When I went on maternity leave with my first child, I stupidly believed that I would have time to work on that screenplay I’d always wanted to write. I thought babies slept all day with the occasional feed; that I’d have so much time on my hands I’d be bored senseless.
I might have been bored but it wasn’t from having nothing to do! Your life becomes one endless cycle of feeding, changing nappies and attempting to get them to sleep. If you’re really lucky you might have time to shower or have lunch. Before you know it your partner is coming through the door and you feel like you’ve done nothing all day. The house looks like a war zone and the dinner is in the Supermarket. You feel inadequate and judged, particularly if you’re still wearing your pyjamas.
Caring for a baby is a full time job with no allocated tea breaks or lunch hour. It is hard to anticipate how much work one tiny individual creates and something that even the most supportive of partners could not comprehend. This is why it is in everybody’s best interests to give your partner home alone with baby time. My advice would be to also leave your mobile at home otherwise you will probably receive a call before you’ve reversed the car out of the garage!
Nothing can prepare you for the reality of having a baby. You can read books, trawl the net and have strategies in place, but once they arrive it all goes out the window. This starts at the birth stage - when you have a fixed idea of how you want your labour to run, but the baby selfishly doesn’t want to work to your schedule. You might yearn for a natural, drug free birth but your little bundle of joy may have decided that squeezing themselves down the birth canal just isn’t them! It is a common mistake to not factor the baby’s personality in to the equation. You might think you’re the boss, but they are in control from the very beginning.
The most common assertion would-be parents make is that their baby will not be given a dummy. I was in this camp, but two sleepless weeks and two ravished breasts later I caved! I was also adamant that my child wouldn’t have fish fingers for dinner, but after preparing three refused dinners in one night, out came good old Captain Birdseye! You come to realise that you have to do what works for you and to throw all of your idealised visions of parenting in to the recycling. When they’re a little bit older you can reason with them but toddlers are not rational creatures.
Another biggie is discipline, having watched many a Super Nanny episode in my post university days, I thought I had all the answers. I knew all about the naughty corner and imagined my child sitting quietly on a beanbag reflecting upon their misdemeanours. I had been horrified by my sister-in-law’s method of locking her misbehaving toddler in the laundry and thought she was a monster.
Well, now I own a laundry with its very own lock and my son spends many a ‘time-out’ in there. I’m not convinced the laundry even works, but it stops me from smacking him and I’m able to sneak a biscuit whilst he’s locked up!
You start out with pre-conceived notions of what parenthood entails and what kind of parent you would like to be but it is rarely as you imagined. It’s like starting a job with little or no experience, you gradually get better at it but you’re constantly learning new skills. I think I’m working much harder than I ever did at work but there is definitely more job satisfaction. As for the screenplay, that might just have to wait a few more years.
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