People like to give you advice when you’re pregnant. There are a lot of things people warn you about… and you think you know, but that doesn’t mean that you KNOW them. There’s a difference between acknowledging a fact and experiential knowledge. Here are a few of them:
Sleep – They tell you that you will lose sleep, but until you have gone several weeks with only 3 consecutive hours of sleep, you can’t really understand what this means. People warned me, but when you get to the point that the baby wakes up and you are both crying together… you get it. You can’t be told what that’s like.
Sleeping while baby sleeps – Everyone tells you this, but can I just say, it’s not easy to do at all! Even if you’re exhausted, sometimes you just feel the need to be productive and have to get something done! When you just got up an hour ago, it seems silly to go back to sleep. It’s like sleeping until 2 and feeling like you’ve wasted the day.
Staring at baby – People told me that I would just sit and stare at my baby all day. I thought that was silly, sure, I’d love her, but surely I will want to do other things. This may be partially true, but really, most days, I could just sit and hold her for hours.
Somehow, you make it – For the first week or so, it felt like life had ended. I wasn’t sure I would ever get out of the house again. What further confirmed this was that the first time I went out with baby girl on my own, it took me 2 hours longer than normal to get out the door. However, eventually, things normalize and you do eventually resume life, somehow. We’ve made it to church, mostly on time, for the past 3 weeks. We’ve been grocery shopping, and yes, we’ve even had TWO (2) date nights.
Regardless of how difficult it has been to adjust, I love being a mom. I can’t say I’ve loved every minute of it, but I love the whole of it.