6 Things You Should Never Say to A New Mum

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Mark Wealth

Four months of carrying the weight of a fully formed baby and the decibels of delivery pains are enough to break a woman down. But it doesn’t stop there for a new mum. She still has to deal with the stress of caring for her new baby and getting her body back in shape.

If you don’t want to be responsible for an emotional meltdown or outburst, this is definitely not the time to give unnecessary advice, ask irrelevant questions or make wise cracks and insensitive comments.

Find 10 things you shouldn’t say…

1. “Why’s Baby Crying So Much?”

If she knew, she would have surely done something about it, right? It could be teething pains, soiled diapers, hunger or sleep and these things aren’t written on the forehead. She’ll have to troubleshoot until she finds a cause and solution so just give her a break, okay?

2. “Can’t You Make Her Stop Crying?”

Oh no! Mummy just loves the sound of her baby yelling at the top of her tiny voice.

Fact is, no sane mother likes to leave her baby to just cry, so, asking if she can’t get her baby to stop might be insensitive or upsetting. Motherhood is tough work.

3. “Your Baby’s So Small…”

Or tiny. Or too fat. Or doesn’t look like you guys. These are insensitive things to say. Making these unguarded comments about the baby’s size or looks could raise the hairs on the back of a mother’s neck and probably her blood pressure. They could also add some sadness to the enormous stress of caring for the baby. You don’t want to do that.

4. “My Baby Didn’t/Doesn’t Behave Like This.”

Oh yeah? Since when did we expect every baby to behave the same way? Don’t rub it in a mother’s face if you had a different ‘better’ experience with your baby.

Because of the volatile nature of her emotions right now, she could get upset thinking something is wrong with her or her baby.

5. “You’re Not Breastfeeding Enough!”

Just because your mammary glands can produce enough milk to feed the nation doesn’t mean others are like that. Anybody that knows anything knows that boobs differ in shape, size and capacity to produce breast milk.

Now, that you know this, try to change the way you present the matter to a new mum. You can suggest she reads our article on boosting breast milk supply.

6. “Are You Going To Try Again?”

This usually comes when a mum has two kids of the same sex or has announced that she wants a particular sex but got the opposite.

She should be focusing on taking care of herself and baby right now and saying this is not helping matters at all. Just keep quiet on the matter and talk about how healthy she and the baby are looking or something equally positive.