Baby 101: Things I didn't know

The movies and television portray motherhood and child birth as a very clean cut and easy process.  I even remember watching 7th Heaven when I was a kid where Lucy gives birth on an elevator and she looks stunning afterwards with no medicine and not much medical help either. 

Even as a child I knew this was an exaggeration.  There is no way that a baby coming out of your lady parts was going to cause you to glow (which she looks like in this picture here).  You want a reality picture?  Screw it:

This was me almost right after I had my C-section.  I was exhausted afterward, and although I had a "glow" of pure happiness that my baby was finally here, it is important to note that I may have not looked my best.  I am not ashamed of how I looked, because I believe I am beautiful no matter what I look like, but it is jarring to me the drastic difference between Hollywood's perception of pregnancy and mine.  As I continue to think on this, there was a lot I didn't know about pregnancy and only knew from what I saw on television or what I heard from other mothers.  I did not have a good perception on motherhood and I blame Hollywood partially for my ignorance.  How is Hollywood's portrayal accurate?  More importantly, how does this help with judgement of mothers and what they are expected to look and be like with their children and during the child birthing process?  Mother's get a lot of flack for not having it all together, but pregnancy and motherhood changes your life completely and most of us are still trying to play catch up.

But I digress.  Although I had a lot of advice from family, these are the things that I wish someone had told me before having my cute and adorable baby.

Warning: Some of this might be detailed, but honestly I don't give a fuck.  Kindly skip over it if you don't want to hear the "details" of pregnancy.

You are not going to sleep.

I know you hear this one a lot, so bear with me.  There is more to the "no sleep for parents" ideology.  At first I had thought that the reason parents didn't get sleep was because the baby kept you up.  I was mistaken, and was unaware of what was required for my little man.  What I learned that beautiful morning of November 23rd was the reason you don't get any sleep is because the baby needs to feed every 3 hours.  Which means that if you are breast feeding like I did, you are responsible to wake up every 3 hours to do about a half an hour to an hour of nursing with your child.  To add onto that, the maximum amount of time you have to sleep as a mom is probably about 2 hours, because it usually takes some time to baby to feed from you.  Even more, if you have a partner that is also trying to both give you that precious mana of sleep during that first week of life, and also requiring sleep, you will need to take a long shift of being awake. One of the hardest things for me was attempting to stay awake holding a warm and snuggly baby while Justin was sleeping.  Let me tell you.  Before going into my c-section I thought I would rock at the sleep thing, because in college I didn't sleep ever.  I was too busy watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel with my room mates.  Boy was I wrong.  I would be lying if I didn't say there weren't crying sessions in that first week because I was SO. TIRED.  I felt like the human race running from the Cylons every 33 minutes. Battlestar reference anyone?

You have to do that every day for at least 3 months.  Some times you want to cry, and sometimes you need to just take a nap but can't.  So the bags grow deeper under your eyes, and you feel like the dog in that fire meme.  You know which one I am talking about:

You get through it, because you have to for that cute button you call your little one.  However, it is an extreme adjustment, and can definitely alter a mother's schedule and mood.  When you read about how to best help your new parent friends?  I am telling you to force them to take a nap while you watch their baby.  They can see you later.  They need to sleep.

You are going to leak!

That's right folks, if you are a breast feeding mother, that ish gets everywhere.  Hearing babies cry makes it happen (and no it doesn't have to be your own baby's cry), and it will continue to happen until the day you stop breast feeding.  Talk about embarrassing, and also a little strange.  It is like your body is programmed for your little human.  The hardest part for me was going back to work and trying to maintain a level of professionalism.  Talk about awkward when you are in the middle of a conversation and you feel drips of milk on your hand.  Luckily, it only happened once to me and it was in front of a friend who was also a colleague.

Nursing is incredibly difficult.

So let me get this out of the way, so no one dares judge me!  Fed is best in my opinion, and I will never feel a different way about that!  Did I breast feed?  Yes.  Do I look down on mothers that formula feed?  HELL NO.  You gotta take care of that little one the best way possible.

However I will say for those that do decide to breast feed, my hats off to you.  Your poor sensitive nipples are going to be in pain for the first couple of weeks of breast feeding.  Not to mention that they CRACK AND BLEED from your little ones gums constantly sucking your life source out of you.  Additionally, nursing makes you incredibly tired.  For me at least, I could barely function after my baby fed.

Not to mention, actually learning how to nurse your child and the anxiety that comes with it was a huge surprise to me.  As a new mom, I didn't know what it felt like to nurse so for the first day I had no idea what I was doing or what my baby needed.  The lactation nurses had me do all sorts of weird poses to get my baby to latch, and it took about an hour for that to happen!  For those mama's who had trouble nursing let me tell you one thing that saved me: the nipple shield!  For some reason the nurses didn't tell me about it, and eventually was told by my sister-in-law to request one.  Nipple Shields give your baby a better ability to latch on. Ask a medical professional about them, but honestly it saved me from the added stress of making sure my baby was fed.

Pooping.

Is the most... terrifying thing ever after a C section.  That is all I am going to say.

The mom guilt is real.

Moms, let me just tell you how much I believe each and everyone of you are a beautiful unicorn, and  that each of you deserve to be pampered and given wine.  However, we don't always feel that way and every small error created by you comes with enormous guilt. You end up convincing yourself that somehow your decisions will ultimately change your kids life and it. is. all. your. fault.  I am here to tell you that you are a beautiful and wonderful mom, and you need to keep reminding yourself of that daily.  I know personally I did not, and I still struggle with the mom guilt until this day.  Since I had literally no mother experience before having my first baby, I was always worried I was doing something to hurt the baby.  Even simple things that I needed to take care of myself (like taking a shower or you know... sleeping) made me feel like I wasn't putting my son first.  That is simply not true!  You can't take care of that little person if you also don't take care of yourself.  Just make sure that you give yourself some time, because that is the only thing that kept me going!

The biggest thing I have learned?  At the end of the day, you are never going to be 100% prepared for a baby.  No blog is going to tell you what you are going to experience, how you are going to feel, what situations you will be put in, and what is best for you or your new family.  Take it one day at a time, drink some coffee and wine, catch up on your TV shows (I watched all of the Vampire Diaries when I was awake at 4 in the morning), bitch to your mom friends (and if you don't have mom friends find some so you can combine drinking wine and talking about your baby's poop habits with one another), and breathe.

Did I miss anything?  Let me know below!

- Jax