Last updated on July 26th, 2023 at 03:01 pm
My foray into motherhood, I thought, should have been gently cushioned by the years I’ve spent juggling the unexpected needs of children while teaching and substitute teaching. Yet instead of the smooth transition into this new role, it felt more like a crash landing. On a remote island. With hostile weather conditions.
Here were the biggest surprises I encountered when becoming a mom:
I wasn’t prepared for the avalanche of post-birth hormones
For the first three weeks of my daughter’s life, I wept randomly, uncontrollably and without warning. I probably terrified my husband with these sudden bursts of emotion. I’d cry for time to do something other than hold the baby and then once free to do that thing, I’d get teary eyedd wanting to return to holding the baby.
And contrary to the chill mom self I had envisioned previous to my daughter’s outside entrance, I became the Don’t Touch My Baby mom. Also, don’t breathe on her wrong or look at her funny.
These uncharacteristic reactions seemed to melt away after the first few weeks, but I can’t really explain their origin other than maybe hormones. I was aware of the feelings, anxiety and depression that can set in postpartum, but I didn’t know how this felt until the weight of it was crushing me like an elephant on my chest.
I was ill-equipped to handle the reality of sleep deprivation
Being sleep deprived is another thing I theoretically knew going into new motherhood, but I ultimately lacked a true understanding until we were in the thick of it.
This is probably why pregnant me bristled when people told me to “enjoy sleep while I could” because a. sleeping while pregnant is already not so enjoyable and b. I thought, I know! I’m expecting the not sleeping thing based on a lifetime of secondhand knowledge acquired through Hollywood productions and also the handful of books I read in preparation for this monumental life change.
I knew, but I didn’t really know, you know?
When our sweet daughter came, we were hit with a timely triblend of sleep depriving factors: usual newborn needs + jaundice + breastfeeding issues. This flurry of events kept us busy around the clock.
My husband, in a sleepless fog, walked into a wall one night.
After two weeks, I was getting pretty intense heart palpitations, presumably from a lack of sleep, and I wound up in the ER.
Breastfeeding was not the cakewalk I wished it to be
When I was pregnant, I read books about and studied breastfeeding. Research has always been fun, casual pasttime for me. I operate on the assumption (I’ll credit my years of training in the school system for instilling this belief) that researching something means I’ll enjoy success in whichever topic: Study hard, and get the A.
Until you study and study and don’t even get the B.
While books like “Ina May’s Guide to Breastfeeding” were informative and inspirational, immersing myself in those kinds of texts and viewpoints solidified the Exclusive Breastfeeding ideal for me. The flip side of that became the crushing notion that I was failing if I couldn’t exclusively breastfeed.
For reasons I can’t wholly pin down, I was unable to provide the entire supply baby needed.
I worked for months trying to coax an increase in supply. We were concocting supposed supply-inducing recipes and triple feeding (a true joy!) and computing elaborate milk math.
We began our complicated but ultimately very fortunate multistep dance of combining my milk with donor milk and formula to feed our baby.
Really, we were so blessed to have these different options available to us. It wasn’t what I planned, but it was still more than adequate to keep her healthy and fed.
It wasn’t what I planned, but it was still more than adequate to keep her healthy and fed.
Charmaine
I was surprised by which baby products we actually used
When I heard that newborns sometimes scratch their faces and so there are little baby mittens you can get that cover their whole hands like miniature boxers I was on top of that concern.
I added these crucial safety devices to the baby registry, and we were lucky to receive a pack of like 100 baby mittens in an impressive array of colors. We were so ready for any possible face scratching situation.
But our girl never really tore up her face. We tried outfitting her with the safety gear, but they were too big, and flopped off her teeny hands uselessly.
There were other items I never dreamed we’d want or need, and yet– the situations demanded it.
Take, for example, a wipe warmer. In times past, this seemed to me like an unnecessary luxury item. But when our daughter would scream during midnight diaper changes, with that howl that pierced our tender new parent hearts, I desperately tried to problem-solve. Could it be the shock of the frigid wipes causing this intense discomfort?
We bought the wipe warmer. The graveyard-shift changing screams continued for a bit, then petered off. We have no pile of evidence suggesting correlation meant causation here, but I suppose this product did what we wanted– warmed the wipes and gave us a small but victorious sense that we were helping our daughter.
What the curveballs of new motherhood taught me
Just because I studied these aspects of new motherhood (sleep deprivation! breastfeeding!) doesn’t mean I was necessarily prepared for them. Knowledge is useful, to be sure. But I should have also made concrete plans. I should have set up systems for more help. We should have found a way to keep my husband home from work longer.
I was so lucky to get some help from friends, family and my community. I get teary-eyed just thinking of their simple acts of love: delivering warm homemade chicken soup or going with me and baby to appointments or helping me clean and get groceries.
If the surprises of new motherhood taught me anything, it’s how to best help new mamas out. And how to prepare myself if there’s a number 2.
Readers, what are your experiences? Did you breeze through some of these or were they a struggle for you, too?
