Make It Make Sense is my series unpacking the most unhelpful advice new mums hear and bringing a life coaching lens to suggest strategies that actually feel supportive. If you’ve got some bad advice you want me to break down, send me a message.
One piece of advice I hate above all others as a first time mum to twins is TRUST YOURSELF.
I’m in the most challenging season of my life and the best you can give me is do what you think it right?!
I’m driving myself absolutely insane microanalysing every single feed and sleep and nappy and I’m somehow just meant to know what it all means?!
I’m delirious with sleep exhaustion and my body is going through the single biggest physiological change a human experiences and within all of that I’m magically meant to be access this newfound wisdom?
Let’s be real, the trust yourself advice is infuriating!
Here’s where the trust yourself advice goes so wrong and what I, as someone with a background in life coaching and mindset work, thinks we should be saying instead.
Why you can’t just trust yourself as a new Mum
For years we’ve been encouraged to look for external validation that we’re succeeding. The A+ grades. The promotions. The glowing reviews. The likes and follower counts.
Marketing purposively makes us feel insecure and doubt ourselves so we spend more money.
At the risk of sounding political, “the system” is geared towards us NOT trusting ourselves.
Most of us were not brought up being asked what we thought or what was our preference or how did we feel. We haven’t been encouraged to tune into ourselves. I certainly wasn’t
Then we start the most important role of our lives and NOW we’re meant to rely on instinct and intuition?
No.
I’m not accepting that as good enough.
What makes trust yourself terrible advice
Self-trust is not a binary.
It’s not a matter of either I trust myself, or I don’t. I can trust yourself at work but struggle in romantic relationships (not anymore). And it’s actually more granular than that, I can trust myself to figure out a budget blow out but couldn’t think of anything worse than being put of charge of hiring a new team member.
I’ve noticed we tend to trust ourselves in the areas of life that we’ve figured out. That’s going to be a mix of things that came naturally and things we’ve fought hard to figure out over time.
So to think we become Mums and can all of sudden access this new found ability to trust ourselves, trust our instincts is bonkers.
We’re either disconnected from our intuition or we’ve built up the ability to listen to it in very specific circumstances over time.
The good news we still have the ability to trust ourselves as Mums. We just need to (re)learn how to.
What to do instead:
Over time, as I got to know my girls, I got to know what their different cries meant, as we got routines going and everyone started to sleep more, I did start to trust myself more as a Mum.
These are the three strategies I used to build self trust as a first time Mum to twins.
Be willing to try things.
Advice I got when I was pregnant that was actually helpful was to give things a go and if it doesn’t work, then try something else.
All of the information about ideal routines may make it feel like babies are incredibly fragile and if we don’t get things exactly perfect then the wheels will fall off. I don’t think that’s true.
What is more true is experimenting helps you to get to know your baby or babies.
My man and I used to compare notes on different settling strategies and between the two of us we figured out the patting, back rubs, shushing techniques that worked for our twins.
More recently I tried a new white noise setting and found the girls settled more easily. What a win!
Be willing to try things!
READ MORE: Six things that helped me survive the first year with twins
Look for evidence.
This might be my favourite life coaching technique ever.
When I noticed that I could tell what my babies’ cries meant, I acknowledged the moment.
When we had the girls settled and we got to go to bed at our old pre baby bedtime, I celebrated.
When I realised I couldn’t remember the last time I looked up the sleep schedule e-book, I did a little happy dance.
Each of those moments were evidence that I was learning as a Mum. Each of those moments showed I had reason to trust myself.
Take a couple of moments and write a list of ten pieces of evidence you can trust yourself as a Mum. Tell me how you feel afterwards in the comments!
Ask for options.
Part of what I hate about the ‘trust yourself’ is that it’s SO open. It’s like being asked ‘tell me about yourself’. It’s so broad. My mind draws a blank.
Asking for options solves that problem.
The second thing I like about asking for options as one normally jumps out at me. Tell me more about that one.
That’s accessing my intuition.
Asking for options is a way for me to tap into my instincts.
It’s not your fault, trust yourself is terrible advice
The ‘trust yourself’ advice isn’t wrong. It’s incomplete*.*
What it’s really asking you to do, tune into yourself, back your own judgement, stop outsourcing every decision, is a beautiful thing to aspire to as a new Mum.
The problem is it assumes we already know how to do that. And for most of us, in the most overwhelming season of our lives, we don’t. Not yet.
And even if it doesn’t feel like it, you have already been building that self trust. There was a moment, about when the twins were six months old, that I realised I was figuring this motherhood thing out.
I’d developed some skills, I’d gotten to know my babies. I could see that I was making decisions that worked for my girls, for me and for my Man. We really were figuring it out!
And you are too.
Use what you’ve learnt here to reflect a bit on your motherhood experience so far. You’ll realise you can trust yourself more than you’ve been giving yourself credit for.
What bad advice do you want me to breakdown next?
