What was the biggest shock after having a baby?

[Thefaceofboe]

Mine was that babies don’t necessarily go to bed around 7pm. I always presumed bath and bed would be done at 7pm and baby would wake up for the day at 7am. My 3mo does 11pm - 11am

The bone drenching utter utter dogged exhaustion.
The layers upon layers upon layers of it with absolutely no chink of respite, ever.
The weeks of this turning into months turning into years of complete and absolute zero sleep.

How lonely and alone you will be.

The sideways sympathy nod re the lack of sleep along side the no offer from anyone to do anything at all to give you even one hour of respite.
How angry and bitter that makes you.

How difficult it is given your exhaustion to go and get a loaf of bread and pint of milk.

How your guts twist in a million ways when you enter the supermarket because you have no bread or milk and the screaming baby starts. How managing this, queuing up behind 10 people doing their months shopping while you rock a screaming baby in the pram waiting will test your sanity to the max.

How you love the bones of this little one but at the same time want to run away, far away.

How obsessed I am with my baby!
How much I actually just love being a mum. I knew I always wanted children and looked forward to it but I didn't realise how much I would love every single day and every time I look at my baby. sounds a bit OTT and embarrassing but when my baby smiles or laughs it means the absolute world to me.

That when other mums said 'every baby is different' they were absolutely right - and this thread shows it so well. It's affected by a variety of things you do, the feeding, the set up, the sharing of responsibilities etc, but ultimately they are little humans not robots and if they're velcro babies or non-nappers life can be just as hard as if they weren't great night sleepers. They actually do have a mind of their own and sometimes you get an easier ride and sometimes harder, from day one.

the opinions and reviews they give off your parenting style 18 years later.

The sleep deprivation. Awful.

Being unwell when caring for a baby/toddler.

My dd was about 9 months old and I had a D&V bug. Literally, every time I sat up for a full 20 hours I would vomit and retch. I remember crawling along the floor with my sick bucket to go and sort her a bottle of milk and laying on her bedroom floor for 2 hours, trying to muster the courage to lift her out the cot and I just couldn't move without vomiting. She watched tv on my phone a lot that day. There was no one at all in the area to help me. A real low point.

The moment he first cried and it was suddenly real in a way it hadn’t been before. The difficulty in doing anything normal those first few weeks. I remember our first shopping trip and I had to stop to feed about five times! Found my next babies far easier as i had an idea when that stage ended but that first time I was in shock that this could be my life forever now.

The tiredness - no wonder sleep deprivation is a known method of torture

How little my ( now ex) helped- he was either at work Or in the pub for the first 3months

I was expecting a lot more input from the medical professionals after - it was very much a case of you’ve got a healthy baby get on with it ( I had post birth injuries - that still trouble me 19 years later no
One believed me )

The loneliness was just awful

But there were many many good things that surprised me too
How fast they grow into little people with their own personalities
How much you love them - the protective thing was awesome
How funny small kids can be often unintentionally

Mine are teenagers now and still surprising me on a daily basis

How empty my stomach felt afterwards

@StarfishDish

How empty my stomach felt afterwards

This was so weird! I felt so off-balance, like when you have an ear infection and your balance goes.

@EishetChayil Such a bizarre feeling isn't it! I couldn't describe the feeling to my husband but you've described it perfectly.

Saying that, my stomach isn't empty now. 10 months later and almost 3 stone put on

Directly after having my first, I was in total shock when my placenta refused to come out, and I had to go to theatre to have an actual human hand (and arm I guess) inserted into my uterus to scrape it out. No one told me that was even a thing.

@CrimbleCrumble1

How hard the night feeds were so I got my three in a routine and they slept short nights eg 11-5 without waking at 8 weeks and then 12 hours by 10 weeks. Each time when my DC were 7 weeks I thought I can’t cope with this tiredness anymore.

How did you do this? Be interested in a routine also, have a couple of books, but not sure how to start. Im due next month so a bit clueless!

How they still don't sleep a year in the sheer bone crushing exhaustion of a year of broken sleep. I thought by 6 months they'd sleep through a solid 12 hours.....hahahahaha

I was also shocked at how well DS slept. I was prepared to be exhausted and then he started sleeping 5 hours at a stretch at a few weeks old. I actually had to wake him up at 3am to feed. Which he HATED.

He's 2.5 now and he still loves his sleep. The only times he doesn't sleep like a log are when he's ill.

That no one will ever, EVER step in and help.

I’m a lone parent and my children are adults now. I’m still waiting...

How long the recovery is. I couldn't walk properly for about 3 weeks and was bleeding for 6 ish? No one had ever told me that would happen so it was a huge shock but now seems so obvious.

That i didn’t enjoy the toast! Everyone bangs on about how good the toast after birth is. Nope.

Highly embarrassingly I didn't realise that baby boys were born with testicles.
I was expecting to see just a little penis and was quite shocked to see the extra "bits" there.

I thought they didn't arrive until puberty, when "your balls dropped"

Oh how the delivery room laughed, and the recovery ward, and the NICU... I am not usually a ditsy person but that story followed us around the hospital

I feel like such an idiot, but I didn't realise that you needed to help babies go back to sleep. I knew they woke up loads, but in my head you fed them/changed them, and then tucked them back in bed, after which they quietly nodded off. The hours of pacing and jiggling and rocking and swaddling and shushing were a very unwelcome surprise.

@Afflecksbungalow

That i didn’t enjoy the toast! Everyone bangs on about how good the toast after birth is. Nope.

I didn’t even get the bloody toast! Or tea! Twice! Wonder if I will this time.

They also leave the unbuttered toast out of reach and then quickly leave ! I don’t think I’ve managed to eat one breakfast in hospital!

That my life was totally changed. When DH went back to work and I was still at home looking after the baby and recovering from birth it hit me so heavily that this was my life now and it had changed massively. Sure DH's life had changed too but less dramatically as he had the consistency of being back at work.

The sleep deprivation is unreal.

The loneliness - being dropped by friends when I became pregnant, and then a few more melted away after baby was born. And no, I wasn’t the kind of person who talks about the baby all the time so that it drove people away.

How many friends you lose

How sleep deprivation makes you suicidal