What I have learned about having babies (AM)

As K approaches her due date we've been talking about having babies. Mainly about birth. Sometimes there is criticism in the world about how much focus there is on labour given it is only one day and motherhood is for life and blah blah blah. But to those critics I say eff the hell off. Labour is hard and horrible and I'm sure that preparing for it helps. But having said that it really is so full on you can't really get it until your in it. At least that is what I found. But when I had Baby I didn't really have anyone close to me that had already had babies. There was my mum of course, but that was nearly 30 years earlier. I didn't have any close friends that had babies so there was not a lot fresh information. Oh sure I read a bit and I spoke to health professionals but other than that there was not a lot for me.

Childbirth in movies seems so over the top but simultaneously somehow not extreme enough. You certainly can't learn anything from movies. You know, unlike all the real life stuff you can learn from them, like how you will probably end up with Ryan Gosling and also all the bitches you went to school with will lose and you will win and also you will be able to afford really nice clothes and a nice apartment even though you never seem to work. And having babies is the kind of thing that even when you see an accurate representation in a movie you don't know it's accurate until it is happening to you.

For example, the most accurate representation of the early days of motherhood is that scene in Raising Arizona when Nicholas Cage first steals the baby and Holly Hunter just starts sobbing and repeating "I LOVE HIM SO MUCH!"

That is basically exactly what having a baby is like. It was for me anyway. But that's not really helpful is it? Though perhaps if you're expecting that feeling you won't feel so confronted by it.

I was in a public hospital when I had Baby, so less than 48 hours after he was born I was sent home with my baby having been shown how to bath him and told to ensure that his penis was always pointing down and the frills of his nappy pulled out so as to avoid leakage. It seemed pretty crazy and irresponsible of the hospital that they would let me take a tiny human home with so little knowledge to keep us both alive and happy, but I guess they do it every day and must have a pretty reasonable success rate. We're all alive and pretty happy, so I guess the hospital know what they are doing.

If in doubt there is always Wikipedia's parenting page.