Warning: In real life, I curse like a sailor, and for some reason that even I do not understand, I try to keep my writing relatively clean. But I cannot write today’s entry without an f-bomb or two. It just wouldn’t be honest.
Also, this is not meant to scare anyone. Everyone is different. But this is how it was for me. After talking to other moms, I've learned that this is pretty much how it was for them, too.
Before my son was born, I had read all about pregnancy and childbirth. I knew about anything and everything that could happen and would happen during the gestation and subsequent birth of my baby. Braxton-Hicks? I knew him well. Epidural itching? I wasn’t a bit surprised when I longed to claw my arms off during labor. Nuggets on the delivery table? Unless you have a C-section, go ahead and count on it, honey. I knew that pregnancy wasn’t glamorous, and I was fully prepared for the gore that was childbirth.
But my preparation for real-life New Motherhood? Well, I attended a breastfeeding class, and that was about it. I guess I was too busy studying up on mucus plugs and signs of labor to bother reading about something that I expected to come naturally. I mean, come on—15 years prior, I had been a nanny to an infant while I completed my studies in Early Childhood Education. I had majored in this, y’all.
Plus, everyone I talked to told me how wonderful it all would be. They talked of precious angels and sweet moments and tears of joy. One friend even went so far as to say that once their son arrived, she and her husband wondered why on earth they had waited so long to have him. It all was going to be fannnnn-tastic.
Once that little creature was in my arms—after 19.5 hours of labor, 8 of which I have successfully banished from my memory, thank-you-very-much—we were promptly yet gently wheeled out the hospital doors, and I began to discover numerous facts of life about which NOONE HAD TOLD ME.
And so, I present:
Everything I Didn’t Know About Being the Mother of a Newborn and MY GOD WHY DIDN’T SOMEONE TELL ME THESE THINGS?
1. That sleep deprivation thing that veteran parents speak of? It is REAL. And it is fucking Hell on Earth.
I’m talking about that tiredness that exhausts you to the point that you know you are tired, and you feel sleepy, yet your limbs will not lie still. You’ve already been operating on 2-4 hours of sleep per night for over a week and your body is so full of cortisol that even if you had the opportunity, you wouldn’t be able to rest because you’ve got a jerky full-body tic going on. As hard as I might try, I cannot put into words the kind of horrific nightmare that the lack of sleep is in that first week or two. And my baby is a pretty good sleeper.
2. The emotional/hormonal upheaval is a visit to Real Hell, where there are many torturous demons who make you go crazy and then laugh at you.
I cycled through feelings of rabid protectiveness to fears of horrible things happening to me or to the Mr. or to the baby to intense sadness and grief for my lost freedom to anxiety and hopelessness over the notion that I would never get a handle on it all. My general feeling during those early days was that I had completely fucked up my once just-fine life. Did I love my son? Yes. But I wasn’t so sure that I was up to the job of being his mom. The ratio of negative and painful thoughts and feelings to positive ones was about 8:1. It was one the top three of my Most Difficult Emotional periods, and I’ve had some doozies.
3. Recovery from childbirth sucks ass.
The nether regions are swollen, tender, and sore, making rudimentary activities and childcare duties very uncomfortable for a few days. I managed to make this part even worse by retrieving a remote control from under the bed and separating my episiotomy site. You know those freezable gel inserts that come in the bottle-holder part of the freebie diaper bag? Yeah, well, I walked around with one of those babies stuffed into my underpants.
Swelling of the ankles, feet, and hands gets worse right after childbirth, and it doesn’t diminish for several days afterward. Did you hear me? I swelled up even MORE after the baby was born. Most women do.
Body parts just aren’t the same anymore (squishy belly, wider hips, bigger feet, blah, blah) and it will be several months before the body settles into its true new form.
Going to the bathroom is a chore.
There might be hemorrhoids, there might be constipation, and there most certainly will be blood. These things will linger for weeks and weeks.
Breastfeeding causes crunchy nipples for several days. No matter what anyone says, this is normal and just part of the fun. When the baby latches on with his voracious hunger, the pain is breathtaking.
