By Sara Rosenquist
When I was pregnant, if anyone had told me that I had expectations about what my baby would look like, I would have said, “Bah, humbug! All white babies look alike.” Then Emily was born, and I found myself surprised. Well, guess what? It’s impossible to be surprised or disappointed unless one has expectations—so, clearly I had expectations. I just didn’t know that I had expectations, and I didn’t know what they were. But when I held my baby with her full head of hair and found myself surprised, that’s when I knew that the expectations had been there all along. I had expected her to look like my baby pictures—bald as bald can be. And the fact that I had expectations also came as a shock. Many of us try to avoid having expectations—at least as far as we’re conscious of. But expectations are often held outside of awareness, and they are the cause of many rude surprises. As you might imagine, having expectations, especially unacknowledged ones, can be the ionic charge that sets the storm clouds of postpartum depression roiling (Cowan et al. 1985; Lawrence, Nylen, and Cobb 2007; Lawrence et al. 2008).
If you’re still pregnant, ask yourself and your partner what you do expect. Try to be courageous enough to acknowledge your expectations, even if they seem outsized or unrealistic. Start talking about your expectations, trying as best you can to identify these hidden traps before the big event. If Scooter has already arrived, then start by listing all the little ways you’ve started to notice feeling surprised (or disappointed). Pull out your baby books and old photos if you have them and jot down some of the family stories you’ve heard about your babyhood. Were you laid-back or high-strung? Did you lie in an incubator for weeks or months before coming home? Were you born in another country and adopted? Collect as many stories as you can—whether you know it or not, some of these stories will probably inform your unconscious expectations. Next, take a look around you at your friends and family, the ones who have small kids. Reminisce about what you like and dislike about their parenting. Start asking the parents you know about their surprises and disappointments. You might even go to www.surveymonkey.com, make up a questionnaire with some of your questions, and e-mail it to the people in your circle of acquaintances.
Have fun sorting though all of this data and notice what comes up inside of you—assumptions about what causes what, for example, that lead you to imagine that if you just don’t do a specific thing, then you won’t have to deal with a certain unpleasant consequence. Above all, have compassion for yourself. “Perhaps underlying the capacity for surprise is a sense of humility. Surprise requires that one admit to not knowing everything and not thinking of every possible contingency—in short, to being human. Actively accommodating life experiences requires an admission of one’s own vulnerability, of the inadequacy of one’s preexisting meaning structures in the face of the challenges of reality, and of one’s apparent smallness in the grand scheme of life” (King and Hicks 2007, 632). Life doesn’t come with guarantees, and neither do babies. How do you cope with surprises? What about disappointments? How does your partner? Knowing your responses to life’s curveballs will help you anticipate and create a plan for coping with the unexpected. As someone who’s been there, I can tell you that a combination of structure and flexibility will be your greatest asset in the months ahead. Training yourself to look for the silver lining will also be important. The Spanish saying “No hay mal que por bien no venga” is roughly equivalent to the saying that every cloud has a silver lining—start noticing and collecting your own silver-lining stories.
Excerpted with permission by New Harbinger Publications, Inc. from After the Stork: The Couple's Guide to Preventing and Overcoming Postpartum Depression by Sara Rosenquist.
Image: Lieselot De Wulf, stock.xchng
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