I’m going to be completely honest with you now, and you might find this strange coming from a woman who runs her own baby classes. There is no need to do any baby classes. There. I said it. And I mean it.
I feel there is a huge amount of pressure on mums in our modern society to ‘get back to it’, to get up and out of the house charging around as if they’ve not just grown a full blown human being for the last 9 months and then had that baby exit their body. We need time to rest, recover and a chance to adjust to our brand new life that revolves around this tiny yet amazing newborn baby. And that amount of time is going to be different for each individual. Some may find their feet pretty soon afterwards and want to get out to meet friends for coffee and take their baby swimming or go to a fitness class, and that is brilliant. But the mum who doesn’t feel ready to leave the house just yet shouldn’t feel guilty for taking the time they need to heal and to adapt. Your baby will still develop as they should without the sensory classes and messy play. You are not doing your baby a disservice by not going.
But I have seen the amazing side of baby classes, and that’s the connections that form between parents that attend. And that is why my one and only regret from when my eldest two were little is that I didn’t go to any classes. Not for my children, but for me.
When I became pregnant with my first baby, I was terrified. I didn’t know how I felt. This was not the plan. I won’t bore you with the ins and outs of my life at the time (I’ll save that for another blog) but I was confused about the whole situation and this didn’t change as my pregnancy went on. When I finally had my gorgeous baby boy, I don’t think I ever truly felt like a mother. I felt more like an imposter who had undeservedly been given a baby. And that’s why I didn’t go to any baby groups. In my mind, they were for ‘real mothers’. For people who had their shit together. People who had always dreamed of having their own baby and embraced every moment of being a parent.
And for a long time, although I had a great support network around me, I felt completely alone. I didn’t have any mum friends and I didn’t think I’d ever have any because I didn’t feel worthy enough to be in the company of other mothers. But when I look back now, I’m gutted I didn’t put myself out there because maybe I would have realised that I was good enough to be a mother, whether I had planned to or not and maybe there would have been others that felt the same as me or parents who would have built me up and had my back.
So if you’ve stuck around long enough to read this, thank you and if you are a parent that is considering attending my antenatal classes or coming along to one of my baby classes I’d like to reassure you that you will be welcome amongst my groups, no matter who you are or your situation. I will do my everything to make sure you feel valued, because that’s exactly what I needed.