Not even ‘The Professionals’ know what to do

For 200 000 odd years, the human race has been birthing and raising kids, so one would think it stands to reason that surely somewhere in that time we should have gained some data and patterns to predict behaviour.

Well, what do we have to show for our 200 000 years long experiment? Nothing. Nothing concrete, nothing universally applicable, nothing irrefutable, nothing foolproof (did you see what I did there?).

But alas, even with a couple of hundred or so years of modern medicine and even more of midwifery we are no closer to definitive answers for raising children.

Before I became a mother, I always had a mental smirk when pregnant women or mothers complained that their experience was unique or extraordinarily acute. Do me a favour, I dismissively thought, “you are not the first woman to ever be pregnant or to have a child, and you are certainly not the last.”

But what I have come to realise is that – that woman or mother may as well have been the first woman to ever be pregnant, the first to ever give birth, the first to ever raise a child. And in terms of being the last, she may well have been the last too because every child is so vastly different to the next, so vastly different one day to the next, one year to the next, there is no cookie cutter solution. In essence, you are the first and last woman to give birth or raise that child – each mother is living out their very own personal moon landing each and every time they have a child.

All we as a race have to show for our efforts and years of group learning are suggestions. Yip, that right ladies, you heard it here first. All you can expect to get from other moms, your mom and even the child-rearing and doctoring professionals are suggestions, opinions, words of wisdom, basic guidelines and broad-spectrum advice.

And so opinions have become like buttholes, everyone has one, and whilst this would be useful if opinions were hard and fast rules, they are not, so it is not – useful.

This aspect of motherhood is terrifying because it seems no-one has the answers, only the previously mentioned suggestions, even if they parade them as foregone conclusions. And while this can be mind-bendingly irritating, it is also strangely comforting.

It is not just you who has no clue what you are doing – no one does. If this were an exam most of us would fail dismally. Everyone (even that one perfect Moms & Babes mom) is doing this parenting-thing through trial and error, experimentation, gut instinct and a whole lot of contradictory advice from multiple sources.

I think a distinction should be made between the advice of a professional and the well-intentioned advice of “civilian”, and the judgements and criticisms of the sanctimonious hoard of know-betters.

Let’s start with the professional advice. In hindsight, I feel sorry for any individuals in any professional position related to child care – doctors, nurses, teachers, lactation consultants, midwives or the baby group facilitator. Hell, I am sure even a shelf stocker at Baby’s R Us has fallen prey to the wide-eyed haunted stare and stench of desperation of a new mom asking for answers to impossible questions.

How many burps do I need to get out after the bottle? What texture of his poop is good or bad? Can I WhatsApp you a picture of a spot behind her left knee and you can tell me if it looks like measles or is just a mosquito bite? When you say to let him sleep at a bit of an incline, what are we talking about here – 23º, 45º or like 80º?

What I realized quickly is that professionals are loathed to speak in absolutes. Even my paediatrician (touted to be one of the best in the country) would never be definitive. My daughter, Izzy, had been in NICU for about two days after her birth and my husband and I cornered him on the stairwell of the hospital, we were determined to get answers out of him, even if we had to use force (just kidding, kind of). We asked him if Izzy was going to be OK, when would she be released from the hospital? We asked him outright how worried should we be, how serious was her condition?

His answer was neither definitive nor reassuring. “If you had given birth at home with no access to medical assistance, she would be dead. So, luckily you were here and not somewhere in the sticks of the wilderness.” Yes, I thought “lucky”. He continued, “I cannot tell you when she will be released, nor can I tell you how serious her condition is, it is serious enough to warrant keeping her in NICU. She will probably be fine, but anything can happen when they are so little, so we need to be prepared for anything.”

What I didn’t appreciate at the time is that what I was asking of him was impossible to give. In this interaction lies precisely the problem and the answer – when it comes to raising children there is no definitive.

How can a doctor say with absolute certainty that an unexpected complication could not arise and steal our vulnerable baby’s life? Similarly, how can a nurse be 100% sure that her advice with regard to a mother’s worry over her child’s developmental progress is right? She can’t, no-one can, they can speak with confidence and authority, they can make very well educated estimations and base their words on a wealth of experience.

But what I and many other parents fail to grasp, is that every single child is unique – and not in the glib sense – in the absolute sense.

