This article is from WeChat official account:Story FM (ID: story_fm), Narrator: Weixi, Anchor: @寇爱哲, Producer: Liu Dou, Text Arrangement: Liu Yi, Liu Dou, Operation: Yichen, Head Picture Source: “Mom is Superman”
Today’s narrator is called Weixi, 28 years old this year, and is the mother of a one-year-old baby girl. More than a year ago, Weixi quit his job at an Internet company and became a full-time mother.
The career of a full-time mother is not as easy as imagined. You are facing a completely unreasonable Party A. The work intensity is huge, but you have no colleagues who can complain to each other, and you can’t even find the opportunity to ask for leave. .
Like this interview: Our producer Liu Dou went to Weixi’s house. After opening the door, the first thing Weixi said to Liu Dou was, please wait a moment, the baby just shit, I have to go and get it.
Wei Xi’s family lives on the 20th floor. When there is haze in winter, she is like living on the top of a mountain isolated from the world. She said that sometimes she feels very lonely, like being bound by this child. The same as in jail.
The decision to take care of the child full-time
I decided to take my own baby when I was pregnant.
First of all, my mother-in-law and my mother are still working, and there are no elders at home who can help take care of the children; secondly, my husband and I both study psychology and pay more attention to the early education of children. We feel that Parenting wife, it is better to take care of the children by yourself.
We have had sufficient communication during this period. My husband said that if I earn more, he is also willing to be a full-time dad. In the end, considering all parties concerned, I chose to quit my job at an Internet company and become a full-time mom.
■ The little feet of Didi, the daughter of Weixi
Human cubs are the scariest creatures in the world
Actually, during the pregnancy, I was in a good state. I was in a very happy state. I didn’t realize how terrible a child is.
Many people who want children nowadays actually don’t have any specific concepts about raising children. Because most of the children you see are stable when you are away from home, even if you see a crying child, they just pass by briefly. And when you really live with a creature like a child, you will find that Ta does not speak any truth, and is completely dependent on temperament.
Human cubs are all premature babies. Tas are born when their functions are not perfect. Other animals in nature have certain behavioral abilities after they are born. For example, lambs can be born after a while I stood up. The baby’s state is the same as the state of an old man on his deathbed, like a puddle of mud, Ta can’t turn over or sleep by himself.
I still remember that after I gave birth in the hospital, my husband and I took the baby back to our little home for the first time. At that time, our cat hadn’t seen me for five or six days, and was very excited from the room. I rushed out, and I soothed my cat. Then turned his head and saw the baby in the safety cradle. I told my husband jokingly, “That’s it, we two are killed!”
I think the term “cause a life” is really appropriate, because “cause a life” you are responsible for her. I had a feeling at the time that only on the day I was dying could I say that I was off work and that I had resigned, otherwise this life would be endless.
■ The second day of Didi’s birth
There are countless ways to breastfeed that can make you better than dead
After giving birth, mothers will face various postpartum sequelae, such as vaginal tear, urinary incontinence, poor uterine involution, etc…
Among them, most mothers have difficulty in breastfeeding. There are many types of breastfeeding difficulties, but the most common ones are breast and nipple pain. According to a survey conducted by the University of California, Davis Medical Center, 44% of novice mothers are troubled by this problem.
I look back on my life in the past year. One of the most painful things is breastfeeding. In the eyes of many people, this is just a common thing for mothers to feed their babies, but there are actually many ways to breastfeed. Let you die.
One of the most painful is that my nipples hurt very much when I am breastfeeding. My baby took the first sip of milk, and I was able to lift my legs up with the natural reflex. Human nipples are very delicate, and the baby’s sucking ability is very strong.
I also told my husband at the time that you can’t feel the pain of giving birth to my baby or the pain of opening my fingers, but I have nipples and you also have nipples. It’s better to give the baby a bite to know that I have It hurts much.
My husband was so scared that he quickly said, “My wife, I can understand your pain very much, so I still don’t try, I know you must be very painful.”
I was breastfeeding while lying on the bed. Every time the child was hungry and was carried over, when I was going to breastfeed her, I was hiding behind, and I felt that the bed was like a torture instrument. Then my sister-in-law would push me from behind and let me get closer to the baby. Every time I take the first bite, I sweat all over.Will come out.
