What They Forgot to Tell Us

Adam and I attended a childbirth class when I was like somewhere around the 30-something week mark (it's funny how fixated you get on how many weeks along you are, then after the baby comes you couldn't remember details about it if someone paid you). We got some useful information and I think it was worth it seeing as how neither of us had experienced childbirth before. There's a few things they forgot to tell us, though, and thankfully I have other mom-friends that filled me in on some of it. A lot of it I had to learn myself. Here's what I wish I knew before I learned it firsthand.

A Small Army Attends Your Birth
The team of caregivers you have to bring a baby into the world is impressive, especially if you have a hospital birth. I went to practice with multiple OB's, and we saw all of them at least once throughout the pregnancy. The doctor that delivered Noah asked me if his student could attend the birth (we had met her on one of her office visits, and I said yes). We went through multiple shift changes of nurses, so we met many. What I didn't realize, though, was just how many people would actually be in the room for birth. I pushed for three hours and was in a haze almost the whole time, but there were certainly moments of clarity (ahem, episiotomy, ahem... don't Google it if you don't know what it is... or maybe DO Google it if you want some free birth control). One of those moments of clarity was me looking at the freakin' army of people in the room and thinking 'When did 14 people get here?' That's probably very close to being an accurate number. I was the only birth happening in the hospital that day, and apparently everyone wanted in on the party.

Motherhood Has a Certain Smell
The first few days after birth smell like Dermoplast (aka hoo-haa numbing spray, aka your new best friend after pushing out a watermelon) and raw, cavewoman, earthly scents. Some of those things linger for a few weeks. I'll keep it G-rated and leave it at that. You probably aren't showering much, and if you are you're using scent-free soap like I did. Then comes the smell of breastfeeding. It's so hard to define, but it's a mixture of leaking milk (like, on the inside of your shirt and (hopefully) into a pad) and pump parts. Showering is just so elusive with a newborn.

How Busted You Are After Birth
It's pretty obvious that you won't strut out of the hospital after childbirth like nothing happened. I know some women are up and at it really quickly after birth, and that's amazing. For them. That was not the case for me, and I have a feeling that's not the case for a lot of people (especially C-section mamas). I had a rough labor and delivery and eagerly took the standard-issue narcotic pain meds. I was offered to be discharged after only one night. I almost laughed right in the doctor's face. It seemed illegal that they would let me go home - "you remember what happened here, right? You can't possibly think I'm okay to leave this place." God Bless labor & delivery nurses, because they're the ones that get you to the bathroom for the first time after you just blew a gigantic baby out of your nether regions. It takes a long time to recover from birth, wether vaginal or C-section, and that seems really obvious but you don't think about those details until you're in it. On top of that, you're entrusted to take care of another human life and be fully responsible for not screwing it all up right away. It should be mandatory to go home with a team of nurses.

The Amount of People That Will See Your Nipples

Choosing to breastfeed means you will be topless in your home 24/7. There's really no point in wearing a shirt while for the first few weeks (though at almost three months I still don't, but at least I leave the house and wear normal clothes 5 days a week). What you don't realize is the sheer amount of people that will see your boobs for however long you choose to breastfeed. Here's a list of people that have either definitely or probably seen my boobs: Many of the OB's in our practice, about 4-5 lactation consultants, many nurses at the NICU and our hospital, my family, any person that pulls up next to me while I'm pumping on the drive to work, any person passing through our employee parking lot while I get disconnected from the pump and into my shirt, fellow shoppers in the parking lot of Target, Home Depot, Lowe's, Market Basket, Wal*Mart, Whole Foods, etc., the list goes on. I'm so used to my boobs being out that sometimes I have to look down to double check I put on a shirt before leaving the house.

