Your Baby Needs This, Too

Photo Credit: Katie Emslie via Unsplash

It goes without saying that having a baby changes your life. And it’s hard. From the nausea that sets in in early pregnancy, to the aches and pains and insomnia in the last trimester, the toll on your body is great.

Add in waking up every few hours to feed your newborn, healing from birth, learning to breastfeed, and a number of postpartum challenges, and you may wonder why we choose to go through any of it.

Until you hold you baby close and sniff their soft, sweet head. Or catch those fleeting dream smiles. Or get that first taste of back-and-forth interaction with your baby.

The hard stuff is the price we pay for experiencing the overwhelming love and joy of being a parent.

In recent years, society has acknowledged the challenges of motherhood. We see photos of celebrities in those ugly-wonderful mesh panties they give you postpartum. We support breastfeeding in public and also understand that breastfeeding isn’t always easy, or preferred, or for everyone. We accept that it’s okay to feel “touched-out.” We are learning to embrace our postpartum bodies. We talk more openly about postpartum depression and anxiety.

Photo Credit: Janko Ferlic via Unsplash

This is all good, and necessary. We acknowledge that parenthood, and especially motherhood, involves some sacrifice, physical discomfort, and lack of sleep. This camaraderie gives us permission to release the unrealistic ideal that parenthood should be easy, or pretty, or that we’re the only ones who find it hard.

It’s hard but we do it because that’s what the baby needs. The baby needs to grow, stretching out the uterus, and compressing our other organs up into the ribcage. The baby needs us to respond to his cries for hunger several times at night so he can eat and thrive. The baby needs to be born so we labor, and push our bodies to their limits, or undergo major surgery to bring the baby into the terrestrial world.

There are things we want to give our kids, like toys, and activities, and quality childcare, and education— so we purchase less of what we might want to give the baby what he or she needs.

All of this giving is normal, and instinctual, and a part of being a parent. But there is a piece missing. 
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There are other things the baby needs—and they are actually the things we need.

Photo Credit: Alexandre Croussette via Unsplash

As mothers, we overwhelmingly put the needs of our family before our own. And while it comes from a place of love, and from us accepting the “hard stuff,” it isn’t necessarily necessary. Ignoring our own needs can backfire on us.

Denying what you need isn’t necessarily what your baby needs.

Your baby also needs:

• A mother who isn’t physically suffering, whether that be during pregnancy or after the baby is born
• A mother whose choices in birth are respected, even if others don’t understand or agree with them
• A mother who is not afraid to voice her fears, sadness, or anxiety
• A mother who gets time to heal
• A mother who gets some time to herself
• A mother who gets medical care when she needs it
• A mother who gets mental health care when she needs it
• A mother who gets social time
• A mother whose needs are recognized and met

You’ve probably heard the phrase, “Put on your own oxygen mask first.” This is derived from airline safety instructions; parents flying with kids are instructed in an emergency to put on their own oxygen masks before they put on their kids’ masks. Otherwise they might pass out before they can put on anyone’s mask, and then nobody wins. 

It’s easy to understand the importance of taking care of yourself first, but it can be hard to do. Or easy to point to something simple like getting your hair done occasionally and say that that’s enough. 

Daily self care is much more difficult. Asking for help can feel impossible to do. Budgeting to see a chiropractor in pregnancy, or a pelvic floor therapist after birth, or hiring a postpartum doula, or a babysitter so you can get some alone time, is completely off the radar for many.

Photo Credit: Luis Quintero via Unsplash

But if there is a shift in thought, in both you and your partner, that what you need as a person, is what your baby also needs in a mother— then maybe self care will turn into a family need.

Your self care will be just as necessary as diapers, or a carseat, or daycare, or anything else the baby may need. And so it will be planned for and budgeted for.

Self care isn’t just okay, it’s necessary. Your care is necessary.

​Pregnancy and parenthood will always be hard, and exhausting, and challenging at times. But by prioritizing your own needs, you are preventing it from being even harder.

I am a certified labor (birth) doula and postpartum doula serving clients in Boise, Meridian, Eagle, Nampa, and the Greater Treasure Valley.
Self-care can come in the form of a doula, whether that be
during your birth or after your baby is born.

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