Before we move on to practicalities, let’s nip this old chestnut in the bud: Asking for help is a sign of weakness. We’ve already established that bringing up kids is really not meant to happen in isolation. You’re not weak for not wanting to/not being able to soldier through sleep deprivation and postnatal healing. Asking for support is going to enable you to enjoy motherhood and maybe even some slices of your ‘old life’ here and there. You’re setting yourself up for long-term success and well-being by asking for, and accepting, help. So let’s get to it!

A collection of early motherhood experiences. Same questions, wildly different answers. Shared to normalise how different motherhood hits all of us.

Hey pregnant self, January 2012,
First things first - you're going to be fine. It's all going to be fine. It'll take you a while to make it to "fine" but it's there. Right on the other side of the newborn fog and the many, many broken nights.

The most surprising thing about motherhood will be how hard it is. You know you're going to be tired but you have no idea how the endlessly repetitive tasks of early motherhood can grind you down to something barely functional.
So please, please, please don't insist on doing everything yourself.

It's always irked me that the incredibly emotionally and physically labour intensive first years of parenting are often dismissed as "over in a blink of an eye". Apparently they reach school age so quickly, that it's totally ok to sacrifice everything else, including ourselves, in order to create the perfect pre-school childhood for them. Never mind all the caring, carrying, worrying and entertainment planning.

Alright. We've been here for almost 2 months, not much will change in the foreseeable future, and the new normal we're inching towards is going to be very strange indeed for quite some time. The thought of this is quite frankly exhausting, so its time to take stock, look at what's working and what's not. Where tempers fray and wills to live are lost. Re-jig, re-group, re-prioritise, re-connect. Look at where you can conserve energy, and sanity.

Mother's day brings with it a flood of posts on social media from people whose mums are their best friends, how they wish they could be half the mum she was, and how mums make everything better. But what if that's not the case? How do you navigate mothers day when you flinch each time you catch yourself sounding or acting like your own mum? When you're trying your hardest to parent in pretty much the opposite way and the complicated relationship with your mum makes many every day actions and decisions harder, not easier.