How Hard the Fourth Trimester Is

HAHA NOPE

Huggies commercials make life with an infant look angelic. It is anything but. I can promise you that you don't know important sleep is to the human mind and body until you survive and keep a baby alive for the first few weeks of its life. Babies aren't particularly happy during the "fourth trimester", aka the first three months of life outside the womb. I get it, it probably sucks to go from the all-inclusive uterine resort to life in real world where everything is foreign. We're nearing the end of the fourth trimester and things aren't so difficult (though we have our moments), but I remember some days in the early weeks wondering if it was ever going to get better or easier. Everyone tells you it is, but the serious sleep deprivation combined with repetitive tasks newborns demand makes every day crawl by.

You're Not Ready for Anything at 6 Weeks
Seriously. You're not. 

How You Will Feel Tired, Even if the Baby "Sleeps Well"
For all of his colic and fighting every nap, Noah is actually a really good sleeper at night **knocks on wood until knuckles bleed so as not to illicit bad karma**. Of course, in those first few weeks he was up multiple times a night. Then one night he suddenly slept for 8 hours. I was convinced he had to be broken, we called the nurses hotline, and their flow chart of baby-crisis said that a sudden change in sleep pattern warranted a trip to the ER. So we went, they sent us to the pediatrician, the pediatrician said, "he slept through the night? CONGRATULATIONS! He's fine. Don't worry." Now at 2.5 months he usually sleep from 9 or 10p to 4 or 6p. Maybe once a week he'll have a random 2a wake-up.
So yes, we're REALLY lucky, that the baby "sleep through the night" many nights, according to his pediatrician (she considers 6 hours sleeping through the night), so why are the bags under my eyes so big they could hold the entire contents of my purse? Because eventually you can't "sleep when the baby sleeps". Now that I'm back to work I have about 300 more things to do in a much shorter amount of time every day. Noah goes to bed and I brush my teeth, shower, pump, clean pump parts, pack my stuff for the next day, make lunch, make Noah's bottles for the next day, maybe throw in a load of laundry, work on homework, etc. I'm usually up for at least another hour after he goes down. It sounds nice to say "he slept for 6 hours last night". Or I could say, "I've been up since 4 this morning." Both are true. Even on nights we get 6+ hours of sleep total, it's almost always interrupted sleep. So, yes, Noah does sleep through the night most nights, but we don't.

Going Back to Work Right as You Get Into the Swing of Things
America's crappy maternity/paternity leave policies/values make life so difficult for new parents. The most you'll qualify for under federal law is 12 weeks, and a lot of it is unpaid. I didn't qualify for 12 weeks, so had I not used personal time I would have been back at work after 6 week. SIX WEEKS! I have another tiny human life that literally depends on me to nourish him so he can stay alive. How the hell can I leave him after only 6 weeks?

The first few weeks are such a mess that there's no hope for any routine, schedule, normalcy, etc. I found just before the 8-week mark we finally got into some sort of groove. We had at least some idea of what we were doing, we were more comfortable going on outings and doing basic things like grocery shopping, we had adjusted as much as possible to our sad sleep routine, I even started exercising again for goodness sake. Then, suddenly, BAM, back to work. New schedule, new life, new responsibilities. I had overwhelming anxieties about being able to pump enough during the day to keep him exclusively breastfed. We started feeling stressed about him being without us all day (he's perfectly fine). I was expected to perform a job with responsibilities and tasks that require mental capacity that my brain doesn't have the processing power to engage in. As with anything, we're all adjusting to our new normal and things are going fine, but it seems like every time we "figure it out" we get another curveball. Such is life!

How Obsessed You Will Be With Being a Parent
I told myself that I wouldn't be one of those people that spams social media with photos and videos of my child. Guess what - I totally am. Parenthood is so all consuming and so simultaneously fun and horrible and draining and exciting and hilarious and awful that it's all you can talk about. Someone can ask me how work was and suddenly I'm about to start talking about how funny it was that I fell asleep while pumping before work the other day and woke up an hour later with sore boobs and a lot of milk. Things that are funny to a new parent aren't funny to any other normal person. All you want to talk about is your baby and your life as a parent, and any other topic seems lame.

