Preparing for motherhood

They say you can't prepare for being a mother. I disagree.

I was not prepared for being a mother. I wanted to be a mother. I was dreaming of having a child for years but when my child arrived the dreams I had, had nothing to do with reality.
The changes in my life hit me like a storm, they derailed me for a couple of weeks until I could find myself again and create a new me - a mother.

It's true you can't imagine what a new baby will bring into to your life, what it will make with you but you can prepare for taking care of a newborn.
After I gave birth to my child I had no idea how to handle him. I had no idea about rocking babies, breastfeeding them, changing them or bathing them. I didn't understand his signs. Was he crying because he's hungry, because he's tired? What does he want? I didn't even know he could cry because he's overtired. He left me helpless and I had to learn the hard way to understand his signs. It took weeks of him being miserable, as his needs where not fully me,t and me being miserable because I couldn't understand him.

I was the youngest child in my family, I had only older relatives. I never took care of a baby before my son was born. I never even held a baby. It was a huge disadvantage. I simple didn't learn yet how to handle a baby.
I believe every expecting mother would hugely benefit from some experience of taking care of a baby. Let it be their sibling, their relative, a baby of a friend but any contact with a baby will be beneficial. There's so much emphasis on preparing for birth but there's not one course for pregnant women on baby care. How to hold a baby, what the rhythm of a baby is, how to breastfeed them, how to rock them to sleep. What their cries could mean. There should be courses for pregnant mothers where they can meet mothers with newborns, where they can handle a baby, learn from those mothers, see baby care in real life.
Birthing is written in our DNA, our body does it by itself but baby care is something we have to learn. And its so much harder when you have to learn it with your own first child.

So if you get the chance, take care of a baby, talk to your friends about their babies. Don't make the mistake of thinking the knowledge will come to you automatically after you gave birth. Be a babysitter, be an aupair, help out your friends who have babies, go to a breastfeeding meeting to see women breastfeed.
Anything but just get your hands on a baby before you have your own.