Growing up...
I was taught “If you have sex without a condom... you will get pregnant”, to then get to my adult life and want to fall pregnant to realise you can only fall pregnant a certain amount of days per cycle 🤯 So when I went off the pill to ‘see what happens’, I learnt quite quickly that I need to understand and track my cycles in order to attempt to fall pregnant. I had long & random cycles, like 75 days, 50 days, 30 days, 40 days and it took about 10 months to fall pregnant with Scarlet. 🤯
Growing up…
When I asked where babies came from, it was “babies come out of their mothers’ vaginas” and even through sex education at school, it was always that one answer. Never did I question that... why would I? As I got older and friends were having babies... I never thought to ask, ‘how was your baby born?’ But then I fell pregnant and was told, “the safest way for your baby to come out is via caesarean” 🤯 I was upset at the time, and I would have people say to me “oh no, are you ok” or “I would never want that, I want to go through the labour and that pain” and even friends parents would say “oh there is no reason my daughter will have to have a caesarean, my labours were all completely natural” - cool, thanks… just what I wanted to hear! But my experience was AMAZING and I look at my daughter now and think, it really doesn't matter how she came out because she'a here, she's healthy and she's my whole world, no matter what!
Growing up...
I just assumed that all babies were breastfed as that’s what my Mum did with my younger brother & sister, I didn’t know much about formula until I was pregnant, and these types of questions started to arise. Once I had Scarlet, I found out just how hard breastfeeding can be! I remember being in hospital and having to call the midwives EVERY time I needed to feed to help me get her to latch properly. Once I got home, I would have to set up pillows around me to feed Scarlet and mainly had to do it doing the football hold then in the end I breastfed her until she was 1. But that’s because it ended up being easy for me, I had the supply to feed and express and I also had the time to express, I had a newborn who was content being fed every 4 hours for only 15 minutes and who slept through from such a young age.
I’m not sure if it’s because we didn’t have access to so many different baby forums growing up compared to what’s available now or if I just never questioned anything because I wasn’t in that head space... maybe a bit of both 🤷🏼♀️
Now.... I can’t believe I didn’t ask more questions. One of my good friends had her 3 babies before I had my first and I never asked her questions about conceiving, her labour, breastfeeding - nothing. And I couldn’t believe how much I didn’t know about her & what her babies were like until I was firing 21 questions at her when I was pregnant with Scarlet.
It’s a whole new world if you’ve never been interested in knowing the facts until one day... you’re in the situation, whether you’re trying to conceive and find out firsthand that it doesn’t just happen from having ‘unprotected sex’. Or whether you plan on having a natural, vaginal birth yet the baby has other ideas or that you just assume that you whip your boob out and the baby automatically just sucks- when for some, that just does NOT happen!
Regardless what comes your way, always remember that someone else is going through what you are... someone else is feeling those emotions, both good & bad, someone else wants to give up on trying and that’s why we all need to take step back from what we see on the outside and understand that everyone has their own story, and judgment is not required nor needed!!!
I’m not at all saying I had it easier or harder than others, what I find hard is not what others find hard and vice versa but always remember that everyone has their own story and their own stuff going on. Sometimes things don’t go to plan or work out how you expect them to but remember there is no wrong or right way and it’s YOUR OWN personal journey – that’s one of the biggest lessons I have learnt on my journey so far!
XO
