Reflecting on Newborn Ian

As Ian’s first birthday approaches, I’ve been reflecting on our experiences since he was born. 

I remember the first few weeks after Ian was born.  We were tired, of course, but not as tired as we had expected.  We were enjoying getting to know our baby on the outside, and learning his little quirks and needs. 

I spent most of my time breastfeeding, and being waited on by my mom and Bennett.  Ian was held pretty much non-stop.  Holding him was relaxing for everyone, and I felt strongly that I needed that bonding time with him after missing out on the normal physiology of labor and immediate skin to skin (he was born via a caesarian because he was breach).  

Of course this was a time of adjustment and learning, but it was much easier than I thought it would be.  I expected to be tired, to dedicate most of my time to breastfeeding, to have a baby that needed to be held…so my perceptions of these activities were normal and manageable.  My theory is that this is because the reality of having a baby was pretty close to my expectations.  What was truly difficult, and still is, was his birth, where my expectations were so far from reality that I was left with a dissonance difficult to incorporate into my life narrative comfortably.

As a side note, I do know that I also had a very high level of support, and that this greatly contributed to my lack of baby related stress.

It would be interesting to study how first parent’s expectations of a baby match with the reality of the baby and how that relates to their stress levels.  From Facebook posts and conversations with mothers in my neighborhood, it seems like many parents have unrealistic (in my opinion) expectations of baby behavior, or have no idea what to expect.  Add in our culture’s belief that babies should be independent from a very young age, and that you can spoil an infant, (both points I disagree with) and parents are stuck struggling to fit their baby reality into our mainstream baby construct.  I believe this gap between expectation and reality is a source of stress, frustration, and self-doubt. 

During my practicum for my MPH, I observed a breastfeeding class in which the instructor taught a very excellent point that still sticks with me today.  In reference to holding a baby, she tried to get the class to look at it from the baby’s point of view.  When you are in utero, you are warm and held close and rocked all the time.  Then you are born.  If your family holds you even half the day, that’s still half as much as you are used to.  Many people refer to the first 3 months of a baby’s life as the 4^th trimester, acknowledging that birth should not mean an independent baby…but that’s a whole other post and I’m digressing. 

We need to do more to prepare expectant parents for the reality of a new born, with all the normal variations…to help them look at the world from the perspective of their baby…to try and teach them to read their baby’s individual needs…to help lesson that gap between expectation and reality…