You Won't Have Sympathy For Childless People That are "Tired"
No one knows sleep deprivation like a parent of a young child. You would think they would be the best to empathize with anyone that is tired. Trust me, I truly want to empathize, but, funny enough, the sleep deprivation gives me very little room for sympathy or patience. Any time a childless adult tells me how tired they are, I mentally do this:

I know that many non-parents have very valid reasons for being tired, and maybe they even slept less than I did that night. In the moment, though, I just internally scream because at least they'll get a full nights sleep at some point. I have a while before that happens, and literally there's nothing more on this earth EXCEPT for winning the lottery that I want more than a solid 48 hours of uninterrupted, sweet, glorious sleep.

The Elephant In The Room: Me.

Everyone expects to gain weight when they’re pregnant. That’s obvious. You can’t grow another human inside of you without adding on some extra pounds. My weight gain wasn’t too drastic in my first / early second trimester, but when I started packing on the pounds I resorted to Google (naturally). Here’s what the Internet tells you about pregnancy weight gain:

A normal, average sized person should gain 25-35 pounds throughout their pregnancy:
Baby: 8 pounds
Placenta: 2-3 pounds
Amniotic fluid: 2-3 pounds
Breast tissue: 2-3 pounds
Extra blood: 4 pounds (isn’t that kinda digusting? Four pounds of BLOOD?!)
Stored fat for delivery and breastfeeding: 5-9 pounds
Larger uterus: 2-5 pounds

My legs. 

Here is my pregnancy weight gain breakdown:
Baby: almost 8 pounds
Placenta, fluid, bigger boobs, extra blood, larger uterus: Probably the normal 21 – 25
Hips, ass, cankles, wrists, face, knees, extra chin, arms, fingers, etc.: approximately 38 pounds

THERE YOU HAVE IT, 72 FREAKIN’ POUNDS. Yes, that’s right, ladies and gents, I gained about 9 bowling balls worth of weight. I was always waiting for the (bowling) ball to drop at my doctor’s appointments, expecting them to finally tell me I was gaining way too much too fast. Spoiler alert: They never did. Sometimes I would step off the scale with my eyes darting toward their chart to see if they wrote something more than the numbers… maybe something like “may have consumed entire buffet before appointment”. They never said I gained too much and I never brought it up, mostly because I was paranoid that if I brought it up then they would be like “oh yeah! Duh! I forgot to mention! Stop packing on those pounds!” My resting heart rate was fine, my blood pressure was always normal, I didn’t have gestational diabetes, so by all accounts I was healthy. Huge, but healthy.

I remember thinking that the 25-35 pound weight gain seemed pretty reasonable, and it wouldn’t be THAT hard to bounce back. I don’t know exactly when I surpassed the 35 pound mark, but I waved it goodbye and never looked back. That’s the thing with pregnancy weight gain – at some point, you can’t stop the freight train. I talked to some women that gained 50+ pounds, but no one I talked to gained as much as I did (or they lied). I remember reaching each 10-pound increment thinking my monstrous weight gain would probably slow down soon… right? RIGHT? 50 POUNDS HAS TO BE IT, RIGHT? Nope. I gave up hope when I reached the 200 pound mark. I’ve never even been close to 200 pounds in my life, and they day it stared back at me on the stupid scale I just said screw it. I was really upfront about my weight gain, and no one ever told me I looked huge even though I did (I do own a mirror). Who in their right mind would agree with a hormonal pregnant woman when they call themselves huge? It was true, though, I absolutely ballooned up, especially in the last few weeks.

By all accounts, I was a pretty average pregnant women. I was less active than my normal self but that was to be expected. I made an effort to walk to work and take the stairs when I felt up to it. I definitely ate more and not always the healthiest, I gave in to cravings, but I didn’t go totally apeshit. What pregnant woman hasn’t found themselves standing in their kitchen shoving food in their face at 4am, anyway? We took walks around the neighborhood (more like slow waddles). So what happened??

"I cannot move...."

I wish I knew. I did have a lot of swelling in the last month, to the point where I could only wear Adam’s shoes and I thought the stitching on my jeans would burst from my tree trunk legs. I retained a lot of fluid and no amount of avoiding salt or staying hydrated helped it. Mostly, though, I was just plain enormous.

