Things just never seem to turn out how you envision, especially when it comes to parenthood. Here are some of the things that are thus far very different from how I imagined.
Body:
I assumed my entire body would blow up with pregnancy and never regain any semblance to the body I used to have. Part of me just assumed the worst (ED thinking). But I didn’t do that during pregnancy and I am doing fine now. I am not wearing maternity clothes now and my body seems to be the same as it was before, with the exception of my abdomen. That’s going to take some work, I need to heal/repair the abdominal separation I got.
My c-section scar is still bright red and kind of raised up, but I don’t hate it as much as I guessed I would. I have been rubbing Bio-Oil into it twice a day and that seems to be helping the texture of the scar. I don’t know that it’s changing the color yet, but all in due time…
I am frustrated with how my digestive system has taken a hit. I got constipated with pregnancy, something I never experience prior to that. The constipation has gone, but I seem to get bloated really easily. Maybe it has something to do with wolfing down all my meals because I am interrupted by mom duties!
Last week Alex wasn’t feeling well. I evaluated things and realized that I’d been incorporating caffeine into my life once again, in amounts greater than I ingested during pregnancy, just to get by. Well, I’ve cut it out again and the baby seems to be feeling better. I will reintroduce caffeine when she is 3 months old, from reading I’ve done the half-life of caffeine in a person’s system is reduced quite a bit at 3 months. And if she still seems to react, then I’ll reintroduce it at 6 months. Perhaps… maybe by then it won’t have the same appeal to me. My desire to have a happy and healthy baby outweighs my desire for that pick-me-up.
Childcare:
We signed up on SitterCity and posted a job for a nanny. We interviewed several people and none of them felt right and some just outright gave us the creeps. One of our interviewees, when I asked her why she chose to do childcare, said, “It seems better than working at Target or something.” Seriously… that’s going to make me want to put my child in your hands?
It seemed absolutely ridiculous to me that I would drive Alexis somewhere and then come back home to work. But it turns out… that’s exactly what we’re going to do. We found a school close to our home, in fact I used to meet a client for runs at the corner where the school is and never paid any attention to it since kid stuff wasn’t on my radar at that time. But we have enrolled her in school and she starts next week. Yes, this is school… there is a curriculum and kids can attend until they start kindergarten. When the students get a little older they have to wear uniforms. Fortunately I don’t have to do uniform onesies for her!
Diapering:
I thought I wanted to cloth diaper my baby. Mainly due to environmental concerns as well as the health of my child’s skin.
Yeah, there is a part of me that still feels a little guilty about contributing all that waste to her future world. And there is a part of me that is still kind of creeped out by the indicator on diapers to tell you when the child is wet (what weird advancements, where diapers suck away so much moisture people can’t tell they’re wet so we need an external sign).
Well… right now I cannot imagine adding cloth diaper laundry to my life. It seems overwhelming. And due to our school/daycare choice we wouldn’t be able to cloth diaper during those hours. Plus laundry already feels hard… how come I can’t get the sour milk smell out of her stuff?!
Feelings:
Because of how disenchanted with pregnancy I felt, I honestly thought it would take me some time to fall in love with my baby. But it didn’t. She’s amazing and I love her to pieces, that happened right from the moment I laid eyes on her.
I didn’t want to be “that mom” that posts tons of pictures of her child on Facebook… and I have done a pretty good job of refraining. However, I do snap lots of pictures of her and I can’t bear the thought of deleting them. I have no idea what I’ll actually do with all of them either!
Jill Will Run 
So happy for you!
You know your internal organs all shift around a LOT during pregnancy–not only your stomach and intestines, but your kidneys, lungs, even your liver and heart–and it takes about a year for them to all move back to their original positions! So it makes sense to me that your digestive system hasn’t snapped back to normal yet. I bet having Alex at a school, not in your house during the day, will make it a LOT easier for you to work without distraction.
I think I would have found cloth diapering overwhelming with my first kid too. It’s such a HUGE shift, going from zero kids to parenting a baby. Believe it or not, going from one kid to two was a lot easier and less of a shock to the system. It was much easier for me to contemplate cloth diapers with a second kid. Although even then, we didn’t start using them till she was about four months old, and we don’t use them all the time. So you could still start using them later, when you aren’t changing Alex’s diaper every five minutes. They are actually kind of fun to use, believe it or not, and the laundry’s not that bad. (I am in no way judging you for using disposables, though. I’ve used them with both kids! I was just surprised at how cloth diapering was actually kind of fun, and wanted to share that perspective.)
bethany actually It seems like it would be kind of fun. And you’re right, maybe in a couple months I’ll revisit the idea for when she’s not at school. I first started contemplating it years ago after all of Jessica’s posts on Very Mom!
I keep telling myself it will be easier to concentrate, but I’m still scared about actually beginning the school. And as she gets older it will be a good way for her to have other kids to play with! I don’t know a lot of small kids! đŸ™‚
Glad you found a place for Alex! Have you tried adding baking soda to your laundry? Should help with lingering odors and us also said to prevent discoloration in fabrics she spits on.
Thanks for the tip, I’ll try that!
Print out some baby pictures and keep them in a box which will be with you forever full of school pics, art work, report cards etc, which you can then give to her when she moves out on her own.
stub Having a bunch of stuff to give her when she’s older has definitely been on my mind. I’ve been keeping notes on different milestones/developments and pictures associated with those. Then I intend to give that to her when she’s older. Great idea!