Things They Don't Tell You About

This is my top 10 or so list of things no one ever told me about being a new parent.  They are in on I particular order and they are all from my experience so take them or leave them.

There is nothing more exciting than burps and poop.

Even if your newborn only sleeps for three hours at a time, this will feel like paradise after waking up every hour and wandering around the house in the middle of the night because there was no possible way you could get or stay comfortable during your last month or two of pregnancy.

The hunger is real my friends and between the craving for all things bread when your milk comes in and the general hunger that follows you around all day every day there is no escaping the constant feeling of hunger no matter how much you eat.

This one may be unique to me but I was cold the entire first two months post-partum.  There really is something to those cultures that go as far as building fires under new mother's beds to keep them warm.  It may sound extreme but I wish someone had done it for me.

If you're breastfeeding or pumping your breasts will hurt all the time.  I don't mean the horror stories you hear of cracked and bleeding nipples or the realities of blocked ducts but I mean just a general soreness and discomfort that starts 30 minutes to an hour after you pump/feed and lasts until you pump/feed again. 

You will love this little person in ways you did not even think possible.  Ok, maybe they do tell you this but I didn't really understand.  Before she was born I thought I already loved and then she was born and I realized that that love was just the tip of the iceberg.

Other people will openly tell you what you should be doing, all the time, without asking if you want advice.  Their advice, no matter how awful it may sound comes from to good place and they assume your experience is exactly like theirs...so feel free to ignore this entire list ;)

The first time you pawn your small infant off on someone, especially a male, who has never held a baby before is simply priceless!

There is nothing harder than leaving the hospital without your child, even if they are perfectly fine and nothing is wrong your heart will beak, you will cry and you will be angry.  

Grandparents and other visitors are wonderful but I wish I had asked them not to come or at least asked them to stay in a hotel rather than stay with us.  Your body is recovering from trauma, your life will forever be different, you are figuring out what it means to be a family and all you want to do an snuggle and bond with that little bundle of joy which makes it incredibly hard to be happy to hand them over to anyone else, including your husband.

If you labor at all your entire body will hurt.  If you push it will hurt in indifferent ways than if you have a c-section but either way it will hurt the next day because you worked hard to have this beautiful little baby.  I did not expect my arms and back to ach as much as they did, even propping myself up in bed took incredible effort.

This one is from a little further down the line: the first time or twelve you tell your beautiful child "no" after they pull your hair or try to put soap in their mouthes and they laugh at you it's really hard not to laugh back.