You know how you start thinking “I’ll have all this time when I’m on maternity leave…”
Nada. There is a reason its disability leave. You may be barely able to walk across the Target parking lot for a week with your husband (or mother) carrying the baby. You’ll be sore for most of it, and exhausted. Wait…EXHAUSTED. As a formerly smart person, you’ll start wondering how to take 10% off the price of something, and does that sign actually form words? For a week you will sleep, nurse the baby, and sit in the bathtub - and maybe cry. With a c-section it may be worse. You’ll almost certainly call the doctor when you pass a blood clot the size of a golf ball with “did you say to call at golf ball or baseball sized clots?”
(Hemeroids became a permanent feature, but my favorite leftover is my wrinkled stomach. You may also gain a shoe size or two and have permanent changes to your hair).
If I got to do the first time over again, I think I’d take Bradley classes instead of a two day Lamaze class. I could have used some better techniques for dealing with the prodromal labor marathon, although I don’t really know that Bradley would have done it.
I second advice to not get to set on a particular birth plan. It doesn’t always go as you’d like, and that’s OK.
Oh, and if something is making you miserable, tell your health care provider. I spent weeks just saying I was OK except for the heartburn. When I was finally to the point of crying over heartburn on a daily basis and asked the midwife if I could take something stronger than Rolaids, her response was, “Of course! Get some Zantac!” Wish I’d known that earlier.
Oh yeah. Although oddly enough, my feet shrank back and then a bit, so I’m now more of an 8 1/2 - 9 than a 9 1/2.
And I third the notion that a young baby is really pretty portable. Once you’re over the birth part, it’s really good to get out and go places, and it’s not hard if you’re reasonably organized about it. Mom and baby will be happier.
OH, the “some tiredness” books tell you that you “may experience”?
More like extreme exaustion, like towing a cement truck up hill in the hot sun. For oh, about the first 6 months.
At least that was my experience. I gave up doing a lot of things earlier than I would have, but I was just so damn tired.