Saturday, February 22, 2014

Day 4 - where is the parenting manual



I suppose all new parents have this same experience, that first day leaving the Hospital with the baby, it has been four months since Cesar’s birth, but I still have to express this point.

So we drove to the hospital, Cesar was born about 5 hours later, it was a long and tiring night, all kinds of moments popped up that one is faced with, moments like, is the baby Ok, is the mother Ok, is everything going well, what’s happening moments, and then there is the moment it’s all over and the baby is here.

Now more blogs will come on those three days in Hospital, for now I want to share this point, that day we left the hospital.

The first three days of having a baby is easy, because it’s happening in the hospital, there are many hands helping, there are many people that know what to do – (sort of, a blog in its own), and there are a lot of support around, the facilities and the equipment for anything that might go wrong.

So for three days the mother is lying in bed resting, the baby comes and goes as the nurses see fit, I visit as much as possible and so do others, it’s all a nice and good experience for most of the parts.

The last day, I go to the hospital, I tell the nurses I am here to pick up my wife and our baby, they ask me, did the doctor say that the baby and your wife can be released, and yes the doctor has, so I go to my wife and she says that there still needs to be a few checks done.

So I wait, the nurses come in and out checking stuff, the doctors come in and do checks, I start packing things up and getting everything in bags.

The last doctor says, you are ready to go – I look at her, I say ok thank you, and I look at Leila and I say, are you ready, she says yes – a nurse arrives and she says that she will guide us out; she will carry the baby, that’s a policy.

So we start walking, we have everything of ours and now an extra human coming with us, home, as we exit the hospital and we get to the car, the nurse hands over the baby, I start assembling the baby seat and getting the settings ready, the nurse is just standing there watching, I am struggling, and then the nurse left after handing the baby over to Leila.

So now it was just me and Leila and the baby, I suddenly had a realization, its real, and the nurse just left us, she did not hand over a manual or anything, lol.

She did not even give us tips or advice, even the entire time we were in the hospital, no one told us anything, no one gave us advice on how to be parents, on how to raise a baby, no one told us anything, and it’s not like we learned anything in the three days of being in the hospital, because the nurses were doing everything and not telling us a thing.

This created the illusion that it would be easy, that it’s all smooth going. But I at least knew I can do this, so that wasn’t a deciding factor in my approach, it was just a shock; I had a couple of realizations in that one moment.

These realizations were a reality kick in the face, because this is what everyone goes through, and this is what Babies/new-born humans are left with, they are left with parents that does not know shit about being parents or raising a child, they are left in the hands of strangers actually, even if it is the baby’s parents, the baby does not know them, the doctors does not know them, so how can a baby just be left like that into the hands of two humans that is now going to raise their child on luck and hope.

In all the time we were in the hospital, no one asked us, do you know what to do as new parent’s, are you ready to be new parents, do you need any advice or tips on being new parents, do you know how to handle a Baby, do you know what to do if this or that happens, NO, nothing like that took place, it was all just left to be.

Obviously the Hospital and everyone working in it believe that the people in there giving birth planned it, or have been making plans or educated themselves to be parents, which isn’t the case I would say 90% of the time - what is educating self on being an actual parent – there is no such book, it’s all a pick and choose a style, which isn’t reliable, and even if one relies on it it’s all just lies yet parenthood is an agreement, so parenting has to include the parents having an effective communication/relationship first.

What I saw and experienced at the hospital according to my standards of living the principle of doing what’s best for all life, I cannot accept and allow this, this isn’t best for the parents and for the babies/children/adults to be, that will one day run this world, we need a new system, it all starts at home, with the families, with the new born humans and what’s then happens in the future, and so the future of earth.

I have opened up in this blog many points to write on and to expose the problems we face as humanity within parenting itself, and the system’s ineffectiveness – which I as a new father am facing and have faced and still facing. From being a parent to being a working man and a partner.

The point of self-responsibility must be understood, we cannot wait till the system changes, because we are the system, we must change first -





2 comments:

  1. cool Gian, thanks for sharing this, i can't even begin to imagine how it must be/can be with a new life on board! cool that support is here!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks Gian, This is the same I experienced 40 years ago, you are the first who says the truth, because everybody is ashamed to admit this.

    ReplyDelete