This post is a companion piece to Averages, and the Looming Should – it’s basically the pregnancy and parenting perspective on the same topic.
Hoo boy, it ended up being longer than expected – so to let you know, in this post I talk about:
The amount of shoulds you are pummelled with post-birth
How and where shoulds and averages are connected when you are given guidance
How you can be tempted to stop trusting your gut by listening and tracking yourself too much
How at the end, decisions sit with you, and trusting and backing yourself is important
How babies are awesome
The arrival on Planet Parent is wild, and the guidance in the travel guide is ridiculously varied. There’s the official line, the unofficial line, the “well the official line WOULD tell you that” line, the social media line, and the friend who drops a comforting truth bomb while spooning you lasagne.
No matter how much foundational work I did pre-baby-launch, it was such a different world, post baby, that each roadbump has taken a while to navigate, the destination always about getting back to the values that I want to underpin our family story.
In the weeks leading to the birth I bought the nappies and wipes, but I kept saying to myself things like, “I don’t know if they are even going to like this brand!”
How was I supposed to shop for someone whose tastes I didn’t fully know yet?
The ongoing shock I’ve had after having a baby, is how depersonalised babies are when you seek guidance.
At the same time you frequently find yourself trying to parse content that seems intent on scaring the shit out of you.
‘Baby’, as the literature often describes them, (not ‘the baby’ – whyyyyyy?) is an abstract concept.
‘Baby’ is average, ‘baby’ is predictable in what its chorus of needs will be.
When you land on Planet Parent, you are told what babies should be doing, and how you should be reacting.
Even if you are reacting differently to how you would like to, and feeling embarrassed and ashamed about it, you are even told how you should be reacting to those emotions as well.
Does that ring a big fucking bell for those who are late diagnosed?
Should II: The Revenge
Because I’ve never had a baby before, there has been a lot to learn.
This sounds obvious from the outset, but, well, there’s a tad bit of pressure, and the information you are presented with is both overly detailed and frustratingly vague.
You are often told what you should do, but often have to fight to find out why.
You are told that every baby is different, but not how, and not how to tailor the average response to their difference.
The advice will change within days, or you will receive three different pieces of advice at the same time. If you bring up past advice that is being contradicted, people will have no memory of what you are talking about.
This is for all parents, but the trigger for adult ADHDers is that we have heard this kind of stuff before in relation to our ADHD.
The resonance between people saying batshit crazy stuff to me about my ADHD and their ‘opinion’, and people saying batshit crazy stuff to me about having and raising a baby, is eerily similar, and when you’re tired and unsure, this can have the same destabilising effect.
My expectations about baby having and raising were that because there were so many babies out there, the guidance I was going to receive would be vaguely authoritative, or at least consistent, but would have some wiggle room for difference.
And it has been authoritative, but it has also sometimes been unrealistic, erased the parent, erased the child, and of course, of course, had massive gaps in the information you might need for your neurodivergent family.
So I want to talk about averages, and how the word should comes back with a vengeance with early parenting, and brings our late-diagnosed wounds with it.
Pregnancy and averages
I was pressured to do many things with my uncomplicated, undramatic pregnancy before a single doctor had laid a hand on me.
Studies have shown, I was told, when 17 weeks pregnant. The guidelines say…
Which studies? Which guidelines? So I can read and understand them too, I would say, receiving a blank look in response.
Doctors were mystified about my suspicious reaction – but I had just travelled through several years of being told that studies had shown AFAB, girls and women didn’t have ADHD. Studies had shown that I was more likely, on average, to have anxiety.
For my IVF and pregnancy, I was told what would happen to my pregnancy, my baby, based on my average demographic. The guidelines state, I would be told. But the content did not correlate with my narrative.
And all this was more difficult as no one told me the overarching story of having a baby, apart from some close friends.
I knew the story of workplaces, of school. Even if I didn’t always quite fit in those environments, I at least was familiar with how they looked and felt. The cast of characters, the settings.
But navigating a pregnancy? When all I had received so far was a letter to turn up at the hospital at a certain time and date? They were highly experienced professionals – but so were decades of doctors and psychologists I’d seen about my life not working properly.
There was the same air of offence when I brought into question what they were telling me against my own lived experience in my own body.
Additionally, the need to infantalise pregnant women was pervasive and corrosive – similar to the need in some to infantilise adult ADHDers.
They would become prickly or dazed at my questions, or ignore them completely; were the averages they were telling me for their administrative convenience? Or for mine and my baby’s wellbeing? After a little context or explanation, crammed with bewildering averages, you then had ten minutes to make a decision.
It was only the fact that I knew that their urgency was most of the time false, that I had time to decide, to consult with people, like my doula, and private, neuroaffirming GP, that gave me the confidence to tell them to wait. That I would come back to them when I knew what would work for me.
Being infected by averages post-partum
Once I give birth, I continued to be immersed into the world of averages. From the start, my baby was was weighed, and measured, and milestoned.
