What’s something a future parent has to have in order before their baby is born, but everybody forgets?

12 comments

1. I’d say mental health.

   Yes we’re all aware of it but the fact that we rely on husbands / partners to drag us in to be assessed for PPA or PPD, that we’re discharged from hospitals a sore, bleeding mess or with a large abdominal wound *with* an infant requiring 24 hour care.

   Any kind of maternal mental health care is something that is talked about as a buzz word but the follow up and follow through is very sadly lacking.

2. Calm and mental health. It takes some time for the mom to adjust to the situation. The new body, the new baby, what happens in the meanwhile ( body recovers, familly around, adjusting in how to do things). Theory and practice are two different things, and no matter how much You think you know, at the first kid at least, you realise how diferent things are when u have Ur kid in ur arms. So yeah, calm and mental health. As somebody said, nobody told me I would recover my period from 9 months in one month after birth.

3. Don’t buy so many toys!!

4. Gabor Maté recommends every couple or anyone who is thinking about having children to work on their traumas! Many people don’t do this at all because it doesn’t come across their minds.

5. You don’t need to be the most stable parent but for the love of everything, pregnancy is the moment to work through yourself like it’s the perfect moment to actually start the work especially if both you and your partner are a fucking mess + it lowers a bit the chance of the truly shitty postpartum depression /psychosis etc, because with all honesty it’s TRULY not a piece of cake to deal with it even if you had depression all your life believe it or not this truly kick your ass like mental illnesses never did before.

6. Common sense and a healthy disregard for social media and other mother’s opinions. Trust in yourself and know we all fu@k up sometimes. They will be alright with love, attention and acceptance from their parents. Never compare yourself or your child to others, they only show the good side.

7. If you’re having kids to have another version of yourself, you should never have kids.

   Children did not ask to be born.

8. mental and financial stability ,driver’s license and a „saving account“ just for the future child and his personal development(so that the child can practice a sport or learn to play an instrument for example)!

9. To reflect heavily on how you were treated as a child and have an understanding on when you were angry because you were too young to understand or were being a shitty teen and when the adults were unfair or made a mistake.

   Everyone know the need to break the circle, or to not repeat mistakes. Very few take the time to reflect on what is actually in the circle, what was truly mistakes and what wasn’t.

   I’ve seen too many young parents allowing their kids to do stuff, because they are still not over their own childhoid frustration, ignoring the fact that it is harmful for kids

10. Learn about controlled crying to help them get to sleep and so you can also.

11. A wind tube (or whatever it’s called). When the kid is crying and you are out of ideas, that’s when you ‘send in the probe’ and it usually solves… things.

12. Stuff for mama for right after baby is born.