One of the many joys of being a Nappy Lady advisor is the buzz you feel at someone else’s excitement that they are about to have a baby. A very close bond is formed between many advisors and their advisees as a result.
Although often well outside our remit, we all get asked about breast feeding, potty training, discipline, composting, recycling etc etc. One of our most successful advisors is in fact not a young mum at all, but is a granny. One of the reasons she is so popular, I believe, is because she is effectively a surrogate mother for some of her advisees, on all sorts of parenting topics.
And of course we learn from our co-advisors as well. If I’m asked about environmental issues, I know it’s Maggie I need to talk to. Though if it comes to composting or raising chickens, there are a number of possibilities (chicken raising seems to be a secondary Nappy Lady passion!).
Of course, we’re also among the first to hear when our advisees have had their babies, and we’re always so pleased to hear about every success. Very often, the full birth story is passed on to us, sometimes to be added to the birth stories on the site. We’re all for spreading the joy of childbirth, to counteract the stories of birthing misery that so many mums seem to like to pass on to the newly pregnant. Having a baby is a natural thing, not a medical emergency!
That’s among the best stuff about being a Nappy Lady advisor. We love to feel part of the community of mums, helping them as they start out on a path we’ve all been lost on before.
Amongst the worst, though, is the dark side of advising, when we feel so helpless.
When mums-to-be get pregnant, filling in one of our advice questionnaires is often one of the first pregnancy decisions they make. We do, however, try to discourage them from doing it too early. When it’s your first time pregnant, you don’t realise that in fact a large proportion of pregnancies miscarry before 12 weeks. You may know it rationally, but appreciating it emotionally as well is something entirely different.
That’s something else we have a lot of experience of on the team. I’ve only had one miscarriage myself, but we have advisors who have had a number of miscarriages, one after the other. We know what it feels like, physically and emotionally, and if we could protect our advisees from it, we really would. It is so hard to try to keep someone’s expectations manageable, without frightening them.
Hence why we suggest you don’t ask us for advice until you are at least 12 weeks pregnant, and preferably more. Even then, it is not a given that all will go to plan, and we have had to experience (second hand, for the most part) the huge trauma of late miscarriages, stillbirths and neo natal death. Thankfully, these are all very rare nowadays, but they do still happen, sadly.
This, therefore, is the dark side of advising. Every time you connect with your advisee as a person and go through the joy of pregnancy, childbirth and child-raising with them, you also have to go through the bad stuff with them, if and when it happens. We as a team grieve when it happens, because it feels like it has happened to all of us.
It’s a high emotional price to pay for doing your job, but it’s a price worth paying. Especially when we get sent those pictures of adorable little newborns to drool over. No wonder half the team are permanently broody! Maybe that’s why they are all into chicken-rearing, as some form of displacement activity??!