Their sleeping and eating and pooing has, from the outset, been deeply considered in a way I didn’t think possible.
In the blur of the early weeks, when reaching out for advice, it didn’t matter if it was beside the point, I was still asked when they last pooped, when they last ate, when they last slept. Half the time I remembered, other times I’d glance at the clock to make a guesstimate. Sometimes I’d tell them what they needed to hear so they could give me the advice that I actually asked for.
It was at that point, that bloody, weighted word would return – should.
Thinking that I should be able to remember nap and poo times turned me to apps, and it would be a fight, even with all the self awareness I had, not to double down on the low self-esteem as a result.
The app that I swore I was only going to use as a tool to work out a pattern would start joyfully pinging at me when it decided nap time was impending, regardless of where we were or what we were doing.
The experience of going to the shops or library was like walking through honey already. We were on a new, little adventure! When suddenly:
Nap time in 15 minutes!
Nap time in 5 minutes!
Your baby should be asleep now! If it’s not you’re a terrible parent!
Ping! Ping! Ping!
At first I would rush home – surely the app must be correct, with their authoritative manner and elaborate algorithm. I didn’t want to annoy the app! An hour later, my baby might be down to sleep, but my heartbeat was elevated, and I’d not bought half my shopping list for dinner yet.
Even with all my self-awareness, for a while, if things weren’t happening in the ‘should’ window, my vulnerabilities could be triggered – reminding me of all the shoulds that have and will be in my past, present and future.
I write more about drowning in averages, and especially over-tracking yourself, in this companion post.
The return of Just Try Harder
So we are over-tracking ourselves, but have added the layer of being wayyyyy more tired, having less opportunities to move about, and having an occasional real life person asking you questions they think it’s reasonable to expect you to know, like how many times you fed four days ago, and a detailed description of your baby’s last eight poos.
Not that having all that information will mean the person you are seeking advice from will believe you.
For me, my baby is a bit of a unicorn, and was sleeping for long stretches, overnight, from day one.
Day napping, on the other hand was tricky and stressful, which meant that even if my baby was sleeping at night, I’d be busy trying to play catch up on housework or feeding myself until late into the night, rather than sleeping.
I assumed the sub-par day napping was as a result of 12+ hours of unbroken nighttime sleep – that they simply didn’t want to day nap, because they were not tired.
But when I described the situation to experts, this assumption would be quickly dismissed, and I would be told to persist with the average amounts of day naps for a baby her age.
For the uninitiated, this would mean spending 40 minutes trying to get a person to go to sleep who didn’t want to go to sleep. This would mean sitting still in a darkened room for hours, because when they finally slept, it would often be on you.
It just didn’t make sense to me that forced napping was a worthwhile pursuit for either of us. But I was told I just needed to try harder. That their not sleeping must be technique, or environment. These conversations would be long, and bananas.
It took me ages to realise that many people simply didn’t believe my baby was sleeping as much overnight as I described.
I would say that if I went by their averages, I would be forcing my baby to sleep three to four more hours than the average, which the baby didn’t want to do.
The experts would stay firm in their advice. Which brought home to me that they didn’t believe me. Again this rhymed from years of undiagnosed ADHD.
They would darkly allude to the “Long term effects on the brain,” if I didn’t do as advised.
I would start to reply “But how does the stress of being forced to do something you simply cannot easily do affect the brain in the long term?”
They had no answer to that, but I did, because I have lived it.
One day I finally said “fuck this”, and dropped a nap from the schedule. Everything was immediately better – she had her naps when she needed to, rather than when I wanted her to. If they didn’t happen after twenty minutes, we stopped trying and went off and did something else for a while. Sleep became less an obligation than a mutually agreed proposition. And I got to mop my floor.
One time, I was convinced by a cacophony of furrowed brows to add a nap back on again (“they shouldn’t be dropping a nap at that age”). The ensuing 24 hours were a nightmare, and I wept, frustrated with myself from listening to someone I knew wasn’t right. We dropped the nap again and got back on track.
The original aim was to reduce stress and connect with our children, wasn’t it?
If we are tired and in hyperfocus on all of the things we are doing wrong, we start to disconnect from how stressed we are. When that happens, we start to disconnect from why something was important to us in the first place.
The stress and anxiety can spiral, and further disconnect us from the many other moments of joy each day brings.
Being stressed means an activated nervous system – and that means only looking for threats – cues that something is wrong. In that world of confirmation bias, we could start to disregard all the times we knew what our child needed, the product of loving hours, our empathy and connection, attuning to this fabulous new person in our home.
Understanding the cost to your body and brain of trying to be and do things like everyone else is a big milestone – and unpacking it is a trip in itself. In any scenario it can be frustrating to have it rear its head. But having the self-awareness to understand when it’s happening, even in retrospect, is incredibly powerful.
Mindfulness and trusting your gut
A baby needs you to tune into them. When they are tired, or hungry, or need a cuddle, you are the person who is there to help them.
