Parenthood - myths and reality

[note: I started writing this a while ago.... twins keep me busy and I haven't been able to finish this until now, more posts to follow]

So, The girls are 3 weeks and 2 days old and today (18-jun) they have reached their 'full-term' mark. If I were still pregnant, today I would be 40 wks. I thought this was a nice point to do a bit of a stock-take on my experiences over the last three weeks.

What did I expect parenthood/motherhood to be like? I didn't really have any expectations at all. I just had a few preconceived notions I guess which ofcourse were way off. I'll try to explain. There are people who think that getting married will fullfill them in life, that somehow the act of saying "I do", dressing up, being the centre of attention will cause some profound change and all-of-a-sudden life is much better. This is one of those things which is hard to put to words. I never really felt that way about getting married, but with all the troubles we've had falling pregnant I had put motherhood on a kind of pedistole, it had become this unatainable ideal. I don't know what I expected it to 'do' for me, but I thought there would be the filling of a void inside me. Reality is different. For starters, I don't have a void to fill, I'm still myself with all the good and bad bits.

I'll dispell a few myths surrounding motherhood:
You take one look at your baby and you will be in love straight away.
So not true. That first look is totally surreal, it took me a good week before I even beleived that our girls actually were coming home with me, and even now, it sometimes feels like we have two strangers in the house with us.

You will just 'know' what your baby needs
Again, not true. The amount of times in the last few weeks Duane and I have been near or in tears because we couldn't figure out why either one of them was crying are plenty.

Breastfeeding is easier than bottle feeding
No Way. It is hard, even once the latching on thing has been worked out. You never know if the babies are getting enough feed, Do they need a top-up or not? how do you work it out? again, this is where this elusive "mums just know" instinct seems to be lacking totally.

I know when I started writing this post (about a week or so ago) there were a lot of other points I wanted to de-myth but I can't remember what they were.

Really, I think that motherhood grows on people. It is not an automatic thing. The first weeks seem easy now, they are now nearly 5 weeks old (tomorrow) and it is getting harder to keep going. They are starting to 'interact' with their environment more, but they are not showing signs of recognition.
It is hard when you are unable to settle them when they are upset and you can't figure out why. It is now 9:50 pm and I'm waiting for the next feed to start so I can go to bed afterwards. I'm fighting to keep my eyes open. Yet I can't imagine our lives without these two girls.

I'll post more photos on flickr in a while. I've been too busy to sort through them.

Take care all,
Agnes