You will find a new appreciation for ice packs.
Your legs will feel wobbly and weak - like you just ran 20 miles. The downside is that you will look like you were just drug behind a horse for 20 miles.
You won't know you have to pee until you think about it, then you'll have to pee so bad you can hardly make it to the bathroom. It gets better, but it takes a few days. In the meantime, treat yourself like a 2 year-old that's being potty trained, and go every 30 minutes whether you need to or not.
The belly that wiggles like a bowl full of jelly doesn't belong to Santa...it belongs to a woman who just had a baby. I guess it's due to the sudden expulsion of a small child and instant geographical changes of all of your abdominal contents, but it is weird. Your stomach will slowly tighten back up a little, but it still wiggles, no matter how tight it was before.
The sensation of bending over at the waist is a strange, but welcome one. Being able to reach your feet without having to lean around your stomach is also a novelty. Shaving your legs is a lot easier, and it might happen more frequently now. Maybe, maybe not.
You will again be back in the land of "nothing fits" as far as your clothes go. Maternity stuff will be too big, regular stuff too small. The good thing is that you can wear athletic shorts/sweats/pajama pants for the first couple of weeks and no one will care or think you're being a slob. You just had a baby for crying out loud. You'll want to be comfortable anyway. And they aren't there to see you - they want to see the kid that did all of this to you.
You will have a constant crick in your neck from holding and staring at your little miracle all day. It doesn't get much better, because very soon you'll start lugging the car seat around too. My advice is to build up those muscles before the kid comes along. Not that I followed my own advice, but hey.
What everyone tells you about sleeping when the baby sleeps is a load of crap. It doesn't work that way. By the time the kid goes to sleep, you're dying to take a shower, go pee, eat, or something else just as necessary. Even if you have showered and brushed your teeth already and you actually get a chance to lay down, your mind will be racing so much you can't sleep. No matter that your body still feels like you've been drug 20 miles and you're so tired you don't remember if you did actually brush your teeth or just imagined it.
You never thought that putting a pacifier back in a baby's mouth 8,672 times was a good way to spend your day, but you discover it's the best thing you've ever done.
Too funny. Yeah, the stomach pretty much never, ever returns to the pre-pregnancy flatness. Hence, the increase in the number of tummy tucks in our culture.
ReplyDeleteYou are just gonna have to teach that kid to suck on his thumb. He's getting close to the age when the thumb can easily be substituted for that paci.
Might as well make a standing appointment with the chiropractor...because the other thing you weren't told: Your neck and back will be out of whack the rest of your life. Carrying the the car seat...carrying the kid on your hip for hours on end while you vacuum, talk on the phone and fold the clothes...stretching your neck to see where he is sitting in the dugout...sleeping up in the chair waiting for him to come in :)