I am puzzled, why does breastfeeding hurt? So I checked the information and found out that many people actually suffer from pain, but this kind of pain is inexplicably ignored, as if it is not important.
I was so hurt at the time, but there was not even a place to ask. I didn’t know what department I should go to in the hospital. It seemed that neither the breast department nor the pain department could help me solve the problem.
■ In the middle of the night, Weixi was sucking milk, and her cat Majiang accompanied her sleepily
In fact, breastfeeding is also highly respected abroad, but there is usually a relatively complete system. When you encounter problems with breastfeeding, a dedicated breastfeeding consultant will come to help you see what the situation is—for example, yours If the breastfeeding posture is incorrect, or the child’s latching posture is incorrect, the breastfeeding consultant will help you adjust it. It is even free in many countries, but our country does not.
In addition to breastfeeding pain, I have also experienced breast blockage, my breasts become hard, and I am particularly afraid of mastitis and fever. Blocking the milk is also very painful, but I still have to let the baby suck. Her suction is strong and my nipples are also very painful.
My nipples were longer than white blisters and red blood blisters. I was so scared that I asked the doctor for help. The doctor just said, if you continue to let her suck, it will be fine if the blood bubble is broken. At that time, I thought this was really the death penalty! The nipples were supposed to be the most sensitive place on the body, but it was really terrifying to suffer such damage.
I also thought about whether to give up breastfeeding, but considering the benefits of breastmilk compared to formula feeding, I still hope to be able to breastfeed.
So after confinement, I sometimes use a breast pump so that I don’t have that pain. But it also has a downside. The secretion of human milk is controlled by the brain, so when the brain thinks that the baby doesn’t need so much milk, you don’t have that much milk.
Therefore, I must keep pumping every three hours for 25 minutes at a time. After these 25 minutes, I need to remove all the parts of the breast pump for cleaning and disinfection, and then put it in a UV disinfection cabinet for one hour. After this round of tossing, I have to start a new round of breast pumping in an hour, and there is nothing else I can do in one day.
Moreover, I said smoking every three hours. It includes not only during the day, but also at night. For example, when I go to bed at 9 o’clock in the evening, I have to get up at 12 o’clock to suck milk, wash the equipment, disinfect, and then lie in bed. Get up again in two hours.
I remember many early mornings in autumn and winter. It was very cold and sleepy, but I had to get up to suck milk halfway through sleep. It was quiet all around, I could only hear the sound of the breast pump. There is an instrument called the Saab machine, which simulates a human heart pressing machine, and it also makes a “boom-boom -” sound. They are also related to life, so every time I suck milk, I feel like I’m being done. Heart compression.
Breast pump
I feel like a machine. I sit in the living room by myself and do these things repeatedly. There are not a few lights outside the window, only the night of splashing ink. At that time I felt so lonely, I thought, I’ve been through this What day is it, this day can still live like this?
I strongly recommend all female friends who have not given birth to a set of nude photos, because you don’t know how ugly your breasts will become after giving birth.
I think my breasts used to be girls’ breasts, very beautiful, the areola is pink, and its shape is also very full, but when you start to become pregnant, your nipples begin to have pigmentation. The color will become darker, and after giving birth, your entire breast will become very soft and will droop naturally. And all of this is irreversible, these changes are so natural and so unexpected.
Maybe no one has told you about this before, maybe you could see your mother’s chest when you were young, but when you grow up youI don’t remember too much. When your friend is pregnant, you can’t say “show me your breasts”. But after you find out for yourself, you have no turning back.
This is a big shock for me. Just like the “life was killed” I mentioned earlier, after giving birth to a child, you will find that you have no turning back, you can only go one way to the dark. At some point, this feeling will make I am very broken.
The role of dad
When the baby is about two or three months old, she will be awake for a longer time, and she will often cry. I don’t have any time for myself, and there is no time for two people with my husband. At that time, I felt that my ego was squeezed to the size of a piece of paper.
I regretted it every night every night during that time-why should I have a child? Why can’t I live a free life? Why has no one told me that a child is such a creature? Why has no one told me that it is so painful to have a child?
