Where did our confidence go?

As I sit here, girls in bed (without too many tantrums), one hand on keyboard, little finger of the other in M's mouth (makes typing tricky but keeps him quiet), I feel, for a brief moment, like I know what I'm doing.

Which is clearly enormously tempting fate, so watch this space for news of an epic disaster (along the lines of the deer that jumped out in front of the car on the A1 last weekend - necessitating a lot of explaining to Direct Line about why offering us a fiesta to get home in wasn't going to work).

That aside, as I have a fleeting moment of confidence, I've been finding myself wondering: as a species, where did our confidence go?

This is my fourth baby, so you'd sort of expect me to know what I'm doing wouldn't you? I certainly expected that I would.  But, while I definitely do have more confidence than I did with L, and more time than I did with A and S, I still find myself at a loss more often than not; asking for reassurance, checking the baby bible, reconfirming to myself that if I feed him again, or leave him to cry, or take him out for dinner with my mum, or let him roll off the sofa at three days old (a real low point), I'm not going to doom him, or destroy him, or ruin his chances of getting a proper job in twenty-odd years time.

But if I were a zebra I wouldn't feel like this.  If I were a chimpanzee, or a kangaroo, or a mouse, I'd have my baby, or my multiple babies (and wouldn't having fourteen make twins feel like a walk in the park on a sunny day?), and I'd just get on with it:  I'd know how he latches on, and that I'm doing it right; I'd know how to keep him warm without letting him get too hot or cold; I'd know, instinctively, how to keep him safe.

So why can't we? Why is there this huge industry around telling us stuff that every other animal knows without asking? 

I mentioned this to my sister-in-law the other day, and she said it was about the information - because the information is there, we become insecure and we rely on it. She said if we weremembers of an undiscovered tribe living in the jungles of Papua New Guinea, we wouldn't feel like this; we would still have that instinctive certainty.

I'm not so sure.  I suspect that for all a Papuan new mum may not have Gina Ford, or the baby whisperer,  health visitors, community midwives, the co-parenting lobby, the nanny state or the breastapo, I bet she has a mother, a granny, an aunt or a neighbour, all regaling her with their stories of dreadful deliveries and breast-feeding nightmares, and all telling her, "We didn't do it like that when you were young" or, "Oh, no, we do it like this now".

I think it's something to do with being human. As a species we no longer have confidence in ourselves.  But I'd love to know when it was lost.  And I'd love even more to know how to get it back again.

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ps Once again I feel like Cinderella.  I am not off to CyberMummy tomorrow, due to new babies, small children, builders and the late and not at all lamented deer.  Instead I will be heading back up the A1 to home, hopefully in a car which will fit us all.  I will however be wishing I were there and sending a big hello to everyone.  Have fun for me.