Our early childhood centre has signed us up with a parents group that will meet weekly for the next month or so (and longer if the group wants to continue), and Chris and I attended our first session today. It was generally a “getting to know each other session”. The first thing that I want to report is that we are evidently hugely lucky when it comes to the sleeping habits of our baby. One of the mothers reported that her baby had been awake from 7pm until 7am one night, and another said that she’d just had her first night of sleeping for 4 hours in a row since her baby was born. Chris and I sat there shiftily, not wanting to admit that Rose has been sleeping for 4-5 hour stretches every night for the last couple of weeks, fearing that someone would want to scratch our eyes out. (I privately thought that maybe we have such a good sleeping baby as a consolation prize for my pain and hardship with breastfeeding. And then I reminded myself that life is not a karmic balance sheet, as I am sometimes prone to think. See what kind of internal dialogue I have to put up with?)
Anyway, I’m looking forward to having this group, and I hope that we all get along and want to keep meeting up after the month is up. I sure could use some contact with other women going through this experience. It would be nice to be able to “baby talk” with impunity.
One last thing – I have to mention that Chris was the only fella to attend this group – the rest were women. Some even admitted that their partners were still off work, waiting in the car outside. I was a little amazed at that.
I confess that I never attended parent’s group, and I still hate the occasional get-togethers where dads are obliged to attend. I find myself in miserable “So, what do you drive” conversations with other blokes who don’t want to be there either. The women all find it great, but.