The baby wakes up at two or three o’clock in the evening. When coaxing her to sleep, my husband may wake up for two minutes, mutter a few words, and then there is silence-he is asleep again! I knew he was going to work tomorrow morning, so I couldn’t bear to ask him to accompany me again.
Looking outside the window, I feel that there must be someone in this world who is tortured like me, forced to wake up alone in the deep night like me, but there is no connection between us.
I seem to be able to see the light flickering in a window in the distance. I wonder if there is also a mother there, who is carrying a baby very hard, but I can only look at each other. We are all on islands. Suffering loneliness and pain alone.
In the past two years, everyone has been advocating that we should refuse “widowed childcare”, which means that mothers should not be the only ones who take care of the children, and then the husband doesn’t know where to go. My husband is actually doing quite well in this aspect, but there is also a lot of room for growth.
■ Didi and Dad have looked at each other for three months
The baby woke up in the middle of the night. When I went to coax her, I hope my husband was also awake. He asked me, wife, I can’t help you, why do I have to wake up? I said, because you wake up, I will feel comfortable in my heart, and I will have a sense of companionship, not that you have to do something for me. Later, my husband would also make some faint sounds to coax the baby, such as “be good, don’t cry”. He said very safely that although I can’t get up, I must be with you.
The most rare thing about my husband is that after I gave birth to a child, he changed his job specifically and jumped from an Internet company to a state-owned enterprise. He can get home at 6 o’clock every day, so he can have more time to take care of the child.
When the child can’t speak, although she can’t respond to you, you still have to keep talking to her. Because the more language input in the early stage, the better the development of her language ability afterwards, so whether I am playing games with her or bathing her, I will talk a lot. For example, mom is rubbing your hair, your hair is black, they are very soft.
But sometimes I go to the kitchen to cook and let my husband look at the baby in the living room for a while, and I will find that there is silence outside, as if there are no living creatures in the living room, I will come out of the kitchen and let my husband talk to the baby more speak.
My husband acted very wronged. What I said to her, she wouldn’t care about me, and she didn’t understand, I played with her and she didn’t play with me.
I tried my best to persuade her, you don’t care if she can understand, you can tell him what you are doing.
Scientific parenting
The issue of parenting methods is the most prone to family conflicts. Sometimes the help of the elderly may be needed, and the traditional experience of the elderly conflicts with the scientific concepts of the young, so at this time it is often a matter of ignorance.
Recently, my husband and I have had a lot of quarrels over the question of whether the baby should eat salt after one year old.
Baby after one year old can properly add salt, but salt itself does not have any nutritional value, but salt can supplement sodium for children, but if children eat natural ingredients that have sodium, they don’t need it Take extra salt.
So I think that since my child is willing to eat and eat natural foods, and I usually feed her sodium-rich seafood, I don’t need to add salt to her. But my mother-in-law would think that the child had no taste when eating, so she had to add salt to her so that she would eat well.
My husband thinks, if adding salt is not harmful to the baby, why can’t you add salt to her?
In this way, we have disagreements.
I told my husband, because now I am taking care of the baby full-time, and I am in charge of her three meals a day. I read a lot of information and did a lot of homework. In the end, I should say whether to add or not. Count.
My husband thinks that I admit death in the aspect of parenting, and some are too true, and even say something that the older generation said, “Like our generation, we all started to eat salt very early. Aren’t we good too? ?”
I will be very angry after hearing such a counterargument. Because within the scope of my cognition, I want to give my child the most nutritious and scientific way of parenting as much as possible. This has consumed a lot of time for me to learn. Now I have to spend a lot of energy to synchronize this knowledge to my husband, he It’s fine if I don’t read parenting books. I gave him my homework to copy, and he came to refute me.
So, on many other parenting issues later on, if my husband raises an opinion, I will tell him, You tell me the source of the opinion, not for granted, let’s debate rationally. Whether it is the previous job or the job of “full-time mother”, I am a very serious person, and I will treat it with a very strict attitude.
■ Ten months of Didi’s outing
For me, a full-time mother is not only an identity, it is also a profession. I now regard parenting as my professional field. I have learned a lot of relevant professional knowledge, so I will follow me very seriously Husband said, don’t be with meChallenge me in my professional field, unless you have the same theoretical background as me.
