A New Mom's Life

Your phone? Has become your toddler’s go-to toy for their baby apps. Your laptop? The object of your toddler’s constant beating and playing. You will try to reason with them at times, other times you will just give up and realize that everything that is yours is  now theirs.

Once your baby starts being mobile, so will all of their toys and belongings. Your baby will learn how to move things, but not know how to put them back. You will find yourself cleaning after them constantly, only to find your living room in shambles again 10 minutes later.

After you have a baby of your own, you get extra excited when a friend is newly pregnant or has their first child. You finally understand what all the fuss is about, and you can’t wait for them to join the adventure.

You will end up giving them advice they don’t need, sharing your labour stories at length, and telling them to “go out and have time to themselves while they still can.” And after the baby is born, you’ll be saying things like, “See? Isn’t it crazy and amazing at the same time?”

Sleeping in? A luxury you’ll never have again unless baby is sleeping over somewhere. Even then, your “momdar” won’t let you sleep past 9 a.m. Your body gets to so used to responding to baby cries that it seems to wake on autopilot, despite your desires to sleep in all day. And once you’re up, you might as well get up, right?

At around 9-10 months, after the hair you lost from childbirth returns, you will be sporting the most ridiculous mullet. I’m not sure which is worse, having no hair or mullet hair. It will grow in and remind you of ’80s rock hair, with the feathery bangs and everything. You may even consider joining a rock band just so you can explain the odd hair choice.

Once you start giving baby solids, you will invariably end up trying their baby yogurt. IT IS THE BOMB. So good. Full fat and sweetened with fruit juice, it is the best yogurt you’ve ever had in your life. So creamy… MMMMMM!

Banana yogurt tastes like banana pudding. Vanilla yogurt tastes like a little tiny tub of ice cream heaven. So, baby won’t mind if you have their yogurt every once in awhile… just to make sure it tastes okay, right?

If you’re breastfeeding, you’re eating lots of extra calories to make up for the milk factory in your body. And if you’re a busy mom, sometimes those calories take the form of cookies and chips instead of the healthy fruits and veggies you were eating while pregnant.

Do not worry. Once you start feeding your baby solids at around 6 months, you will end up evaluating everything that goes in your mouth and start to eat a bit better. If you’re pureeing fresh fruit and veggies for the baby already, you might as well have some too.

And you think, once baby starts eating the same food YOU are eating, you can’t have another pizza and wings dinner again. (At least not in front of the baby.)

If you’re breastfeeding, you’re probably inhaling food even faster than when you were pregnant. They say a woman should take in 300 additonal calories when she is pregnant. When you’re breastfeeding, that number goes up to 500.

The thing is, you’re so busy with baby that sometimes you’ll end up starving yourself, then bingeing on said calories when you have a spare second. It’s not pretty, but it’s a necessity to keep up your energy sometimes.

If you’re like a lot of moms, your trips to the shopping mall have forever changed. Instead of going into your favorite stores and trying on cute outfits, you will go into your favorite stores and get cute outfits for the baby (H&M, Gap, etc.).

New jacket, skinny jeans, sweet pair of shoes… nothing is too good for your baby. And the thing is, they outgrow everything so fast, it’s kind of a necessity.

As for you… you can keep on wearing the same two pairs of jeans and the few nursing tops you’ve been rotating in your wardrobe.

One day, your baby will reach a great sleep milestone. “He’s sleeping through the night!” “She’s going down for naps without crying now, ” you proudly say to your sleep-deprived mom friends.

They may smile and say, “That’s great.” They will probably hate you for it, though.

Don’t ever, ever brag about your baby’s sleep. Your baby will have bad sleep for the next two weeks just to show you who’s boss.