Advise, Opinions and Stories! Oh My!
So you’re pregnant. You have patiently waited for three long months, 12 whole weeks, to make the announcement to the world. The day finally arrives for you to share your most exciting news!
What comes next?
Advice, opinions and more advice!
Everyone has an opinion. It gets both frustrating and overwhelming to hear everyone and their sister give you their own personal feelings on everything baby. Should you breastfeed or bottle feed? Co-sleep or own room right away? Natural birth or epidural? Everyone and I mean everyone has the answers!
How do you handle all these unwanted opinions?
Want my advice??
There is no escaping it so you might as well smile and hang on for the ride.
There are a couple of things to keep in mind when people start throwing all this info your way.
People mean well. The first and most important thing to always keep at the forefront is that most of the time people really do mean well. Friends and family are so excited to share this wonderful time with you. They just want to be a part of your experience and the best way many know how is to offer to you their words of wisdom. This is especially true if it’s your first pregnancy. For some reason offering you words of wisdom makes people feel as though they are a part of your experience and are somehow helping you.
Not all advice is bad. Try to remember that you are hearing information first hand from people who have experienced it, some many times over. If they survived pregnancy, childbirth and parenthood they probably have learned a thing or two! They have been through the ups and downs, they have made mistakes and learned their lessons. Don’t automatically dismiss what other parents have to say, there may be some gold in there!
Consider the source. On the other hand, just because they have been through it doesn’t necessarily mean they know best. Consider the source, are their parenting styles totally different from the way you envision your life? Were tv’s displaying black and white images the last time they had a baby in the house? Then maybe you want to listen politely and check with your doctor if you have questions. Things change, recommendations change so some advice you are receiving could be out of date.
The best of the best always comes from people who don’t have children. Somehow NOT having kids can make you feel as though you are a total expert. The wisdom always seemed to flow freely from certain childless friends who had it all figured out and knew exactly how they were going to handle it all when it was their turn. (HA! That’s all I have to say about that!) Though, I do have to admit that I may possibly have been one of those people before I had kids. I seemed to have all the answers until that baby finally showed up in my life and I realized that I had no clue!
Advice will begin rolling in from the moment your baby becomes common knowledge, maybe even before, so take it all in. Listen carefully, mull it over, take out of it what you want and forget the rest. Make sure you do your research, speak with your doctor or midwife and make your own educated decisions. In the end, it’s your body, your baby and your life, no one knows better than you.
