6 Things I Wasn’t Prepared for as a New Mom

From getting sick to self-care, breastfeeding, & social media

Estimated reading time: 10 minutes

I have wonderful friends who are moms, many of whom were moms before me, and they were at the ready to offer tons of advice before Penelope’s arrival. This advice went beyond what to put on one’s registry and ‘sleep when baby sleeps’ – they provided graphic (i.e. HELPFUL) descriptions of labor, delivery, postpartum care, breastfeeding.

All of it was so appreciated, and all of it made me feel a wee bit more ready. However, as I reflect now with an almost-nine-month-old (WHAT), there are six things that I truly wasn’t ready for and didn’t receive advice about as I anticipated (and even agonized about) stepping into my role as a mother.

Estimated reading time: 10 minutes

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I’ve been way more sick than I’ve ever been sick before.

I rang in my 33rd birthday with a raging fever & body aches…three weeks after I had the stomach flu and two months after I had a horrible sinus infection.

My immune system is usually pretty resilient, and in the last five years, I can remember maybe four times I’ve been bed-ridden sick.

However, thanks to the combination of baby girl attending daycare five days a week, not having had a full night’s sleep in over eleven months, and being back to work full-time/teaching yoga part-time, my immune system has been under fire this winter. Slash on fire.

Sometimes, as a neat bonus, right when Penelope’s mouth is open and I think she’s about to sing or show off some other inevitably cute new skill, she’ll instead sneeze down my throat.

Or when I pick her up from daycare, she’ll stop, joyously bop over, and then put her whole hand – which moments before was elbow-deep in a bucket of daycare blocks – directly into my mouth.

I do think one friend explicitly told me that I’d get this sick and this often, but maybe I forgot or put it out of memory. I just.wasn’t.ready for it.

Because I’m nursing, I can’t really take anything. But I will offer the following:

• The saline nasal rinse/spray bottle has been a life-saver to stave off additional sinus infections. It’s basically the NetiPot in the form of a spray bottle…which I personally find easier to use than the pot/spout.
• Boogie Wipes are equally awesome because they HAVE the saline spray ON them. They say they’re for kids and babies…and my husband and I now use these for ourselves.
• If your doctor agrees with this, take a probiotic (my midwife recommended & I really like Garden of Life).
• If your doctor agrees with this, take Vitamin D.

Don’t let social media fool you.

How’s that baby sleeping through the night? Is their baby eleven months old and housing an entire broccoli stalk and bowl of quinoa? Is mama ever sick or tired? Have they been on five date nights and like twelve international vacations post-baby? Is her skin the skin of a goddess?

How does she have THREE babies and look like that, make that much money, live in that spotless & #bohoinspired Pinterest-worthy home? How, internet? RIDDLE ME THIS INTERNET.

“Comparison is the thief of joy.”

We all do this to some degree, yes? It’s scary how fast I can fly into the dark back tunnels of Instagram wondering how I ended up searching for and then following hashtags like #kardashians4lyfe, #justinandhaileybieber, #yogainspiration (I mean…just incredible & inspiring shit), and #makeuptutorial (…can anyone teach a girl how to contour??…).

Even though we all know and even tell ourselves that social media is a carefully curated version – an illusion – of daily life, that online personas are good at avoiding the scary, filthy, tear-filled, lonely, mind-numbing, otherwise ridiculous moments of motherhood and parenting, we spend ample time on IG and FB anyway. Esp at 3:47am. 🙃

Questions I should be asking myself & mom advice I try to tell myself:

• Am I:
  • enjoying and paying close attention to this stage of Penelope?
  • asking for help?
  • being supportive of other strong women in my life?
  • putting decent foods into my body?
  • not feeling guilty if I can’t always put decent foods into my body?
• What part of today will be:
  • just for me?
  • just be for me & my partner?
  • just for P & me?
• When I reach for my phone, can I reach for the New Yorker or my book or audiobook instead?
• Or if I really need to veg, can I sit quietly and practice mindfulness for ten minutes?
• Or…if I really need some Netflix or HGTV, can I be okay with that, too?
• I can slow down, pay attention, and think first about my choice before the action becomes automatic or rote…aka mindless.
• I am a good mom.
• I am doing my best.

All of these questions and declarative statements are a part of my yoga practice, and to really slow down enough to believe these things, this is the practice, a little bit every day.

One’s daily sanity matters: #selfcare

Walking on the W & OD Trail during one of P’s naps…and yes, that tree ACTUALLY looks like that in October

I’ll loop back to that age-old instruction for new moms (sleep when the baby sleeps’) and why this new mom advice rarely worked for me.

