Having a Baby Doesn’t Mean You Have to be Under House Arrest
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Photo Credit: Cultura/Judith Wagner Fotografie/Getty Images
I hear pregnant women say over and over again that they'll be housebound once their new baby arrives. This was one of my biggest fears when I had my first baby. I had heard it so much that when we left the hospital, we didn't even go straight home because I was dreading it. Instead we went to my parents' house for lunch, and when we left there I was only slightly more settled about heading home. It wasn't that I was scared to be with my baby or that I disliked my house. It was simply that I didn't want to feel like I had to stay home all the time just because I had a new baby. And what I found was that despite popular beliefs, it is not only possible to leave the house regularly with an infant, but it can also be really good for both the parents and the baby.
It's Just as Easy to Sit at Someone Else's House as Your Own
Now mind you I wasn't going nuts the first few weeks of his life. In fact I wasn't even driving so I was mostly limited to my own neighborhood for the first two weeks, but every day I put the baby in the stroller and went out for a walk, even if it was a slow and short one because I was in pain from the episiotomy. I was lucky in that my parents and several other friends lived very close by so I would stop in for a visit at someone else's house for a change of scenery.
Many people would say that I'm crazy, but we even showed up at a going away party at a friends' house about 45 minutes away when our son was only three days old. I knew we would know almost everyone there and that the house was large enough that I could sneak away into a bedroom with the baby if need be. It was just as easy to sit at a friend's home as it was to sit at my home, except that it was better for my mental health to have social interaction.
We weren't the very first of our friends to have a baby, but there weren't too many others. However, that didn't stop us from attending gatherings either. If there was a beach party, barbecue, or our weekly dinner club, we brought the baby with us. That's not to say we brought him everywhere. There were times when it was ok and other times when it wasn't appropriate and we stayed home or got a sitter. But we weren't sitting at home every weekend saying, "No, we have to stay home because we have a baby."
Benefits Go Beyond Mental Health
Besides it being good for my own mental health, I also think that I did my child (eventually children) a favor. It's important to have children learn how to act around adults and at certain events and the more you expose them to that situation, the more accustomed to it they will become and it won't be such a burden on them like it is when it's only a rare occasion they have to act that way.
In addition to French women not getting fat, it appears they are also better parents than we Americans and after reading an excerpt from Pamela Druckerman's Bringing Up Bébé: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting in the Wall Street Journal last night, I realized that this is one thing that I apparently have done right as a parent. One of the things she touches on is that French parents don't make their child the center of attention 100 percent of the time like Americans tend to do. The children also have to assimilate to the parents' lives and as a result they are better behaved.
I'm not saying that my kids behave perfectly all the time either at home or in public (a quick glimpse at most of my posts makes that clear), but they aren't overwhelmed by walking into a room where there aren't any other kids, they love a good dinner party, and I rarely worry about how they'll behave when we're heading to a social function.
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