Anyone reading my blog regularly will have noticed by now I have a real bee in my bonet about the constant expectations being thrust at mothers making the experience of bringing up kids feel less an enjoyable adventure and more of an unacheivable assignment.
It's worth noting it's not all media based, other mothers can be the worst culprits.
The headline statement was spouted at me by my own mother last week when she was here as a "helpful" reply to my complaining about how tired I was.
My mum watches a lot of tv and likes to fill me in when she visits on what the latest advice has been this week on all kind of subjects.
She generally starts with "well you don't watch tv but..." or "if you watched the tv you'd know...."
Let me just say I do watch tv but I just don't share her passion for soaps, the news, any program where the police are showing us what a delightful country we live in, anything with people with bones sticking out bleeding or any kind of talk programme. I find them all depressing and stressful.
So mum had seen a thing that stated that babies should be sleeping for 12 hours a night?! My response was "which babies are these??", "all babies she replied, it said so on the tv".
Clearly no one has told Lucas this, maybe he missed the sleeping orientation because he was busy checking out a door or set of wheels or smiling at some girl baby waiting to be born.
Lucas sports many no nos when it comes to bedtime and we could no doubt do a whole talk show just on his faults.
He won't be put down unless he's asleep, he spent months crying just to get in my bed and then was happy to go to sleep, he was still waking for a feed at 6 months and he usually finally collapses about 9pm and gets up at 5am with at least 2 visits from me during the night to replace his dummy or come and sleep with me.
Yes I'd love a whole nights sleep, I can't remember if I've ever had one now. Before Lucas was born Freya was still getting up every night and either getting in bed with me or wandering about or crying.
I can't complain about bedtime with Freya too much as she has always just taken herself off to bed when she's tired and on the whole she doesn't come back down. She does however still wake up in the night quite often and because of her inability to identify danger I still have to get up and return her to bed and check she hasn't tried to smother Lucas. (yes she's tried before fortunately we were in the room at the time.)
This reminds me of another good fairytale told by another mum was when Lucas was 6 weeks old, after asking how old he was and if he was sleeping through she announced, "well you've only got another 2 weeks till he sleeps through then"!! I'm not often left speechless and I don't think fast enough to have worked out at the time why she would have said such a thing.
When I thought about it afterwards I realised that both her children must have started sleeping through at 8 weeks so she, quite logically, thought that's what all babies did.
I seem to have taken turns with one placid baby, one screaming non sleeping bundle etc so by the time I'd had my second I was only too aware how different 2 babies can be.
I'm not even going to buy that it's the parenting style or experience, patience whatever as it is very clear looking back that my children began to express their personalities from the minute they emerged into the world. My 16 year old screamed non stop and would only sleep if I was carrying her, at 5 she was still awake at 10.30pm and now she stays up till 4 or 5am!
I was reading the other day that it has been noticed that autistic children scream more as babies. As I say I take all this information with a pinch of salt as I just don't believe you can generalise anything like that. Yes Freya screamed a lot when she was born, the woman in the bed next to me asked to be moved! And the other 2 who screamed a lot are the 2 with challenging personality issues, I have no idea if they are autistic too but it seems to me it just highlights the kids with more to say for themselves, they seem to be letting you know, "I have additional needs, don't neglect me"
I find the "they shouldn't be doing that" comments equally as annoying as the "they should be doing this" comments, like the recent speech therapists comment that there's nothing unusual about a 3 year old not being able to string sentences together properly and lots of kids add "jargon" aka nonsense into their talking.
Maybe it's just because I have a need for people to be specific but if what they mean is it's not unheard of then that's what they should say, not speak to me in a condescending manner assuming this is my first child and I have no idea what I'm talking about!
Obviously I was a first time mum once and it's the memory of things that were said to me and how I was treated then which make me want to stand up and yell "all mums are different and all kids are different, if we ask for advice please help, if not please let us get on with making our own mistakes and parenting in the way that works best for us!"
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