Things about becoming a parent that no tells you
- The sleep deprivation is 100 times worse than anyone will ever tell you. everyone makes jokes while you are pregnant about 'uh oh, no more sleep ins for you,' and 'get ready for those sleepless nights,' its not a joke. It sucks. And it is hard. At the same time you will be amazed at how fast you will now be able to fall asleep and in any position: sitting on the couch, holding your baby, feeding your baby, and all three of those at once. You will pass out holding your newborn and wake hours or minutes later to find them staring at you, and thinking, 'how did I not drop you?' Luckily they can't talk and no one will ever know. Suckers
- You will start to sway out in public. You aren't drunk, no, this is from nights and days of rocking your baby, especially if your baby needs this to fall asleep. You will sway and rock all the time now, even when you are not holding your baby. You will look crazy, and you won't notice. Only other moms will understand and will rock with you.
- If you breast feed, it hurts! It is not the wonderful natural thing you think it will be. At least not right away, eventually if you stick it out, and you are able to, it eventually doesn't hurt anymore and is enjoyable. But at first, your boobs will be huge, and hard, and your nipples get huge and hard, and will crack, split, bleed, look they are going to fall off. Direct showers will hurt, snug bras will be out of the question, don't even think about jumping around, this is not the time. You will spring leaks. I suggest carrying extra bras and shirts with you if you venture out in public. If you are extra leaky, don't bend over, stand near running water, stand in ear shot of a crying baby, look at a baby, think about feeding without expecting to start spraying like a hose. Do have fun with it. See how far you can spray, threaten to add your own milk to your partners coffee, you are milking like a cow, better laugh than feel like a beast.
- You will sing nursery rhymes and children's TV show songs out loud instead of regular normal person music and you will not notice right away.
- Once your baby starts to crawl and walk, you will no longer go to the washroom by yourself. They will come with you, on the bright side, almost all toddlers love to hand you the toilet paper, so its really like you just gained a personal assistant rather than a peeper. And even once they are in bed or distracted, you will still pee with the door open. Its only embarrassing when you do it in front of company for the first time and then need to explain your son/daughter usually comes in with you. Only other moms will realize this is normal and not embarrassing at all. Other adults, especially those without children might stop coming over for dinner.
- Soap operas, celebrities, and gossip magazines get replaced with children's TV shows. You will share with your husband at the dinner table what those silly bananas in pajamas did today, "snacks in bed", those silly bananas what were they thinking!
- Your meals will resemble your toddlers. Where before you might have lunched on gourmet sandwiches, fancy salads or whatever, you will now find you eat peanut butter sandwiches cut in quarters, a hand full of raisins, 2 slices of fruit, and wash it all down with watered down apple juice. So good.
- You will ingest a lot of baby slobber. This sounds gross, but when your baby or toddler runs up and gives you a big sloppy kiss on the face for the first time and it happens to be in your mouth, you will feel so loved you wont care. You will also let them "share" their food with you and will eat their pre-soaked cookies.
- You will eat their food. Yes off their plate if they leave something good. That's not what i mean. I'm referring to when you pack them snacks for going out and then they fall asleep and you are driving home and its been a bit too long since lunch, you will ravage their tiny teddies, pieces of fruit, teething sticks, and small juices. Don't be ashamed, or too good for it, we all do it. Kids snacks are great, always nice little hand fulls, perfect for snacking. Why don't we do up all our food in these tiny portions?
