Is she good? Does she sleep? And other useless things people say…

New motherhood is loaded with all the best things in the world and a hefty dose of all the worst.

Insert: unsolicited advice, comparison, judgements, and to the bone exhaustion.

One thing that deeply grates me is when some random person asks if my baby is good? What a ridiculous concept to think that a baby is anything other than pure love, and joy and of course “goodness”.

My question to these people is: What would the opposite of good be?

Bad?

Is she bad?

Does she put a balaclava over her head at night and sneak off to steal the Crown Jewels?

Is she planning to take over the world “pinky and the brain style”?

Because that Is something I would consider BAD?

But not sleeping through the night at the tender age of 6weeks, 3 months?  8years? What an absurd determing factor of the character and personality of my child.

I see so many postpartum mums questioning their natural instincts to love, nurture and attend to their precious babies because of these unhelpful benchmarks of good or bad.

•A baby wanting to feed or be close to her mother?

•A baby who Cries to let me know she is angry, hungry or uncomfortable?

• A Baby that wakes often through the night to seek nourishment, attachment or comfort.

Now That is something I consider fundamentally RIGHT, in fact biologically NORMAL, and right on track with being GOOD, for want of a better word.

Look don’t get me wrong, a full night of uninterrupted sleep wouldn’t go unappreciated but it’s not what I expecting right now.

My primary focus is the best development for my little girl, and the best development occurs when her needs are met, this could be at 10:30 in the morning post shower and life giving coffee, or it can be at 3:15am after a long night of feeding and rocking a teething, grumpy babe back to sleep.

This is my reality, my responsibility and my joy to nurture and love my little girl, and your “advice” or judgements are incredibly unhelpful at the best of times, but if you add in the second guessing, anxiety, exhaustion and compassions that plaque a new mamma you can imagine how UNHELPFUL your questions can be?

What would be helpful you so sweetly asked?

• A cup of tea

•A friendly chat

•A supportive ear

•A kind word

•Why not ask how the new mamma is doing instead?

• How she Is feeling?

• How is she healing?

• What she is enjoying about her new role?

These are such welcomed questions.

These are wonderfully suppprtive questions.

These are questions that could potentially change a postpartum mums day.

So next time you see a cute little babe and feel the need to chat to a new mamma.

Practice a little bit of Mindfulness:  Dont just ramble off the same mandatory boring questions of good/sleep/feeding routines etc….

Look into that mother’s eyes, create a safe space for her to share a little bit more of her life, her feelings, her experiences without needing to fit the mould for GOOD or god forbid BAD…

Trust me….

If you did that…

I would consider you to be a  GOOD human.