Mar
2012
Not without my mummies
Before I gave birth to my twins, I had only heard a few passing comments about mothers’ groups from a close friend who had a baby. Apart from that, I had no idea what they actually were, what actually happened when they met or how you joined.
When I was discharged from hospital, I was told that a nurse from my local clinic would come and visit me at home in the first few days. When she came, she told me about the local clinic. About how you can weigh your baby and then there was a group talk afterwards. You could choose to stay for it if you wished. I was unsure if I would stay. After all, I had two babies and I knew it was very unlikely there would be another mother of twins in the group. I knew I could learn a lot by listening to the questions the other mums had and the answers from the clinic nurse when it came to babies in general, although I wasn’t sure how I would go relating to the mothers of single babies. How could they understand what I was going through? I would come across so many different obstacles than they would. There were things that I just had to do differently to them. Also apart from that, I didn’t want to be the one who always had it harder or have it look like I thought their problems weren’t as big as mine. Anyway, having a baby and being a new mum is the hardest job there is, whether you have one baby or five. There is still so much you are unsure about, so much to learn, so much to worry about and so many areas where you can think you are not doing it right or well.
Because I had two babies I was told I could bring a helper with me so my mum came along. This did make it that much easier for me to face all these strangers. We sat in a circle and went around the room introducing ourselves and our babies and then asked any questions we had.
Straight away I felt a rapport with most of the mums. As the hour ticked by I realised that they were going through so many of the same issues as I was. I felt a connection with them. As the weeks went by we started to become closer and we began meeting outside of the clinic for coffee. It was such a wonderful thing to be able to meet up and talk about how things were going and to bounce questions off each other. And although I thought I would be the odd one out because I had twins, they all treated me just the same as everyone else. They accepted me and I felt like part of the group.
From these initial meet ups we have created something amazing. Something that has been instrumental to my sanity, success, and developement as a mother. We created a private facebook group which grew in numbers over the following months. We have multiple meet ups every week catering for everyone’s different schedules and most weeks there was at least one option that we were able to attend.
Out of this we have also created a book club and a super slimmers group to help each other achieve our health goals.
My mummies, as I call them, have been there for each other everyday for the past year. At whatever time of day or night there is usually someone there on the other end of the facebook post to ask advice, talk to, or even whinge to if things were hard.
I know my first year as a mother would not have been the same without them. I have made some amazing friends and our babies have all shared an amazing first year of life with each other.
I hope we stay friends for life and that our babies continue to grow up together.
I cant recommend it highly enough to any new mums or mothers to be out there. It may be scary and a little awkward at the start but the amount of support, reassurance and advice that you will get, as well as a general understanding of what you are going through makes it so worth the effort it takes to get out the front door in those early weeks (and even in the later weeks)!!
I love my mummies! I hope you have as wonderful a group of ladies as I have.
Ang
Kaz
March 29, 2012 at 2:18 am (421 days ago)This made me teary
x
Carole
July 30, 2012 at 5:54 am (297 days ago)Thank you so much for following Carole’s Chatter. I am going to follow you too now. Have a good one.
Kaz
July 30, 2012 at 8:16 am (297 days ago)Thanks Carole. I love finding great new blogs to follow.