Day 24 - It’s called post-partum baby!

It happened after the “babymoon,” two weeks after Jake was born. Everything was perfect. I stared for hours on end at the little precious being that I had created. I was overjoyed to finally meet this tiny person that had lived inside me for 9 months. I wondered who he was, what he would become and who he would look like. I was totally captivated by his every little movement and jumped at every coo! I was in a swoony, blissful haze! I was in love! And, the icing on the cake was that I could finally sleep on my stomach. Heaven!

Skip to a couple of weeks later…

The happy, swoony hormones from my delivery were levelling off and were all wonky. My emotions like my house were now a complete and total disaster. My little precious little wonder looked less like a baby and more like a parasite that required constant feeding and diaper changing, needed to be held around the clock, and squawked whenever I put him down. I couldn’t remember when I had last showered and how long I had been wearing my pyjamas. I wondered whether the black circles under my eyes had become a permanent fixture. And, my boobs hurt! I couldn’t figure out what hurt most, the fact that they might explode or the feeling that someone had tried to sandpaper my nipples off. I wondered when I would get my figure back because I wasn’t keen on the stomach flap and the stretch marks that looked like a road map to my belly button. I mourned the loss of my old life. The one where I could party all night, sleep in, do what I wanted when I wanted. You know the life that had zero responsibility!

The hurt, hormones, sleeplessness, dark circles, flabby skin, crying, poopy diapers and constant caregiving is what postpartum is all about! It plain sucks…period! Here is some consolation, however. Every mommy goes through it! It’s like a right of passage to mommyhood. If you can handle post-partum you can pretty much handle anything your little monsters to throw at you. The “suckiness,” although “sucky,” is brief (and, like the actual act of childbirth will become a vague memory). Most things get resolved with time. And, what doesn’t go away, you just adjust to. Those little bundles of poopy messes and spit up are really easy to get attached to. They have a way of making you forget about your old life was like. Soon, you will wonder how you could have ever possibly lived without them. J