Sarah Mayhew Craddock is a mum about town

Being ‘good enough’ has never been on my agenda. If a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing properly, surely?

So parenthood comes as bit of a shock to the system.

There are books, blogs, websites, apps, relatives, healthcare professionals, friends, magazines, neighbours, colleagues, random women with dirty fingernails in Tesco, drunk men on the street (I live near the Cowley Road) all happy to share their words of perceived wisdom, yet all of them are singing, at deafening decibels, from different hymn sheets.

The first few months of parenthood are an emotional minefield. My husband jokes that sleep deprivation has been successfully employed in Chinese torture for centuries. There’s no doubt about it, it’s tough to perform on little sleep.

Throw in racing hormones (for the mums, at least), a body that’s often in tatters (mums again), and all of those opposing opinions, and you haven’t got a cat in hell’s chance of passing an exam on parenthood.

Yet there you are, alone with your thoughts at 03:27, desperately trying to meet every need and make sense of every sound.

Society might have you believe that to be a good mother is to be perfect and never make any mistakes, but my health visitor has advised me otherwise. She reckons there’s more merit in being a Good Enough Mum, and to my relief this seems to be a theory shared by many.

You see, the trouble with performing perfectly as a mother (I’m envisaging a slightly more maternal Mary Poppins), is that time doesn’t stand still as we rear our young; bills still need to be paid, dishes done, clothes washed, food cooked, and dust blown off surfaces. Besides, we don’t live in a perfect world, so probably not a bad idea to prepare the next generation with a smattering of imperfection from the start.

And so we sleep-deprived sensitive souls try our best, every minute, of every hour, of every day. It’s hard work, and we find ourselves fumbling around, feeling our way in the dark, lacking confidence, and doubting our every decision. We haven’t done any of this parenting stuff before – no walking the course, no dress-rehearsals, no practice papers. So we seek advice, we listen, and we learn at a rate of knots never previously encountered. Some of the pearls that are passed on are truly helpful and gratefully received; unfortunately, however, we find ourselves on the receiving end of a lot of inappropriate, unhelpful, hurtful grains of sand as well. I look around at my friends (who all seem pretty perfect in the mothering stakes to me), and ask them if they’ve been on the receiving end of any inappropriate, unhelpful, or hurtful ‘help’ – the stories came gushing in. Feeding came high on the list, complete strangers making and sharing judgements on how one ought to feed one’s baby generally isn’t welcomed. And imagine how a Good Enough Mum felt when one mother-in-law remarked: “Isn’t it a shame we can’t get your breast milk tested to make sure it’s good enough.” Another mother-in-law told her daughter-in-law that she hadn’t breastfed her children because she thought it was “disgusting” and that her midwife had told her that it’s the women with horrible nipples who are always the ones that want to breastfeed.

Thank goodness for the sense and incredible support offered by the lactation consultants at Baby Cafes, La Leche League and the National Breastfeeding Helpline. That said, other friends have been on the receiving end of ignorant comments about formula feeding from strangers and Boastful Breastfeeders.

One friend said that she was still in hospital having given birth when a relative commented that she had gained a lot of weight during pregnancy. Another friend’s relative remarked: “Looks like you've got another one in there.” How can such comments ever be perceived as being helpful?

Other people offend with an assumption on the baby’s gender struggling with the idea that baby girls can be dressed in a colour other than pink, and baby boys can be dressed in a colour other than blue. How about offering, “What a beautiful baby” and stopping there?

Then there are those who, within seconds, claim to know your baby better than you do, remarking “he/she’s too hot/too cold/got wind/got colic/tired/hungry/thirsty ad infinitum. Or even worse, “Give her/him here, I’ll make it better!”

On behalf of all of the Good Enough Mums out there might I gently suggest that you make yourselves helpful by being supportive; respecting parents for making the decisions that they have undoubtedly agonised over.

Remember that everyone’s circumstances are different, and that you could make yourself very helpful by making a cup of tea, washing up after yourself, and just listening.

In short, if you are to presume anything, presume that even a Good Enough Mum knows what’s best for her baby, bow down to that fact, and butt out.

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