Читать книгу First-Time Parent: The honest guide to coping brilliantly and staying sane in your baby’s first year - Lucy Atkins - Страница 52

It’s not just your body that’s going to feel the after-effects of childbirth–your mind can go a bit doolally too. This is partly down to hormonal shifts, partly exhaustion and partly the sheer phenomenal experience of new parenthood. If you’ve just got through a particularly difficult birth, you may well feel shell-shocked by what happened. If the birth went well, you’re likely to feel anything from high as a kite to completely invincible. Giving birth can genuinely make you feel you’re capable of anything, and that nothing in life will ever scare or daunt you again.

Except, perhaps, keeping this wondrous infant safe and well and happy–forever. This is whopping great life stuff and it makes the early days (and weeks) of parenthood unimaginably special. But while it’s going on, you’re also likely, at some point, to crash. It’s not surprising–birth is a big deal, both physically and emotionally, and a few nights in charge of a new and almost inconceivably precious baby, probably in a loud ward with little in the way of support, are enough to do anyone’s head in. You might experience the ‘baby blues’ around day three, where you feel all weepy and helpless (see here for more about this). Or you might just wobble up and down, sometimes precipitously, from time to time. All of this is normal. The best thing for you is a supportive partner who’ll be there not just to hold the baby, but to hold you too sometimes. These early days of snuggling, feeding and gazing at your newborn together are what life’s all about. To say it’s an ‘emotional time’ is the understatement of the century.