We all dream that having babies will be blissful, full of smiles, tiny babygros, and strolls in the park in the sunshine.  Not to mention bath time fun and snuggles in your Cuddledry baby apron towel of course!

The reality though is often far removed from this imagined ideal. Today’s post is from Emily Organ. Emily is a stay at home mum in her mid thirties with three children under five. Emily also writes the popular parenting blog Babyrambles.

It took me a while to get pregnant with my first child. During that time I was desperate to be a mum. And I thought parenthood would be a walk in the park compared to my stressful job. I had firm ideas about what life as a mum would be like. I turned out to be wrong on a few of them.

Misconception 1: Newborn babies sleep most of the time. Whenever I went to see a friend who’d just had a baby, it was asleep. I later found out that newborn babies do sleep quite a lot, but usually for half an hour here and there. The only exception was when people visited, then my babies would be comatose for three hours. My friends would say, “Your baby sleeps a lot doesn’t it?”.

Misconception 2: Mums who complain about baby weight should just exercise. Eat less and move around more, that’s what you do isn’t it? Then I found out that baby weight seems somehow different to normal weight. It has a more stubborn, hormonal nature. And finding the time and energy to do regular workouts when you’ve got a young baby is not easy. Some days with young children can be so tricky that you need cake to get through them. Not conducive to losing that weight.

Misconception 3: Parents who complain about lack of sleep are making a fuss about nothing. After all, you can have a bad night’s sleep when you don’t have children can’t you? I never appreciated the effects of sleep deprivation. And when it happens night after night you become zombified and prone to bursting into tears at nothing. Those nights when the baby woke up for a feed and didn’t go back to sleep again were the worst. And the discovery that you can’t force a baby to go to sleep is not a nice one.

Misconception 4: Fussy eating is caused by parents. Surely if I introduced a wide variety of foods at a young age then my children would be happy to eat them? My son was adamant he didn’t like most foods when he was ten months old. And despite my best efforts, he’s still adamant he doesn’t like most foods at four years old.

Misconception 5: Children under five are incapable of being naughty. I was certain their brains would be too under-developed at this age to carry out mischief. But then I discovered that an eighteen month old will deliberately throw toys at his older brother and laugh at me when I try to tell him off. And run off in the opposite direction when I try to put his coat and shoes on. How do you discipline an eighteen month old? The answer is you can’t really, you just have to live with it.

If I’d known what I know now, would I still have children? The answer is yes. I found out that motherhood is harder than I ever imagined, but I feel lucky and blessed to have my three beautiful children.

Photo credit: maessive

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