What I Would Say If I Met Pre-Baby Me - Guest Post

This is a list of things I know now that I wish I knew before I started expanding our family, things every mother to be should know. It’s not that these women aren’t motivated to make an effort for their baby-to-be, it’s that this info is just not out there. Or at least not in the places they are looking. If you have a pre-baby friend, share your wisdom, without scaring them off. There’s no need to wrap motherhood in a veil of mystery.

1. Analyze yourself, define your triggers, the things that haunt you from your past, especially your upbringing and childhood. Children are amazing at triggering old emotions, deal with them now and start with your children as a whole person. 
2. When it comes to your birth, don’t choose the easy way, don’t be bullied into something you don’t fully support. You can’t overdo your and your baby’s birth; put in an effort to explore your choices and choose an option you feel comfortable with.
3. Seek out real information. Mainstream parenting and pregnancy magazines are NOT decent information, they play into whatever sells ad space best. They bear false information and spread old wives tales.
4. Find the mother in your environment you relate to most, the mother you would like to be, the mother you aspire to: talk to her. Make her your friend. Have her share all her wisdom with you.
5. If you’ll be having a baby together, make sure you’re on the same page, that you have the same desire to learn and grow. That your family project looks similar, if not the same.
6. Babies don’t come on your schedule. Don’t plan your life around them, don’t try to decide how many you will want or when you want them. They will come as they are.
7. Yes, there are times you will be exhausted, but you will be able to deal with it. You are strong and you are not alone. 
8. Don’t listen to pregnancy and birth horror stories. Seek out beautiful birth stories. Birth is not a initiation in pain, it is a becoming, a beautiful, breathtaking, life-changing, earth-rocking event. Birth is not war with your own body, it’s an exploration of its power and its mystique.
9. Enjoy your pregnancy, don’t be fear-mongered by ‘well-intended’ doctors, women have been having perfectly healthy babies for ages before they came to meddle. 

What would you tell yourself? What do you tell your childless friends?


Author: Laura Schuerwegen
Blog: Authentic Parenting 


Bio: Laura is a mother, wife and writer, who swapped the life she studied for to have a more connected family under the African tropics. After lots of travelling, she and her family are now living in DR Congo. She writes about natural living at Authentic Parenting.