Parenting is hard, really hard.
There are up’s and down’s. We do so much to protect our children, from the moment they are in our belly, till our very last breath.
Unfortunately, there are some things that are out of our control. I’ve read a few stories recently where parents have lost their children. Each time you read a story like that your heart breaks, but then after becoming a parent and reading something like that it hits you. It hits you hard.
You can never feel what these parents go through, but you understand. We are parents. Parents who are reading about every parent's worst fear. I never know what to say if someone tells me about a loss of a child, it's such a taboo subject, but it shouldn’t be.
I sometimes feel it best to listen, listen to them remember and live every memory again. We lost our first baby at 12 weeks pregnant. We were heartbroken, but it’s not until you go through something like that, that you realise that it happens to so many women, yet you never hear of it unless you have physically gone through it. I don’t get it? I remember a work colleague had lost her baby to cot death at 4 months old. I came back to work following our missed miscarriage and she was the only one that came to me and said “I can’t imagine what you are going through but I am so sorry.” I just stared at her, my heart sunk. After what she had been through she was so compassionate. Why? Because she is a mum. A mum to a beautiful angel.
We were blessed and went on to have two perfect baby boys. Again, you don’t realise how lucky you are to be able to conceive and carry a child naturally. We have friends who are going through rounds of IVF, as they were telling me what they have to go through, a pang of guilt ran through me. Guilt that I have been lucky enough to fall pregnant with my two boys naturally - my son, Grayson, wasn’t planned and he just happened, and I feel like shit when I say that to people, especially people who struggle to fall.
I usually end up sitting there, thinking about how I take it for granted. I feel selfish. I know my friend will probably read this and think I’m a wally, but my heart goes out to them, every single person who has to go through so much for something I often take for granted on a daily basis.
There is so much judgement around parenting. It’s so wrong and puts so much pressure and anxiety on mums. Whether you had a natural birth or c-section, whether you bottle feed or breast feed, co-sleep or put baby in a cot, jar feed or make all your dinners from scratch, use organic food or freezer food, remember this. You are perfect.
You have come into parenthood blind sighted – no one prepares you for what happens once you get your baby home. Your children adore you, you are their queens. As long as you and your children are happy that's all that matters. Screw society, do what’s right for you and your baby. Not anyone else.
Anyone can judge from the outside, but until their living it, their opinion is nothing.
A x
