10 things that surprised me as a new mom

I have always wanted to be a mom, but I never felt like my life was together enough for such a huge responsibility. I approached other moms who seemed to have struck a good balance between their professional and personal lives. The moms I spoke to told me that no one is ever truly ready to have a baby, because life is never perfect. Each baby is unique and every mom is different. Even though no amount of preparation will make you ‘ready’ to have a baby, it can be one of the most fun, loving, happy and fulfilling experiences of your life. That convinced me. I prepared the best I could but, as anticipated, there were many details I missed. Here is a list of the things that came as a surprise to me:

1. Labor pain: Everyone knows that labor is painful and intense. What I found out was that, for me, labor would be like the worst period cramps imaginable – and then some! 
2. Baby bump: Your baby bump will take its own sweet time to go down. My baby is seven months old, and I still look about four months pregnant. 
3. Postpartum cramps: I am not sure if this happened to me because I had a C-section, or if it happens to all new moms. But I had terrible cramps (similar to labor pains) in the first week postpartum, and they intensified every time I breastfed. 
4. Breastfeeding pain: Breastfeeding is painful in the beginning. I had sore, cracked nipples and every feed was extremely painful. No nipple cream seemed to work. I met with a lactation consultant who showed me how to massage my breasts to open up more pores, and she showed me how rubbing my breast milk on the nipple would help the bruised nipple. That worked for me. 
5. Hormonal imbalances: I had heard so much about pregnancy mood swings that I kept expecting them to show up during my pregnancy. But they never did. On the other hand, I did not hear much about postpartum mood swings. So I was unpleasantly surprised to find that I was unusually sensitive, and that every little unplanned detail (very common with a newborn) would make me cry. 
6. Appetite: Your appetite will increase significantly and you will not get time to eat your meals in peace. For some reason, almost every meal (for the first month or so) was interrupted by my crying son. Changing my meal timings didn’t seem to help either. I learned to inhale my food and, although my son no longer disturbs me during meals, I still do!
7. Spit ups: Spit ups are very common among babies. The first time it happened, I freaked out as I thought he was unwell and ‘throwing up’. But I learned that it happens frequently and is normal in healthy babies.
8. Strange habits of a newborn: There are certain things that your newborn might do, that you might find strange at first. For example, twitching is apparently common. In the beginning, I thought my newborn was having nightmares, or was getting scared easily. Swaddling helped but he hated being swaddled, so we just waited for the twitching to go away on its own. Another strange habit my newborn displayed was animal-like sounds and loud laughter when sleeping. This scared me in the beginning but, again, I learned that this is common.
9. Baby boy pee: Your baby boy’s pee can go all over the place. The first time I changed my son’s diaper, I was rewarded with a fountain of pee on my face. And recently he has started to hold and play with his wee-wee during diaper changes. I was worried at first, but apparently this is very common among baby boys.
10. Lastly, moms are on call 24/7, yet our work will almost always go unnoticed. A mom can be functioning on two to three hours of sleep, breastfeed every couple of hours, change diapers 10 times a day, soothe a crying baby, and deal with all the other necessities for the baby, and get zero recognition. Yet a dad doing a single diaper change will be applauded. I was not expecting this in a fairly progressive family, but this is common in our society. It may not be right but I’ve realized that I can be a better mom when I make my peace with that.