In that email, you can talk about the ways they can help. It’s a pain in the neck if a guest constantly asks, ‘what can I do?’ The best guests are the ones that never need to ask. You can help by providing a list now: ‘If you are ever stuck for ways you can help, each day there will be a few kitchen jobs written out on a note on the fridge. Folding laundry is always welcome. Wiping surfaces and bathrooms. No one ever needs to ask to empty the dishwasher or empty a sink’.
If you are going to stay at someone else’s house, you can write a note too that explains how your day will go. Just because you are the guest and someone else is the host, it doesn’t mean your role as a parent and your ability to have control over how you parent is changed in the slightest. Make sure you and your partner are on the same page. If your baby finds it unsettling to be held by lots of people (and many have very little experience of being held by strangers), make it clear that once baby is in the sling that’s a sign to everyone that he’s sticking with you.
It all sounds really bossy, doesn’t it? Why not? You are the boss when it comes to your own parenting.
The guidelines you lay down now about your ability to call the shots will be with you for the next two decades. If you open a conversation now as to ‘why you are still feeding him’, you can expect a dozen more conversations about other parenting decisions down the line. You don’t have to have conversations about anything that you don’t feel the need to justify. Simply opening some debates implies there are two equally valid points of view and you have to make your case and that’s not true for many things.
Even the loveliest, kindest, most supportive family member in the world may think that they are helping by trying to challenge you on a parenting decision you really don’t welcome a challenge on. Of course, we may fear comments and challenges that may never come. Just as we sometimes find the fear of breastfeeding in public is worse than the reality, where no one bats an eyelid and all you get are warm smiles. It might be that the fear of comments is what hangs over you – in the weeks prior to getting together and even in the actual days themselves. Taking control may help you nip it all in the bud.
If you won’t be with family, the video call may be your only contact. It doesn’t have to be an intense long ‘trying to squeeze the whole of Christmas into the slot allowed by your free Zoom account’.
Is it really fun to open presents ‘with’ someone over a video call? What can work well is looking at photos and video clips together. Babies aren’t always in the mood when the video call comes around. Just as you sometimes spend Christmas sitting next to someone and looking through photos together, you can reproduce that experience with some video footage. Perhaps show a previously recorded clip of a present being opened rather than try to capture it live. Make a little montage or slide show and talk it through. It can help structure a conversation and babies are notoriously bad at family quizzes.
I hope your Christmas is filled with people bringing you food, cleaning up after themselves and showing kindness. This has been a weird year and Christmas needs to be about rest and togetherness, in the best way we can. It doesn’t have to meet all our dreams. We don’t have to cram in all the conversations. It doesn’t have to be everything to everybody. You don’t have to present a vision of the perfect new family who copes with everything and has all the answers. Be the parent you want to be and encourage the people who love you to come along for the ride.
After a career as a Deputy Headteacher in central London, Emma initially trained with UK charity Association of Breastfeeding Mothers, qualifying as a breastfeeding counsellor with them in 2007. She qualified as a Board Certified Lactation Consultant (IBCLC) in 2011. She recertified in 2016 and continues to offer voluntary support at groups across West Haringey and volunteers on the National Breastfeeding Helpline and ABM national helpline alongside her private lactation consultant work. You can find her on Instagram and on Twitter as @makesmilk. Her book, “You’ve Got It In You: a positive guide to breastfeeding” can be found on Amazon and from other retailers.
