Overthinking At 2am

Written by Meghan Brook for her blog, Me, Amelia and Diabetes.

You can follow her on Instagram and Twitter!

It’s 2am *yawn*, Amelia and James are both sound asleep and I am wide awake… thank you Diabetes/winter cold. So when you can’t sleep and are bored of Facebook, twitter and instagram then the only thing left to do is blog.

I have a tendency to wake up during the middle of the night a lot. Always have done and probably always will… when I do, I always find myself overthinking things, and since having Amelia I’ve found I overthink things a lot more.

Tonight I worked out why; judgement.

It is so easy to judge others and having spent a lot of my life in hospital having my sugar levels looked and my life questioned I thought it was something I was used to.

Then I got pregnant and resembled a whale, and had been prewarned by the hospital that my baby was growing big. When this was mentioned to most people (if they had asked) it was a common response for people to reply that diabetics have big babies. This made me want to burst into tears because I had done everything to control my sugar levels and keep them in range. Although I can happily say Amelia’s size apparently wasn’t anything to do with my Diabetes control, I also know people didn’t mean anything by associating Amelia’s size with my Diabetes but it made me feel guilty and like I had failed as a Mum already and Amelia wasn’t even born yet.

Before having Amelia, me and James discussed how we would approached people offering advice and that although we really appreciate it, parenting to us is a learning curve and yes we will make mistakes (we are human after all) but it’s something we felt we want to chuck ourselves into.

What I didn’t realise is there is a difference between advice and opinions. Also that being a ‘first time mum’ would make me feel so small at times.

For example; the other day I nipped to the shop with Amelia. It’s cold so I made sure she had hats and mittens on. Her mittens never stay on long so I wasn’t surprised when someone in the shop kindly pointed out to me she wasn’t wearing them.

Although I’m not sure kindly is the right word. Maybe informed is better, she informed me that MY child wasn’t wearing gloves (she was sound asleep in her car seat with layers of clothing on and a blanket over her minus the mittens I had put on her earlier – they were under the blanket), she then proceeded to touch my face with her cold hands and explain to me how cold it was outside and that Amelia should be wearing gloves. After this wonderful advice she asked if Amelia was my first child!

Thinking back on it I should of told her where to go, instead I felt guilty and ashamed. Most of all I felt judged and looked down upon. I felt like the question about being a first time Mum was actually an insult.

Why is it acceptable to make people feel this way though? Having a baby is difficult enough without people pointing out when they think you are doing something wrong. Anyone who knows Amelia will know she’s pretty chilled out and happy… so I must be doing something right.

As soon as you get pregnant it’s ‘do this’ ‘do that’ and ‘don’t do that’. And don’t even get me started on the breast feeding vs bottle feeding debate. It is an unnecessary debate because no matter what someone does it doesn’t change the fact they are an amazing mum/dad.

I think everyone can be judgemental and have opinions and there is nothing wrong with that in itself. I just feel maybe we should keep those judgements/opinions to ourselves at times. If people want advice they will ask for it. Instead of giving someone an opinion why not tell them how great they are doing instead.

Because one thing having diabetes has taught me is that life isn’t easy but every day you achieve something (no matter how small that achieve may be) and that in itself is amazing.

I am starting to ramble which is always a sign I should stop writing. Hopefully I haven’t contradicted myself with this blog.