The combinations of DNA that a human can embody is essentially infinite. So, far scientists have calculated that 420 billion different variants are possible. And that’s just the new changes arising in a single generation – not even accounting for the number passed down and recombined from previous generations. But I digress into something far too complicated and inconceivable for my tired little brain to comprehend.

What I mean to say is, each child responds differently, grows differently, learns differently, recovers differently, feels differently, thinks differently and behaves differently. So, how could we possibly be able to apply general rules to our children and expect a uniform result?

Regardless, as sure as the sun rises every morning and sets every evening, every mom will ask the impossible questions and every professional will answer as best they can. 

Moving on to the advice dispensed by “civilians” – in other words, any man or women (or non-binary) and their dog. Everyone has a Masters in parenting, even those who have yet to have a child themselves. These well-meaning individuals are often the worst (and if I am honest I fell into this category of advisors prior to having my own child), they carelessly share tips and tricks they may as well have learnt from a Chappies’ wrapper, almost always with no attempt to fact check before dispensing their pearl of wisdom.

I have heard and been told all sorts of insanely personal, weirdly specific and obviously ridiculous things as others attempt to “help” or sympathise with a mother’s incredibly specific and non-of-your-business journey.

On hearing that a mom planned an elected C-section (aside from the fact that is absolutely zero percent your business as to how another woman decides to deliver her baby), one childless barely out of puberty girl declared, “Don’t worry I am sure your maternal instinct will kick in as your pregnancy progresses.”

“Drink a Castle Milk Stout every day of your pregnancy as it will help with milk production.”, says waiter to pregnant mom, either to be helpful or sell more beer. This strangely is the advice the “professionals” would have dispensed in previous centuries before we became acutely aware of the dangers of Foetal Alcohol Syndrome.

“OMG, like, how are you going to give birth, natural, OMG, a friend of my aunt’s cousin, like, gave birth naturally and the baby was, like, breach and she ended up, like, tearing from, like, one hole to the other. Like, hectic, hey? Aren’t you, like, so scared?” Why do people insist on telling pregnant women every single childbirth horror story they know of in graphic and sadistic detail.

Swaddle from left to right. Don’t let her have a dummy once she turns 2 years and 2 months old. Shave your baby’s hair it will help make it grow.  Don’t cut your baby’s hair before his first birthday, it will ruin their hair. You look haggard, it must be a girl you are pregnant with, they steal your beauty. You’re carrying very low, it is definitely a boy. Do not bath as it can drown your foetus. If you have a cat you will have to get rid of it, it will smother your baby once it is born. Are you suffering from heartburn, your baby will have lots of hair when he is born. Let your baby cry it will strengthen his lungs. You think you’re tired now, wait till the baby comes. You think you’re tired now, just wait till you have a second.

Often this unsolicited advice is most commonly thrust upon you by other moms. Why? Surely we all have hated being on the receiving end of this exchange? Perhaps it’s like a form of hazing, you had to endure it and now you will make sure others do too. Or maybe it’s that we are so desperate to have the best (read: most often worst) story, to be the best example of motherhood, the mould on which all other mothers can shape themselves, that we simply cannot help ourselves. I don’t know, it’s seriously deep-seated and it’s seriously fucked up.

If you want to read more about mom shaming and competition, check out Moms, why are we being so mean to each other?

Amongst all the advice I received, one piece has been key to maintaining my sanity, and so I will pay it forward. Find one person that you trust, one person that fits with your parenting philosophy, someone who you feel “gets its” and only listen to that person. Throw everything else away, smile and nod politely whilst letting it flow in one ear and out the other.

For me that one person, whose words I clung to like someone about to drown clings to a life buoy, was my Paediatric Nurse. A woman with the positivity of a Care Bear, the speech cadence of a horse race commentator and the honesty and realism of someone I immediately knew I could trust and rely on for pragmatic suggestions and ideas, confidently dispensed. She was also the first person to actually look at me, really look at me, and bluntly affirm what I already knew to be true: “Wow, you look bad!”, followed by, “She is really a screamer, isn’t she. Looking at her, you are doing a really good job, but you need to take care of yourself too?”.

I have noticed that this person can take different forms for different people, some find that one source of information and advice in their nurse, a friend, a doctor, their mom, their sister, a doula, an online mommy forum, a book or even just their hairdresser. The “who” is immaterial, as we established earlier, the advice is only ever at best, a best guess. It is a never perfect answer or solution, it is always trial and error.

Why you ask is this the case? Keep up, people – all children are unique snowflakes and there is no one ring to rule them all.

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