Bringing Home Baby: Expectations Vs. Reality
When I was pregnant with my first child, I had sky-high expectations for how certain things would go once we brought her home from the hospital. Of course I had heard horror stories about sleepless nights, nursing difficulties, leaky boobs and a deflated post-partum stomach but obviously, it would all be different FOR ME. I would be the shining exception to every crappy “bringing home baby” rule. My house would be neat and tidy, my baby would be held for hours and doted on and I would bounce back to normal, lickity split.
Except, no. Not at all. Not even remotely close, in fact. I won’t say it was a horror show but my first few weeks as a mother were definitely not the sunshine-filled, rainbow-tinted tableau I had assumed they would be. It was just very real and so totally devoid of the veneer of adorableness that Pinterest and moms who lie about how #blessed they are on Facebook had led me to believe it would be.
I am about to do a comparison of my imagined life post-baby and my actual life post-baby. I do not spare you any of it because that is what I am here for. Hang on tight, because here we go- bringing home baby: expectations vs. reality:
The Drive Home From The Hospital
Expectation:
Reality:
I thought it would be the happiest car ride of our lives but I was too busy losing it every time we hit a bump to enjoy it.
Breastfeeding
telegraph.com.ukReality:
I “gave up” nursing so many times in the first days we brought our babies home. Without a nurse or lactation consultant there to assist me, I felt lost and inept. It was so not the blissful and “natural” process I had been snowed into thinking it would be.
First Night’s Sleep
Reality:
I thought we would get our daughter to nod off so easily- I mean, we had all the baby sleep paraphernalia that Babies R Us had to offer! She still had the nerve to stubbornly refuse to fall asleep without a few hours of pacing and burping and feeding.
Dressing The Baby
Reality:
A miserable, naked baby was a very common sight at our house after we brought our son home. He pooped so frequently and hated being messed with anyway so being that it was summer, we let him go with only a diaper on pretty often. So glad people bought us all those perfectly coordinated baby outfits that he barely ever wore!
How I Would Look In My Clothes
Reality:
Ok, I never actually thought I would look like Beyonce, mid-concert, but I was under the mistaken delusion that I would look normal again relatively quickly. I blame the media’s obsession with post-baby bodies. I really did think that belly would disappear when the baby did. Le sigh.
The State Of My House
Reality:
I thought that because of my awesome husband and our awesome pre-planning and our awesome ability to keep our house clean pre-kids that there was no way mess would invade our house. I was wrong. So very fucking wrong.
(Image: Inara Prusakova/Shutterstock)
