Have a new baby? You better add self-care to that to-do list! Don’t forget your own needs, they say, while you are looking after your new baby. Love getting your nails done? Add that to your to-do list for the week. Just need some sleep? Well, just sleep while the baby sleeps! (and then do the laundry when the baby does the laundry).

This is absurd. Not the self-care part, of course! I love the self-care part. The fact that new parents are being asked to ADD it to the to-do list. Stressed and overwhelmed from all the endless things that need doing? Why not take a bath to relax once you’ve got everything done? What a good idea, for those times you have 25 hours in a day, instead of the usual 24. Where does self-care inevitably end up? On the bottom of the list, of course. And what is the result of that? A longer list, no self-care, AND some extra guilt and an enhanced feeling of failing. Splendid.

What we need to do for our new parents is take things OFF the to-do list. I know it’s radical, but if someone else is putting a wash on and doing the dishes, maybe the new parent will have the freedom and space to take a nap. Or hop in the bath. Better yet, if someone else has already run the bath for them, it’s a darn sight more likely they’ll hop in than swapping it in for some of the precious two hour sleep they might get when the baby first goes down at night.

You might be thinking, yeah great idea, but it’s just not the reality of having a new baby! And you would be right, but only in the context of our peculiar culture in this particular moment of history.

Historically there have always been more adults around a new family to support them in the early days after a baby is born. Even in our Western culture, until about 200 years ago (since the Industrial Revolution nuclear families often move away from their family of origin for work). Even in 2019 we are the odd ones out.  At this very moment across India, China, South America, and even Europe (hello Holland), new mothers are receiving intensive support. Someone is cooking them special food, maybe giving them daily massages (India), and taking over the chores the new mother would normally do.

What could the new mother possibly do with all this spare time? Well, rest to recover from the dinner plate-sized internal wound that giving birth creates, learn to breastfeed THIS baby (because each one is different), and bond. Incidentally the nature of that bond, which psychology we call Attachment Theory, provides the new baby with a blueprint for relating and relationships for the rest of their life. We are talking about some pretty important tasks this new parent has already. Let’s make sure we are taking everything else off the to-do list, not adding something else.