I usually write about politics, but since I recently became a mom, I have been thinking a lot about all things motherhood, pregnancy and baby-related. Here is a little list of some things I learned about pregnancy and new motherhood:
1.If you have lost a pregnancy, there will always be that lonely pause after someone asks you if this is your first baby.
2.The maternity clothes you excitedly went out and bought when you were three months pregnant will stop fitting you somewhere around the 7th month. You will then have to go out and buy a whole new round of tunics, tights and maxi dresses. Sigh.
3.By month nine, you will start feeling like a tourist attraction each time you leave the house -- the incredible pregnant woman, inches away from birthing her baby in the middle of a busy street!
4.You will learn the hard way that people say the strangest things to a heavily pregnant woman.
5.Every minute you go past your due date will feel like a year.
6.You will be insanely excited when labour starts, but that feeling will soon be replaced by intense pain and then you will wonder why you were so excited to be in this much pain.
7.You won't wear or use 90 per cent of the things you packed in your hospital bag.
8.Breastfeeding is natural but it doesn't come naturally. Formula feeding, whether by choice or not by choice, does not make you a bad mom. You are a great mom when you do what works best for both you and your baby.
9.In the hospital you will at some point in a sleep deprived daze ask the maternity nurse to take your baby to the hospital nursery so you can sleep, only to be told rather curtly that those discontinued sometime in the 80s. Then you will curse the person who made the decision to discontinue them.
10.The first shower you have after you deliver your baby will feel like the best shower you have ever had in your entire life.
11.Your favourite post-partum visitors will be the ones who drop off ready to eat home-made food in disposable containers and leave with a trunk full of your dirty laundry. They will do this in complete silence without making eye contact.
12.Onesies with zippers will save you.
13.You'll put away a lot of adorable newborn size clothes still with their tags on them because let's face it, newborn size is kind of a funny joke designed to make your friends waste their money.
14.As amazing as your new tiny person is with her/his wonderfully complex anatomy formed by your body in only nine months, you will not be able to stop gushing over those adorable little baby fingernails. Seriously, what's with the obsession with fingernails? Why don't people gush more over the brain, eyes or small intestine?!
15.You will cry on the inside when people brag that their baby sleeps through the night.
16.By day 5 post-partum you will google "night nurse."
17.You will quickly learn why sleep deprivation is used as a form of torture in some countries.
18.Taking a bath feels like going to the spa.
19.You will spend hours and hours and hours staring at your baby in disbelief, repeating "I can't believe I made that."
20.You will have a whole new appreciation for your own mother.
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