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Funny, for all the time we spend raising kids, we don’t really spend a lot of time preparing for the job!  Of course, if we all waited until we were really ready to have kids, there wouldn’t be very many born.  But I do find it curious that when we have months to plan, prepare and dream about who we want to be as parents, we tend to spend an inordinate amount of time focusing on getting a baby, rather than what it’s going to be like to have a baby.

A few months after my first child was born, a girlfriend and I decided to write a book about the post-partum experience with the working title, “What You DIDN’T EXPECT When You Were Expecting!” Each of us, for very different reasons, had been extremely challenged in the first months of parenthood.  We were floored – why didn’t anyone tell us it was going to be so damn hard?  OK, so we might not have believed it, but at least they could have tried to warn us! 

Where were those idyllic moments shown in the Kodak commercials, we wondered?  What new mother in her right mind would be caught in a flowing white nightgown?  Let’s be serious – the human secretions alone would be a deterrent, but really, who was going to do that laundry? I could go on ad nauseam on this topic – it really burned me that I was so ill-prepared. But I think it was best summed up by an older woman we interviewed for the book, who said, “Honey, the rest of your life is a postpartum experience!” 

Truer words have rarely been spoken.

It seems like our culture sets us up for difficulty in the early postpartum months.  I’m not denying for a minute that hormones and chemicals have their hand in the mess – talk about a roller-coaster ride that doesn’t seem to end. Here’s a tip: beware, especially, day five for hormonal chaos, and day 15 for the double whammy of sleep-deprivation and all the help disappearing!  But it’s only exacerbated by the excessive attention we’ve placed on every micro-transition that has happened over the previous number of months.

Whether we obsess about pregnancy, surrogacy, delivery or adoption, we tend to get so focused on “the acquisition process” that we forget to focus on the main event:  it is really about becoming parents! The relatively unexpected and often completely overwhelming upheaval that happens after we take on this enormous new responsibility completely throws us for a loop.

When we talk about  “postpartum” depression, we’re still putting the emphasis on the pregnancy.  We should shift our focus from the fourth trimester, to the first phase of parenthood.  Better yet, wouldn’t it be amazing to actually use pregnancy – or the adoption or surrogate process – as a planning ground for parenthood?

When I got pregnant with my second child, I began teaching pregnancy yoga classes for women, and labor and delivery classes for couples. My job was to help pregnant women and their partners prepare for and set expectations about the birth experience, using yoga to bring relaxation and health to the delivery. I became immersed in the three trimesters of pre-parenthood.

But as a seasoned veteran of postpartum shock, I must admit that I tried to steer the conversation, whenever possible, to what to expect after the baby was born. I knew all too well that the time spent preparing for an ideal birth was incomplete without equal importance placed on preparing for postpartum life and the beginning of parenthood.  So I tried to teach budding parents to use pregnancy, labor and delivery as a training ground for parenthood.

Now, after three kids of my own, and watching hundreds of new mothers and their partners fumble and find their way through the early maze of parenthood, here’s what I know is useful advice for all stages of parenthood, both before and after the baby arrives at home:

1.   Expect the unexpected and be prepared for anything.

2.  You can’t control what happens, you can only control how you respond to what happens.

3.   Learn to ask for help and support, and actually accept it.

4.   Let your partner BE a partner – get over the ‘super-woman’ myth that you have to do everything yourself.  If there is no partner, find an ally!

5.   Trust your instincts.

6.   Create and join community wherever it presents itself.  Loneliness and isolation start a vicious cycle.

7.   Practice taking care of yourself.

8.   At all costs, maintain your sense of humor (choose laughter instead of tears.)

These days, when a loved one is expecting a baby, I always arrange for a “Blues Box” for the mother-to-be. In it, I get the women who love her to place little, wrapped gifts for the mother, not the baby.  When the new mother is feeling low, she can go to that box, and find a message that reminds her that her needs matter, too.  It’s simple, but it works as an antidote to “the baby blues.”

As you may have discerned, “two mothers writing” became two mothers living, and we never completed the “What you Didn’t Expect” project.  But the experience was so intense that now, five kids between us and nearly 17 years later, we still could write that book.  

Who knows…maybe when my youngest goes to college, we still might.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus is a Life, Leadership and Parenting Coach and the founder of Touchstone Coaching and Impact ADHD.  She is a regular ShareWIK.com columnist.

Read more articles by Elaine Taylor-Klaus here.

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