Lion Fox & Co are excited to include the lovely Fi Morrison aka Mumma Morrison as our guest blogger. Fi is a 28 year old first time mum to a beautiful baby boy who she has affectionately called Starfish. She is married to the love of her life, Craig, and even though they practically have no time for each other besides eat, sleep and cuddle Starfish, she loves doing life with him. This is her story..
How I survived the first 6 months of motherhood!
Fi and her little Starfish.
I remember vividly my third night as a new mum. It was the first night my husband decided to go home for a quick sleep (leaving at midnight and returning around 6.30am), trying to get adequate sleep at night so he could then take our son during the day so I could get some sleep (which worked better in theory…). I remember sitting in bed holding our newborn son. He didn’t like sleeping in the bassinet, so we would cuddle him to sleep and then try and put him down gently after he’d drifted off, praying he’d stay down. That obviously meant the holder couldn’t sleep, making for our sleepless nights.
On this particular night – the third, ‘notorious for baby blues’ night – our son didn’t want to sleep. He wanted to be fed; no wait, he wanted to be changed; hang on, he wanted to cry just for the sake of it. He may have had an hour of sleep around 1am in the morning, in my arms, as I desperately tried to stay awake watching awful TV shows (because clearly programmers don’t consider first-time parents in their programming schedules!). I made it until about 5am, when the floodgates opened and I bawled my eyes out. Big, uncontrollable, fat tears streamed down my face. I messaged my husband telling him to come in ASAP. When he walked in, I passed him our son and curled up in a ball on the bed to sob. Even though I was told by the nurses that this was normal (Day 3 is always the ‘hardest’, apparently), it didn’t make it any easier to cope with, and I felt awful about the whole thing.
Fast forward a few weeks, and I was trying to adjust to life with my baby boy. He had the loudest cry I had EVER heard, and while I was over the “blues” part of my postpartum recovery, my anxiety was only beginning. His crying and fussiness was getting so bad (although again apparently ‘normal’ between 6-12 weeks), I was afraid to leave the house. I decided it was much easier to just stay at home with him where I wouldn’t get flustered if he had a big cry than to try and venture out, risking a massive baby meltdown.
The first few months were tough. Even after my son’s fussiness plateaued around 3 months, and he became a happy baby (the complete opposite of his previous months), I still struggled with going out, fearful that he’d regress and lose it out in public. So how did I manage to survive the first 6 months?
- Support Networks – The biggest saving grace I had in those first few months was the support of family and friends. They brought us meals, washed our dishes for us (THANK YOU!), babysat when we had a situations to take care of, visited us, shared stories and life with us. They may seem like little things, but they made a huge difference in helping us adjust to this new life we are now living. This also includes constant communication with your spouse – this has been the biggest hurdle in our relationship to date, and we constantly make sure we’re checking in with how we’re going and how our relationship is going (even fitting in a date night or two if we can!).
- Blogging – I have many people asking me “Why on EARTH would you start a blog? How do you find time?” and to be honest, I make time. Just as we tell new mums it is important for them to have “mummy me” time, blogging has been my way of working through my experiences as a new mum, spending some time for myself (making me feel like an ADULT again, rather than an automated boob-feeding, nappy-changing zombie-bot) and hopefully helping others in the process. For me, there is no doubt or question in my mind why I’m doing it.
- Self-Care – Going along with blogging, finding time to look after myself really helped me to survive the first 6 months of motherhood. Whether it was going out for a massage (if time allowed for it), going out for dinner with my mum friends, or even (and yes I’ve done this) going for a drive by myself through drive-thru maccas for a McFlurry at night when my husband got home because it had been a rough day. Whatever you classify as looking after yourself, make sure you (and your partner) find adequate time to do that.
What are your tips for surviving the first 6 months of motherhood? Did you have something that helped you to get through this new chapter of life?