4. Then, as if that weren't enough to contend with, the people, they will not fucking go away.
Everyone wants to come over and hang out and be entertained and shit. When all you really want to do is 1) lie down, 2) cry, 3) stuff ice down your pants and let your boobs air out, there are people who want to come over and visit. And you have to sit there on your sore hiney and smile while they are yammering and cooing and handling your baby with their grubby hands and generally not-shutting-the-fuck-up-and-getting-out-of-your-house. The biggest blessing that breastfeeding affords during this time is the fact that once the baby gets hungry, you can take him into your bedroom, lock the door, and not come back out for days. I made a point of telling everyone that my baby was a very slow eater and that we would be out of commission for an hour or more, so good night. In other words, it’s ten o’clock in the evening, the Baby Show is over, go away.
5. Babies are all-consuming.
Oh, Holy Hell, their needs never end. A new mother rarely has time to pee, much less take a proper shower or eat an actual meal. I’d heard this before, but I didn’t realize just how much work taking care of a new baby would be. Babies produce an inordinate amount of dirty laundry, what with the pee and shit and spit up (my GOD the spit up), they eat all the damned time, and when they’re not eating, they are filling diapers that must be changed or crying to eat again. Sure, newborns sleep a lot, but they take many frequent, short naps at first. That whole “the newborn stage is easy because they sleep all the time” theory is bullshit. I had about 15 minutes to breathe (or pee or shower or eat) every couple of hours or so.
6. Breastfeeding isn’t as bad for everyone as it is for some.
The one thing I studied up on was breastfeeding and surprise, surprise--it was the one thing that went smoothly for me. Lesson learned. But even if it goes well, the first week is a bitch. Hot, swollen, hard boobs topped off with crunchy, bleeding nipples are not pretty. With a whole lot of patience and a little time, this gets better.
Actually, everything gets better.
First of all, the baby still won’t sleep all night for a while, but you will come up with a system that works. For us, co-sleeping was the answer. That meant getting rid of the big fluffy comforter and the extra pillows, but it also meant being able to sleep for chunks of 3-4 hours at a time, as opposed to 45 minutes at a time.
The emotions level out, eventually. Once I started getting a little more sleep at night and became adjusted to my new role and identity, and took a couple of solo excursions to Target, things started looking up. If things don’t start getting better after a couple of weeks, call your doctor, stat. PPD is real and it is dangerous if left untreated.
The soreness subsides, and things start to feel almost normal again. When I called my doctor on the fifth day to request more pain meds, she knew something wasn’t right and had me come in. A round of antibiotics and many, many sitz baths later, and I was feeling tip-top (well, compared to before). But are things the way they were before? Well, of course not. Will they ever be? I doubt it. But are they fine and OK and completely functional? Almost. It just takes time.
While some people will drive you bat-shit crazy, there will be angels who will save your sanity. Four of my best friends (all of whom have young children) arranged to bring us dinner on four separate nights. They came to the door, looked at the baby, put the food on the counter, and LEFT. The next week, one of those friends who is also my sister-in-law noticed my darkness, and brought me a bag of feel-better goodies—calming shower gel, fuzzy slippers, M&Ms, trashy magazines, and a very sweet note of encouragement. She knew. I will love her until the day I die for that.
The baby begins to grow and mature a little bit, and even though he is still considered by some gurus to be a fetus in the fourth trimester (I totally agree with this), he begins to settle into a routine. That means the mom can begin to devise a schedule that the whole family can live with and thrive on. And this is when things really start getting better. In fact, taking care of Baby gets to be fun at this point. Here is where the sweet gazes during feedings began to melt my heart and the smiles and cooes made me laugh aloud. For me, this happened right around the sixth week. That’s right—I didn’t begin to truly enjoy motherhood until my baby was about six weeks old.
And now, it’s all starting to come together. I have three good friends who are pregnant right now, and this is what I tell them: When your baby is a week or ten days old, call me and let me tell you that it all gets better. The first few weeks of motherhood--for me, at least--were hellish. This is the hardest thing I have ever done. No one told me it would be this hard. No one told me that it would get better and that I would get the hang of it. No one told me any of this.
Even if they had, I’m not quite sure I would have believed it.
