I thought you'd be too wrapped up in the baby, at least for the first six weeks or so, to think about much else at all, and I was astonished when I realised you were surfing the web, checking Twitter, etc.
I really hope you didn't mean it like this, but to me this sounds like you're saying I should have been spending more time with the baby rather than faffing about on the internet. :-(
To be honest I thought I'd be too wrapped up in her to do anything else at all, too. What I hadn't really realised properly was that looking after a baby involved spending a lot of time exhausted and miserable, on my own in the dark in the middle of the night, being solely responsible for the survival of a small screaming kicking clawing animal that doesn't even know how to make eye contact, & spending about 12 hours of every day trying to feed said animal (which was - and still mostly is - difficult and painful and stressful). It felt horribly isolating & I was in desperate need of reassurance that there were other human beings out there. I think I would have gone completely mad if it wasn't for Twitter. Going completely mad is still on the cards, to be honest, though things feel _slightly_ easier now that she can look at people and even smile a bit & is a bit more human. Still not easy though, & the knowledge that I have to carry on doing this for another year or so makes me cry with despair most days.
And I don't write much about this because a) I know it makes me look like an even worse mother than I am, and b) I'm now part of the conspiracy that tells everybody how wonderful it is having babies.
I wonder if some of the people who "become a selfish bell-end" when they have kids actually just find they don't have enough energy left over for looking after other people as well as keeping themselves and their child(ren) alive. I guess that's what selfishness is, though, isn't it.
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Date: 2011-06-10 06:20 pm (UTC)I really hope you didn't mean it like this, but to me this sounds like you're saying I should have been spending more time with the baby rather than faffing about on the internet. :-(
To be honest I thought I'd be too wrapped up in her to do anything else at all, too. What I hadn't really realised properly was that looking after a baby involved spending a lot of time exhausted and miserable, on my own in the dark in the middle of the night, being solely responsible for the survival of a small screaming kicking clawing animal that doesn't even know how to make eye contact, & spending about 12 hours of every day trying to feed said animal (which was - and still mostly is - difficult and painful and stressful). It felt horribly isolating & I was in desperate need of reassurance that there were other human beings out there. I think I would have gone completely mad if it wasn't for Twitter. Going completely mad is still on the cards, to be honest, though things feel _slightly_ easier now that she can look at people and even smile a bit & is a bit more human. Still not easy though, & the knowledge that I have to carry on doing this for another year or so makes me cry with despair most days.
And I don't write much about this because a) I know it makes me look like an even worse mother than I am, and b) I'm now part of the conspiracy that tells everybody how wonderful it is having babies.
I wonder if some of the people who "become a selfish bell-end" when they have kids actually just find they don't have enough energy left over for looking after other people as well as keeping themselves and their child(ren) alive. I guess that's what selfishness is, though, isn't it.