There are a million things I wish I knew before becoming a mother. How to transfer a sleeping baby to a crib. How to prevent cradle cap. How to make plans and see friends when your infant naps 4 times a day but doesn’t sleep at night. But those are things better learned than told. Here a few a few things that I wish I could go back in time and tell myself.
Your Body Will Change
I’m not talking “your belly will get bigger”. I mean: expect to buy new bras and be shocked at what’s in them. Expect to relearn how to get dressed. Expect to need to buy new shoes because your old ones don’t fit. (These are all good things, if you want a new wardrobe!) And your body may or may not change back to what it was, and either way is okay.
You Will (Eventually) Stop Leaking Milk
I started leaking milk around 20 weeks pregnant. I absolutely did not expect that. I am still breastfeeding her at 21 months and fortunately I do not randomly leak milk constantly anymore. That is something to look forward to!
You Will Sleep Again (ish)
For me, the sleeplessness started in pregnancy with insomnia and waking up frequently to vomit, ugh. This season passes. Though my daughter does wake up at the crack of dawn, at least she mostly sleeps through the night. And I nap with her, so I am pretty blessed.
You Won’t Remember a Life Without Your Baby
This is the weirdest thing to me and I don’t know if it is normal. I can’t remember a time that I didn’t know my daughter. In all my memories, she is there.
You Have to Prepare Yourself to Make the Life You Want
I really wanted a natural birth with no pain medication but I did nothing to prepare for it. Within the first few hours after my water broke, I asked for an epidural. There’s nothing wrong with an epidural but my birth didn’t go the way I wanted because I didn’t prepare for it. If I want to be a mom that spends time outside, I have to schedule outside time. If I want to avoid screen time, I have to prepare myself to find different ways to occupy my baby. Before pregnancy I had the ideal that because it is natural to be a mother, it would be effortless. I was wrong, obviously. It requires effort. Lots of it. (It is worth every ounce.)
The Anxiety… Subsides
During pregnancy, I had a lot of worries. Is my baby growing? After pregnancy, I had a lot of worries. Is my baby breathing? During the first year all I had was worries. If she would wake up the next morning, if her rash was fatal, if she would ever talk, or roll over, or make eye contact. She did all of those things and more.
I still worry, of course. They say a mother’s job is to worry. But, I worry a lot less. It is nowhere near the all encompassing anxiety of the newborn phase. That passes! I wish I had known that.
Breastfeeding Gets Easier
SO much easier. Like, light-years easier. AND it starts to feel like a super power when your baby latches and immediately stops crying, or immediately goes to sleep. It is in incredibly intimate feeling, and also, powerful. Wow, my body just knocked this baby out on vibes alone.
I was not at all prepared for the pain of my milk coming in for the first time 3 days postpartum. I assumed because I had already been leaking milk/colostrum for months that my body was already acclimated to making milk. I was wrong. It hurt (for me)– I don’t know if it hurts for everyone but I wish I had been more prepared to deal with that. And I wish I had known that the pain was very short-lived.
All in all, I wish I had believed everyone when they said the days are long but the years are short. Coming up on my daughter’s second birthday has me feeling so nostalgic and wistful. Everything changes with a child and it is all better than before. Even the hard parts. My “hard” now is a thousand times better than my “hard” before my baby.
As always: stay wild & thank you for reading<3
