Top Ten Surprises about Bringing Home a Newborn

Top 10 Surprises about Bringing Home a Newborn

1. The extra pounds you’ve gained won’t magically disappear with the birth of your newest little joy. Logically, of course, this makes sense. But there will be a part of you that secretly hopes that the removal of a 7 pound baby from your body will somehow equate to a 40 pound weight loss. That part of you will be wrong. Very wrong.

2. The pounds will start melting away within the next few weeks. The joy you will find in stepping on the scale each morning will be moderated only by the nuisance of having had to change your clothes three times in the middle of the night after finding yourself drenched in the sweat that results from the massive amounts of fluids exiting your body.

3. After spending nine months cursing pregnancy-related weight gain, nausea, insomnia, aches and pains, and immobility, you will find your post-pregnancy self suddenly missing being pregnant.

4. All of the worrying you did during pregnancy will not evaporate when baby arrives. Instead, the pregnancy worries will transform into baby worries about how much baby has eaten (probably enough) , when she last pooped (not that long ago), and if a little bit of bleeding around the umbilical cord is normal (it is).

5. The house that you so meticulously cleaned and organized prior to baby’s arrival will become disheveled approximately 3.5 minutes after you walk in the door with your arrival. It will never be clean again.

6. You will find yourself in tears over the latest episode of Wife Swap. You will be grateful that you have the excuses of fluctuating hormones and lack of sleep to blame for this.

7. No matter how intellectual, poised, or driven you were prior to baby’s arrival, there will be a point in time when you find yourself dressed in sweats with unshaven legs trapping a dear friend in a conversation about the color of your child’s last poop. Although you will recognize this as it is happening, you will be powerless to stop it.

8. You will be startled to find that girls can shoot their pee just as far across a room as boys can.

9. Between leaky boobs, leaky diapers, and leaky baby mouths, you will spend a lot of time being wet. You will miss being dry but will be too tired to care enough to change your outfit, especially given that it will only be a matter of minutes before you are wet again.

10. It will all be worth it.