It wasn’t because I didn’t try. I did. However, when P did finally sleep for one of her middle-of-the-day naps, it was hard for me to settle my mind toward sleep, knowing full well that her naps were short and I’d have to wind back up quickly and be ready for the wake, nurse, burp, cry (sometimes both of us), play, poop cycle to begin again.

New mom advice? Figure out what you need during nap time, and then do that thing.

What did begin to work were doing other things I needed — for me — during those naps. There were a lot of long walks with the stroller. Hot showers (…I’d put the car seat with a sleeping baby on the bathroom threshold…). Drinking tea & eating dark chocolate.

A FACE MASK (so many good ones from Credo, my favorite/the best online store I’ve found for clean makeup & skincare). Although not sleep, these were nevertheless mental resets, and I needed them.

There was stuff I didn’t realize I would need.

I have tried to KonMari our life to a degree, especially because our house is small and didn’t believe in closets or storage when built 120 years ago.

P & I in baby jail. CHEERS.

Even so, there were baby items that we received (that now appear on the registry I wish I’d had).

And there have been several items I had no idea I’d want or need at about four or five months but that have been super duper helpful since purchasing.

In other words, baby jail is clutch, y’all.

Breastfeeding is hard, required patience (for me), and may not be how you feed your baby.

…Duh. So let me elaborate.

The best advice I received about breastfeeding was from the woman who ran the free parenting education classes at the hospital where we delivered.

“Are you planning to breastfeed your baby?” We all said nothing, but Breastfeeding 101 was the name of the class. Sooo…for the most part, yes.

“Good. So first you’ll have a baby.” Lots of blinking parents.

“After that, you, moms, will pick up your baby.” Increased blinking.

“Or partners, you will hand the baby to mom. And then, moms, you will try to put the baby up to your breast and feed the baby. It might go really well. It probably won’t the first several dozen times. If mentally you can and you want to, keep trying. Keep picking her up. She is your baby.”

Breastfeeding isn’t like the Movies

This is like…utterly inane advice in so many ways. But I love this woman (who’s also a lactation consultant and mother of six) because it was actually the best advice ever and exactly what I needed to hear.

One can and should most definitely seek support from a lactation consultant and the nurses, who equally know a ton, but it’s not like the movies.

Someone isn’t going to come in to coach you through every breastfeeding attempt, and I don’t really think I ever thought about this until this woman spelled it out for us.

I took this advice about breastfeeding. I tried. She tried. We tried. We failed. We tried more. And we failed more. For us, it’s what ultimately worked.

But breastfeeding required patience and sustained effort, attempt after attempt after attempt.

Even though Penelope was “latching pretty well” according to a wonderful lactation consultant, breastfeeding hurt so bad in those first three weeks that I wasn’t sure I could sustain it. I thought my nipples were cracking off. I cried a lot.

Epsom Salt Boob Baths. Not Kidding.

The LC thankfully recommended that I start doing epsom salt (the plain kind….no scent) boob baths three to four times a day, and thank all the goddesses for these. They saved my nipples, my confidence, and my relationship with breastfeeding.

As for breastfeeding on the whole, I tried to remain open to two things:

• 1) That we would find our groove and it would work for us, or
• 2) We wouldn’t find a groove and we’d make the switch to formula.

I really wanted breastfeeding to work, but I was actually good with either scenario playing out. And I think that in many ways, not being overly attached to breastfeeding is what allowed us to be successful.

So that’s my new mom advice (which you can definitely take or definitely leave): if you are mentally able to keep trying (and you want to keep trying), keep trying to breastfeed. If it works for you and your baby, awesome. And if it doesn’t? Formula is also awesome and feeds babies, too.

My postpartum body is just…different.

Daily arm workout, May 2019

Obviously. There was a BABY in this body. And since having her, I have been able to regain a ton of strength and also build a lot of new strength.

Read one yogini’s thoughts about her yoga practice before baby & after baby

But I still wasn’t truly prepared for lots more squishiness in places there was never squishiness, boobs that can literally sag to my shins when I bend over for something with my shirt have off (LOL), and all kinds of extra skin that’s just…extra…and looks super weird when it’s no longer stretched over a baby bump.

All of it, though, is beautiful evidence of how absolutely incredible women’s bodies are and a reminder that I grew a HUMAN BEING and birthed her out of my body, smack into this crazy, crazy world. Wild.

Is any of this new mom advice helpful? Are these six things that you were also ill-prepared for as a new mom? What were you ready for? Questions or comments? Share below!