They literally hand you a baby, and say goodbye.
You walk out the doors of the hospital, looking back over your shoulder, waiting for someone to come and show you how to do it all. But they don’t.
You walk to your car, put your baby in her seat, take another look back at the hospital and wait for someone to stop you. But they don’t.
You climb into the passenger seat and then change your mind and get into the back of the car because you can’t just leave the baby sitting back there all by herself, can you? Your partner starts the car and you stare desperately out the window as your car crawls away. SURELY someone is going to stop you now. But they don’t.
Your partner drives at 12 kilometres an hour all the way home. You walk through your front door with your baby and stand in the middle of your home wondering if ANYONE is going to pop their head in to let you know what to do now. But they don’t.
They just LET YOU TAKE THE BABY HOME.
She’s yours now. No one is coming to take her away and no one will be watching to make sure you’re doing it right. ALL the decisions are yours and you’ve simply got to figure it out on your own. It’s terrifying.
Don’t they know you’ve never done this before? This isn’t putting together a tricky jigsaw puzzle, or riding a bicycle. This is a whole living human being and the stakes seem ridiculously high. And yet no one seems to care.
The weight of responsibility rendered me stupid. Standing in my lounge room, holding my baby, staring at my husband, I couldn’t think of a single thing to do. I couldn’t for the life of me think of what I’d normally do if I’d just walked into my own home. I couldn’t even try to come up with something by myself. We had to have a discussion about whether we should just sit on the couch and hold the baby for a bit. We eventually turned on the TV even though that felt way too normal considering we now had an extra human living with us. Like, maybe we should have done a tour of our home and brought out the fancy china to impress him? I didn’t want our new housemate to think we were lazy slobs who just did boring things like watch TV. We eventually accepted that sitting and watching TV would be how we’d exist for the next few weeks at least. But, good lord, it felt strange.
Going home can bring with it all sorts of expectations about what you’ll be doing each day. Social media is not the place to go for tips on how to spend your day.
‘Going for a jog on the beach with the peanut!’
‘Just baking some healthy breastfeeding muffins!’
‘Popping out for some brunch with the bebe #blessed!’
Nope.
Some new mums will take to social media to prove they’re coping. They need the world to watch them, trotting around with their infant, filled with joy and gratitude.
Some mums simply can’t do it. But there aren’t a lot of posts on Facebook saying, ‘Sat for fifteen hours straight. Only stood up to wee and grab a fresh tub of Nutella. But I did watch two seasons of Game of Thrones, so it wasn’t a complete write-off’.
If you feel like going for a hike with your infant strapped to your back wearing miniature Kathmandu and soft-soled Salomons, you go get it, you sprightly little minx.
But if you want to sit on your arse in your trackie daks, that’s okay too.
Sloth time is limited with babies. Your ability to sit and do nothing will come to an end pretty soon, so don’t rush it. And remember that the vast majority of new mums are doing the same. It’s just not very Instagrammable.