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In our current world, we can be overwhelmed with information, with everything at our fingertips. 'How to do' explanations and go to guides for everything from burping your baby, how much calcium you need each day to designing a race car. Everything is spelled out for us and available with the click of a few buttons. It's overwhelming and for the most part unnecessary.
Don't get me wrong, like you I like to know mindless information sometimes. I too have wondered what noise a turtle makes (thankyou Mr. 6 for your incredible questioning!). What I'm getting at is that although we have the ability to find the answers to almost everything at a whim, do we really need to know it all? Wasn't life more simple when we had to use our imagination and go through the books and wonder about the answers? I mean haven't we been doing this thing called life for thousands of years as a species?
I'm going to take you back a few years in my journey... back to when I remember preparing for the birth of my middle child. Oh I read all of the books and got the all the apps. There was so much available and my mind at the time was like a sponge, taking it all in. I had the contraction app, the track my pregnancy app, the what to eat when pregnant app. Then there was the preparing for when he arrived, the sleep app, breastfeeding app, what to feed my baby app, how to get my post-partum body back on track app - you name it, I probably had it on my phone.
My oh my I put so much pressure on myself to 'get it right'. I had done this mother thing before so this time I was sure to level up and have it all 'organised'. Ha! Why was I putting so much pressure on myself? With my first born, I didn't read a thing other than the required paperwork to be admitted into hospital to have him and the pamphlets we got handed at my midwife appointments.
When my second son was born, everything I had planned for and organised for had swiftly gone out the window, but not before I had developed a healthy dose of post-natal depression. My little one had Colic and was up every night from 12am-4am and I could not put him down during the day. Breastfeeding was beyond excruciating but I was determined to breastfeed. I have no doubt that the pressure I had compounded myself with was coming back to haunt me. I had missed one of the most important facts - I was a mother. Within my core, I knew how to look after this baby, yet every app I looked at said I was doing it wrong or he should be sleeping, or feeding and he wasn't. I had set myself up for a big ugly failure. It wasn't going to be like the first time around. It wasn't my first baby. I was missing my ability to trust within myself. I had got so caught up in trying to be amazing that I forgotten that I already was. I am an incredible mother.
Why? Why am I sharing this with you? I am sharing this with you because I think it is so incredibly important to understand that just because information or apps or books are available to us, it doesn't always mean that we need them or that they are going to serve us in ways we think they will. Yes, take what you want from what you come across but please, if you notice yourself being swept up in the consumerism of today's world, take a moment to remember that you likely have the answers you need within you.
The example I shared is just one of the many times that I have been caught up in the overwhelm of information available to me.
So what I have I learnt through all of this? To look within and to trust the wisdom of my own soul. Yes, that's right. There are a million and one books and apps on parenthood (and everything else!) and you know what I did when I fell pregnant with my third baby? I went within and trusted in my ability to be a mother. I trusted that I was having this baby because I would be the best mother to her, whatever the experience. I also learnt from my previous experience and decided to opt out of things that were causing me and my family stress (breastfeeding, I'm looking at you!) because you know what I have learnt, that a happy family is so much healthier than an over informed 'trying to be perfect at everything' stressed out and unhappy family.
This marries with so many other aspects of our lives. Just because we can find out the answers and plan things down to wire - is it really necessary? Will it truly serve us? At the end of the day, we can plan and prepare for anything and everything but sometimes the universe has other ideas.