Why? Oh why,do we compare our babies? As a new mum,I’ve become so aware of the milestones and the box ticking that goes on with a new baby,especially in the first year. A lot of this is fuelled,and rightly so in the right context,by our health system. In the beginning it puts amazing pressure on you, weights, ounces, solids, hand eye coordination, clapping hands, smiling, sitting, farting…Lord you name it they’ve an “appropriate”age for it! This pressure wore off me in the later six months when Ned was well weaned, a big boy to say the least and content in my eyes. But I know many of my friends continued to feel the pressure for so many things and so many aspects of raising their little baby. Often,purely fuelled by comparison!

As Mum’s,hopefully,we have at this point in our own lives accepted ourselves as individuals and as different to our nearest and dearest in many ways. We’ve accepted that we are different to many of our friends, peers and work colleagues. And most of the time we have accepted we’re different in many ways to most of our family! So with that logic we should know that each baby is already different to its friends, peers, cousins, Instagram friend and so on.

Yet, us mothers torture ourselves weekly comparing our babies.

The worst comparison of all is the one made through social media. I post the good and the positive, rarely the bad and the negative. I refuse to post a picture of Ned mid tantrum or upset. I’m not going to press record on my insta story vlog whilst my husband and I are fighting! I’m not going to post a video of myself crying over spilt milk. I’m not going to publish my bank balance! Therefore Yes all will always look “perfect” or worse “normal” unless I choose to share. Don’t get me wrong all of us give insight and inferences to life’s daily struggle, of motherhood, marriage, career you name it but by choice with timing and often after the fact, the reality is still very different.

Comparison really is the thief of joy because you are rarely making an accurate comparison. The old saying you don’t know what goes on behind closed doors is the truest of them all! So when browsing through an Instagram feed, insta story, Facebook, blog, whatever…. take a second to remember they are human, their baby is human, their husband is human and they choose what they share and how they share it!

We are all just getting through life one day at a time, nothing’s perfect because perfect doesn’t exist, it’s yet to be found, it’s yet to defined, perfect is as individual as us. Perfect is perfect to you and my perfect is definitely not yours and yours I’m sure is not mine! So don’t let your joy be stolen.

Love what you have, however it comes.

Comparison the Thief of all Joy – Theodore Roosevelt

Love Dee X

Website:  www.thoughtstotsandtea.com

Instagram: @deehollhan