a fit.
4. You know that certain strategies you implement to quiet a crying baby will bite you in the bum, but when you’re in a sleep induced haze, you do them anyway and deal with the consequences afterwards.
5. Even when you’re onto a winning strategy, you’ll forget what works in the sleep induced exhaustion, until someone reminds you a week later and then you remember.
6. Swaddling works.
7. So does letting the baby cry herself out.
8. Even though you think you’re not suffering from hormones, when you have a few freak temper tantrums and crying fits, you’ll realise you’re not immune.
9. Don’t tell anyone you don’t have to worry about mastitis. The next day you’ll wake up feeling sore.
10. Cabbage works to soothe mastitis.
11. The smell of cabbage and leaking breast milk is revolting.
12. Mop up any breastmilk spillage-it will smell like curdled sour milk if you don’t.
13. You always love your baby-but you love it more after a good sleep.
14. You will be surprised by what sort of a parent you will be. I didn’t want to do attachment parenting, but since I’ll only probably be doing this once, I’ve given in and am riding it out, with my baby sown to my hip.
Hi Amra,
Just logged on to your website and found out you had baby Sofia. She is really beautiful! I know all about breastfeeding, I hear you pain, I breastfed Jono for 30 days and breastfed Giorgio for a whopping 5 days… Good on formula, Australia is a lucky country that we have all these resources.
Soldier on !! I am very proud that you had a baby, for a long time, I thought you would never have the pleasure…. It’s a blessing.
Congratulations to you both!!!
Helen xxoo
I totally forgot about the cabbage thing. Gawd. Don’t worry about S being sewn to the hip. I did the same with W, and he’s 3 now and sleeps in his own big bed..awww!