What you don’t get told about having a baby

alisonkathrynlee - 5 May 19

Throughout my pregnancy and when I became a first time mum, I experienced so many side-effects, emotions, thoughts and situations that had never crossed my mind or come up in antenatal classes.

Let’s start with the effects on your body.

Hair. It will grow out of everywhere. Pros are that the hair on your head will be the shiniest and thickest its ever been. But that will also happen in other areas of your body, including sprouting out of places that had never been hairy. In contrast to that, you will lose hair after birth. I found it worse when I stopped breastfeeding, and I now have really attractive tufts of hair along my hairline.

Next up, skin tags. Just having a relaxing bath halfway through pregnancy, found skin tags in my armpit, panicked and then found out from Google that it is normal. Thanks pregnancy.

Let’s move onto night sweats. These were HORRENDOUS. About a week after birth I sweated profusely at night for about a fortnight. I asked my mum, she thought I was going mad, I spoke to a friend, she said I might be getting mastitis. I finally spoke to my cousin who had given birth only a few months prior and she had them too! A sigh of relief that I wasn’t coming down with some freak illness.

Let down spray. Oh the hilarity of a screaming baby, a painfully full boob, and the sudden uncontrolable spurting from your nipple across the car as you unclip your bra. I’ve spent a long time cleaning up random spurts I’ve found months after stopping breastfeeding.

The due date IS A LIE! Unless you were anyone who was having a baby near me who did happen to give birth on time. Oh the jealousy. My due date came… and went. 14 days, an induction and a near cesarean later, he was born. Along with that were the constant messages of “is he here yet?” and “have you not given birth yet?”.

The most painful experience I went through was the baby screaming anxiety. When you’re stand-still in traffic and baby is hungry and screaming in the back seat and there is nothing you can do in that moment in time. As someone who has not had much experience of anxiety, I was surprised at the strength of the anxiety it brought on. All I can say is it does get better over time, and you can pull over five minutes later and feed them (and experience the aforementioned let down spray across your car).

I was fortunate in that I did not experience Post-natal depression. The dark cloud lingered over me several times, black and heavy, but soon passed. I hadn’t learnt much about taking care of yourself after the birth, when you have become a mother. My education of it was through the raw posts of strong females on Instagram, educating me and making me realise that you are still human. Yes, you are now responsible for a whole other life but you need to look after yourself too. You have been shaken up and things aren’t in the same place they once were, but you are still you. Take any opportunity to give yourself some you time. Self care prevents you from burning yourself out, benefitting all those around you.

Whatever weird and wonderful things your body and mind are going through during this chapter in your life, you are not alone.

alisonkathrynlee

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