Within a week of having Noah I had lost 24 pounds and had ankles again. The next week I lost another 7 pounds. I decided I would only weigh myself when Noah was weighed so I wouldn’t obsess over it… and, also, I didn’t want to get batteries to replace the ones for our scale. I had to get weighed at my 6-week postpartum checkup, and I was excited to see what was sure to be another impressive amount of weight lost over a month. I lost 31 pounds in 2 weeks, I must have at least lost ten more in another month! Well, GUESS WHAT, I didn’t lose even one. I grudgingly accepted that I hit the plateau, I had lost all the weight that would be easy to lose. I still had 40 more to go.
I’ve never had to lose 40 pounds in my life. Truthfully, I’ve never HAD to lose weight in my life. I’ve tried to lose weight, successfully and unsuccessfully, but I’ve never had to do it for REAL. I expected to be in maternity clothes for a while after giving birth, but a lot of my pre-pregnancy things don’t have a prayer of fitting at the moment. I’m locked in that awkward phase where my maternity jeans are too big but my “old” jeans only go halfway up my newly gigantic thighs.

The postpartum body simultaneously incredible and useless. Your uterus shrinks back down from being a giant watermelon, your abs start to come back together (yes, they SPLIT IN HALF during pregnancy), you produce breastmilk which is a total other wonder of nature in itself. On the other hand, your skin hangs off your suddenly shrunken belly, the texture and color of your skin may be weird (like mine), your muscles ache for reasons you can’t pinpoint, and your sleep deprived brain is pretty much useless. In short, even though you’re a superhero that was able to give birth you’re not really equipped, mentally or physically, to freakin’ EXERCISE. I remember thinking my 6-week postpartum check-up seemed extremely short. Like, I couldn’t believe I got cleared for normalcy in less time than it takes to get an oil change. It was suddenly okay for me to submerge in water for long periods of time, aka take a bath (something I had been doing already, whoops), exercise as usual, and have sex (HA). I wanted to poke my head out of the door after my doctor left and say, “hey, wait, you remember the whole episiotomy thing, right? The stitches…. The epidural…. Me fitting a nearly 9 pound baby through my pelvis…? You sure I’m all set to be a normal human again…?”

Me.

So, there I was, finally ready to hit the ground running again, but I was stuck with a version of my body that I didn’t know. My hip muscles ached when we went on casual walks around the neighborhood. I looked down at my jiggly belly and wondered if it was even safe to run, or if my intestines would be sloshing around too much. I did what I always do in emotional crisis: I went shopping. I got some better-fitting spandex to stuff said-jiggliness into and hit the pavement. I allowed myself to indulge in crappy food, mostly because you really have to eat whatever you can, whenever you can when you have a newborn, but I decided to stop the excuses once my maternity leave was over. I had one last cupcake and committed to healthier eating. I finally got into a rhythm with our schedule – Adam would come home, I would feed Noah, pass him off, and go for a run. We finally got into this routine about 3 days before I came back to work. So now here I am, again, trying to adjust to a new schedule and see where exercise fits in with the following chaos: juggling drop-offs with the sitter, full-time work hours, feeding Noah, feeding us, diaper changes, playing with Noah, pumping, cleaning bottles, cleaning pump parts, giving Noah a bath, finding time to shower, general errands, remembering to brush my teeth, and starting my MBA. What am I forgetting? Oh yeah, finishing season 4 of Orange is the New Black. It was my go-to show for those long breastfeeding sessions in his early weeks, and now Noah and I need to know how Piper’s dirty prison underwear business works out.

All this is to say is that my body saw the 25-35 pound weight gain, laughed, and steered the train to donut-ville, and now I'm dealing with it. I've never had to lose so much weight in my life, and do with a body I don't even know how to use. Still, I'm not using it as an excuse. My goal is to not have a Santa-belly by Christmas. Ho-ho-ho.