It makes things really simple in some ways, and understanding their needs can be the most simple, connected experience in our complicated lives.
This muscle of stating a need is not well exercised for us, after a lifetime of being told what we should be, and how we should feel.
So it’s going to take some getting used to, trusting you have properly listened, when your baby has stated a need. And sometimes, trusting that, in spite of what the people around you are saying.
It can be especially difficult, if someone who was a caregiver for you as a child, is contradicting what you want to do – again this is for a seperate post.
ADHDers have empathy, big emotions, and excellent neuroception on our side – and the opportunity to use all these strengths to care for our little person.
The depersonalised averaging of babies can be a real head fuck.
But I also think of the amount of times I have said “My baby is tired,” “My baby is hungry,” and other people around me haven’t noticed what I have noticed.
This noticing can also be really upsetting – for me, it makes me think of all the times I have stated my needs and had them ignored or downplayed – but to ‘get it’ so easily with my child has rebuilt my confidence, and sense of my own inner strength.
Cause babies are awesome, and yours in particular will be awesome for you.
A big caveat, of course.
Of course I need to add a big caveat here that if you think something is wrong with your baby, you should seek the advice of a medical professional. But understanding the context and nature of your interactions with those giving advice, while necessary, can also be the root of some of the confusion.
If a medical or allied health professional is trying to give you advice, and it feels confusing or contradictory, you have the right to seek clarification and context.
Practitioners and professional advice-givers need to cover their risk, legally, and medically. I’ll write more about this another time as understanding how to manage risk can really support ADHDers in their decision making. But if you’re not across why someone is saying to you to seek the advice of a medical professional, it can sound scary to you. There is a huge difference between someone who can say there may be in issue going on, medically, and someone who has the legal and professional authority to decide there may be an issue going on – and it’s not always clear where that line is. If you’re unsure, or someone has made you anxious by the way they have presented their advice, it’s completely acceptable to seek clarity.
You are allowed to say things like:
- Can you please explain what you mean in more direct/plain language?
- Where does this advice come from, specifically?
- Out of the information I have given you, what aspect has caused you to give me this particular advice?
- If you are asking me to do something “As soon as possible”, what timeline, specifically, do you have in mind?
- I would like to write down what to say to the doctor/specialist – can you please guide me in what to say, or where your concerns lie?
Don’t be alarmed if the person is taken aback or not immediately able to answer – information exchanges don’t always sound like this to them, so you do need to give them a hot minute to adjust their thinking also. The advice to go to a medical professional could be because you’re on the phone, for example the Maternal and Child Healthline, and they can’t see you or your kid, and don’t have access to your medical history. They can’t equivocally say ‘it’s fine’ when they are not 100% sure of context, nor can they say ‘you should be worried’, apart from in specific, understandable circumstances.
So if you’re looking for certainty in those kinds of situations, it’s going to be tricky to find it, but you are also allowed to clarify what they are saying, in order to reduce the mystery that may be contributing to your anxiety.
No matter what decisions you make, you are alone in them
I bought this book by Rachel Cusk before I gave birth – I heard it was controversial (‘Unflinching’ is the word most often used in reviews), but only properly started reading as my baby neared one year old.
I wish I had started reading it sooner.
It resonates with why I talk about Planet Parent – this strange world I am in where I am expected to make all of the decisions, and to always know what to do, at a moment’s notice. Those decisions are then constantly queried anyway. My attitude towards this has evolved over time. This muscle was best developed when, as an experiment, I started saying back to the opinion-giver or query-maker if they wanted to be fully in charge of what happened next. At this point there would be an instant retreat, and the phrase: “Well, you’re the mother”.
Having a baby meant getting comfortable with making decisions – a classic ADHD challenge.
Every time you are presented with data, averages, guides, advice, opinions, bewildered expressions, or milestones, there is a small, expectant silence that follows.
So, what do you want to do?
This can freeze you to your core, but at least it’s better than:
So what should you do?
The joy with babies, is that they really are constantly changing. This means you can too, and you don’t have to wait for the prompt to change things up.
The aim of coaching is to get people to move away from thinking any one decision is final, and if it doesn’t work, that it confirms that they are a bad person.
That’s why I like to talk about the joy of shame-free experiments – “I’m going to try this thing, and if it didn’t work, it doesn’t mean I am a terrible person, it just means it didn’t quite work.:”
With this freedom from shame, we now have room to step back, reassess, and try a different thing.
That has been the essence of early parenthood so far, too – an endless list of things that haven’t worked, along with things that have worked, and sometimes those two things happening within the same scenario, or two days apart.
And as you go along, you realise that your baby doesn’t really notice, long term, if a scenario didn’t work well for the both of you. I partly think this is because they don’t really understand or cling to the concept of shame (and hopefully never will), and even if they did, they really love you, and want to be with you, and want to connect with you.
The radical honesty of babies, if you slowly allow it, can help you to move all those averages to the side, and really start noticing what is needed for this one, singular, human. And it really can be quite nice.
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