When you have your first child, everything is so new and you don’t know what to expect. Every experience is your first. Your first positive pregnancy test, first scan, first time feeling your baby kick, first pregnancy announcement, first time giving birth, your first everything. It’s amazing and although you wouldn’t change anything about having your child, there may be some things you would do differently next time round. Through my previous experiences with Kory, here’s what i am going to do differently this time round with baby number 2.
- I am going to go out more. I’ve always been a bit of a home body and always preferred staying in over going out. That’s just how I am, I’ve always been the same. After having Kory, I felt really overwhelmed and didn’t want to leave the house but I think when you have a child, you have to make yourself go out, it wasn’t healthy for me and Kory to both stay couped up all the time and there’s nothing I enjoy more now than taking him out to different places and on days out, I only wish I had done it sooner. So this time when I feel afraid to leave the house, I’m gonna remind myself that it’s okay and I’m gonna make myself.
- Say NO to visitors. This is a big one for me. Kory was premature and as a result of this, spent the first 2 weeks of his life in the hospital after being born. When the time came to bring him home, I just wanted to be able to enjoy him with my partner as Rory was due to go back to work the next day. I thought people would understand this but obviously not. It was nice that people wanted to come and visit Kory but I would have liked to have been able to enjoy him myself first as I hadn’t really been able to in the hospital. The nurses did the night feeds as I had been discharged from the hospital, the nurses knew how to wind him and how to comfort him, I felt like they knew my child better than I did and this was my chance to get to know him. The whole experience was horrible and I feel like it was ruined for us, I just wanted to cry the entire time whenever someone came round and scream ‘give me back my child!’ I am hoping and praying that this baby won’t be born early so that we can avoid her having to stay in the hospital after being born like Kory did but if my pregnancy experiences have taught me anything, it’s that babies come when they choose to. So this time round I will be saying no to visitors and I will be letting people know when we’re ready for them to visit.
- Speak up and trust my instinct! When it’s your first child, people think it’s acceptable to throw all sorts of advice at you (helpful and unhelpful), criticise what you’re doing and try to overtake. With Kory being my first baby and me doubting myself, I let people tell me what to do, or listened to people tell me about my own child, even if I didn’t agree with what they were saying at the time. This time round when I disagree with a nurses opinion, I will be sure to speak up, the next time someone offers me advice, I will take what’s helpful to me and ignore the rest, the next time someone tries to overtake, they will be put back in their place, help will be accepted when and if it’s wanted.
- Pick a better pram. I rushed into making the decision of which pram to get for Kory, I chose my pram simply because I liked the look of it. Kory was only in it for 6 months, he’d outgrown it and preferred to be sat up in a buggy. This time i’ve made sure to look into more detail and compare prams and I am happy with the pram we have chosen.
So those are the things that I have decided I will be doing differently this time round. Is there anything you wish you had done differently, did do differently or would do differently next time round?
Let me know in the comments!
Life as The Lonsdales 