So he looked for a few articles later, which said that it is okay to eat salt after a child is one year old. Although the articles he shared were slaps me in the face, I was still very happy because he started looking for references. Yes, it means he is involved in this matter.
In many issues of parenting, the key is not who is right or who is wrong, but that both parties must seriously participate.
In the beginning, I was very superstitious about childcare. I hoped that my children would be raised according to the model introduced in the book, but later I found that the individual children are very different and the state of each stage is different, so I follow the book The requirements cannot be met. Therefore, in some matters, I will choose to go with the flow and let myself go appropriately.
Baoma’s voice diary
For those without parenting experience, it may be difficult to imagine how a full-time mother spends a day. So this time in addition to the interview, we also asked Weixi to record some voice diaries with his mobile phone. From the following voices, you can vividly feel a day of a mother.
8:00
When the baby wakes up, my day begins. I will change her clothes, change her diapers, brush her teeth, and then start eating breakfast.
10:00
It’s almost 10 o’clock after breakfast, and then the baby wants to pull papa. When she finished pulling, I packed her up, put on clothes for going out, and took her out for a walk in the community.
This is a social moment with other babies and parents. Everyone talks about similar topics. How old is the baby? What can I eat now? Can you speak? Then praise this baby for good-looking, and praise that baby for walking well. But goodAnyhow, someone can have a complete conversation.
12:00
When I come back from the sun, I will put the baby to sleep first. She will probably take a lunch break for an hour and a half. As soon as she falls asleep, I rush into the kitchen to cook for her. In terms of her eating, I will be more attentive and make a lot of tricks for her, such as rice balls and steamed food, which change every day so that she will be more interested in eating.
When she wakes up, I will serve her to eat. Because I’m now cultivating her to eat by herself, she will grab it or throw it everywhere, so when she finishes eating, I will not only clean up the “disaster scene” she created, but also help her clean up.
15:30
In the afternoon I will accompany her to read a book and watch her crawl at home. She might fall, she might stretch her hands into the socket, and she might throw the glass on the ground. I need to stare at her with good eyes, because I don’t know what demon she will be.
18:00
Thank God, her father is back at this time. Dad started taking her, and I started cooking her dinner.
19:00
Feed the baby to eat, take a bath, and drink milk.
21:00
She is finally sleeping!
24:00
She woke up again, I need to hug her, coax her, and wait quietly for her to fall asleep again. If she is lucky, she will continue to sleep until 8 am the next morning.
But a child’s sleep is very unstable. She may wake up twice or four times at night. You can never predict whether it will be stormy or calm tonight.
Return to the workplace
I have worked for 30 to 40 years in my life, and I have only accompanied my children to grow up for a few years, so I do not regret quitting my job to take care of my children. But there will still be moments when I see the work status shared by my former colleagues in the circle of friends, I will feelArray lost. However, I know that when my child is two or three years old and can go to kindergarten, I will definitely choose to return to the workplace to find my own social value.
In fact, since I resigned, I have been thinking about my future career development. During this year, I was also reviewing my work experience, thinking about the possibilities that belonged to me.
■ Weixi likes photography and is also learning professional knowledge of photography during parenting
From a personal level, I feel that raising children is a great benefit to me, and my personality has changed a lot. Before giving birth, I was not an emotionally stable person, but after I gave birth, my character has improved a lot, because I know that emotional stability of parents is particularly important for children.
I’m studying psychology. I still remember that our teacher told me an extreme example: if you have to hit your child, it’s better to just let Ta fear every day and don’t know when he will be hit. Tell him clearly what day of the week you will hit him. For children, facing an emotionally unstable adult is a very anxious and terrifying thing.
I realize that my emotions are not very stable. In fact, it is not only in parenting, but also in previous work. In the final analysis, this is my own problem, not a problem caused by my child, so I may need to do More work makes me feel more stable.
Actually, raising children is another kind of workplace for me. A full-time mother is also a job. It has exercised many of my abilities, such as the ability to collect information and the ability to practice. It also improved my self-confidence, which are also very important qualities in my future work.
This article is from WeChat official account:Story FM (ID: story_fm), Narrator: Weixi, Anchor: @寇爱哲, Producer: Liu Dou, Text Arrangement: Liu Yi, Liu Dou, Operation: Yichen