The part in The Good Earth where the heroine gives birth, silently, and then goes back to work in the fields 20 minutes later? That’s fiction.
And she does it twice. That’s science fiction.
BZ, after you give birth, you have the following things to deal with:
First and foremost, your body goes through a raging hormonal storm, which in only a few weeks basically restores your default hormone levels to their pre-pregnancy state. Bear in mind that these hormones had nine slow months to get fully rigged for “pregnancy”, and breaking them down to “not pregnant” is not easy on you. It usually takes a brief, hectic four to six weeks. For some women, it’s like an attack of the PMS That Ate Cleveland, the PMS Godzilla, the PMS Thing From Beyond Space. It’s familiarly known as the “baby blues”.
You cry for no reason, bursting into tears standing there in the middle of the kitchen floor because you only have one box of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese to cook for supper and you wanted to cook two boxes.
If your bottom is sore from the episiotomy (the small incision that’s sometimes made to facilitate the passage of the baby through the vulva), or from hemorrhoids that you got from pushing during late-stage labor, you cry even harder.
You haven’t had normal sex with your husband in about four months–for the entire last trimester, your belly (and its inhabitant) has been a huge, silent participant in your awkward couplings. You wonder if when you do resume normal sex, your vagina will be too stretched out for him to feel anything. You’re still 30 pounds overweight. The only pre-pregnancy clothes you have that fit are your workout sweats and your collection of extra-large “U.S. Olympic Beer-Drinking Team” t-shirts that you used to wear for painting the garage and digging up the flowerbeds. Your breasts are huge, and not in a good way. You cry even harder.
Then the baby starts to cry, and nothing you can do seems to make him happy. If you’re a first-time mother, caring for a newborn can be overwhelming. In earlier eras, most girls got some experience with babies by caring for infant siblings and cousins and neighbors’ kids, but not anymore. And there’s a limit to how much help a “So Now You’re A Mom!” baby manual can give you. He’s not wet, he’s not hungry, he’s not cold, he’s not being stuck with a pin. What on earth is the matter with him? You don’t have any idea.
You stand there in the middle of the kitchen floor, holding your new baby, both of you crying.
You wonder why the hell you ever got pregnant in the first place.
It’s probably just as well that you aren’t trying to close that important deal with Amalgamated Industries while you’re going through this.
Two weeks is not long enough.
Note to Poysyn: YMMV, dear, okay?