Pregnancy is a magical time in a woman’s life. She carries life inside her belly, loves her child even before meeting him, and gets to experience how strong the female body truly is. This period comes with an intense few months of preparing for the nursery, getting all the baby’s needs from clothing to car seats and everything in between, and is so overwhelming that the mother to be rarely has any time to think about the due date itself and what life will be like during the first month after delivery.
Hospital:
The first couple of days at the hospital everything is a haze. Nurses check up on the new mom, the baby sleeps away from her and allows her to rest, he is brought to the room when he needs to be fed, and she is sedated from the pain as she smiles at family and friends who come over to congratulate the parents. At best, the mother will get two nights while nurses bring her meals, teach her how to bather her newborn and had out brochures for lactating techniques and good nutrition.
Home:
Once the couple head home is where the real work starts, because the former quiet home has become filled with a bundle of joy whose needs must be met immediately. Here, the mother learns how self sacrificial she is, and that deserves lifelong praise. She has just given birth and can barely stand up, but instead of resting her body and getting some solid sleep, she forgets her pain and dedicates her time to her precious baby. She will worry that he is hungry as she learns to nurse him from her milk, she might choose to formula feed and panic when her baby refuses the bottle, she will try with all her might to caress the baby for him to feel he is at home outside of the womb, and once he falls asleep for a couple of hours at most, she must tend to guests who arrived to wish her well.
Reality:
There is no night or day, there is a continuous frenzy of tears, bath time, bottles, dishes, laundry and diapers, and this cycle repeats itself. There are times during the day where she should tend to her surgical wounds and also take some painkillers, and she should really be eating properly but most likely is not because her attention is focused on the life she helped bring into this world. She will worry her baby has colic, she will fear SIDS, she will be on call for breastfeeding during late hours of the night. But amidst all this chaos, the home is filled with love, and the new mother realizes what she never thought would happen: loving another human being more than life itself.
Maria Najem
Photo: mommybites.com
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