A New Mom's Life

When you are pregnant, an amazing thing happens. You have this luscious, shiny and thick hair that you never had before. For some reason when you are pregnant, you temporarily stop shedding hair (one of the cool side effects, like great skin).

However, about three months after you have a baby, the shedding resumes. Piles and piles of hair end up in your shower, on the floor, on your pillow. You start to freak out a little bit. Will you have any left?

I’ve been told the excess shedding does stop, somewhere around nine months post-baby. Maybe it will be sooner for you, maybe later. But eventually, Cousin It will disappear from your bathroom floor. Thank goodness.

After you have a baby, you begin to see the softer side in people. Other parents. Children. Complete strangers.

Someone that you thought had a tough exterior becomes mush in the hands of your child. They offer toys, talk in a sing-song voice, and basically, transform into a completely different person right before your eyes. They become friendlier, kinder and 10 times more patient. Sometime this person is you. ;)

If you already have a competitive streak, you will find it is even more prevalent after having a baby.

“So-and-so’s baby has eight teeth already!” While your baby remains toothless.

“Thomas is already using the potty!” At seven months old.

“Lucy is walking now!” And your baby still hasn’t figured out crawling yet…

All these accomplishments and supposed claims may make you feel inferior. Don’t let them. Just remember that you have your baby for a little bit longer than everyone else. After all, they’ll all learn to walk, talk and poo eventually.

If your baby is sporting a grandpa combover, eventually you will decide to give your baby its first haircut. Now, this is a bit tricky, since the hair is quite long in the front and still growing in the back. That, and the baby won’t stay still while you’re cutting, and you don’t want any haircut injuries in the process.

So what do you do? You snip a bit off this side, take a bit off that side, and then try to make the bangs straight (they won’t be). In the end, your baby will have a bowl cut. This is extra unfortunate if you have a girl, but you can hide your handiwork with lots of cute bows, or worst-case scenario, a large sombrero.

If your baby is like most, they will be pretty bald for the first year. Some other babies will have a full head of hair, and you’ll wonder why yours looks like a cue ball. It’s okay. By the toddler years, they’ll catch up.

If your baby does have hair, it may grow unevenly, with extra long hair in the front, and zero hair in the back. You’ll find yourself styling your baby’s hair in a grandpa-like combover, in order to hide the bald spots. The other option is to put lots of cute hats on your baby to avoid the hair issue altogether.

If you’re nursing often in the beginning (sometimes like, six hours a day), you will find yourself with a LOT of free time. If you have an iPhone, you’ll have the luxury of multitasking while your babe is getting his essential nutrients.

You can check your e-mail, your Facebook, your Twitter, the weather, the news, play some Angry Birds… and check Facebook again. You will be so up-to-date with the goings-on of everyone you know that they’ll wonder if you even have a life.

If you’re breastfeeding, be prepared for some very uncomfortable breasts at these times:

1. A few days after you’ve gotten home from the hospital, when your milk comes in.
2. The first time your baby sleeps longer than usual, and your milk has nowhere to go.

It hurts, but it will go away once your body adjusts to the changing supply/demand cycle it goes through. Oh, and if you’ve always been more on the “minimalist” side, you will suddenly find yourself very well endowed.

I’m not sure how moms did it before Google, pre-Internet. The first time your baby’s poo looks a little weird, you’ll Google it. Whenever you have a question about your baby’s development, or wonder what is “normal,” you’ll Google it. It’s amazing the crazy things that you’ll be wondering, but the reassuring thing is, you won’t be the first person to ask that question.

Thank goodness for Google.

You will feel guilty the first time you leave your baby with someone else. You’ll wonder if they’re okay, think the baby will hate you for abandoning them, play various scenarios in your head of how they’ll handle being without you.

Then you go out, and you have a pretty good time. You laugh, you remember what life was like before baby. You sneak a little bit of your old identity back. And you learn that this is a good thing, to take time for yourself and re-energize. (You also find out later that baby was absolutely fine without you.)

If you loved going to movies pre-baby, prepare to find yourself watching a lot more movies on DVD. It’s not that you can’t go the theatre after baby, it’s just a luxury to go when your nights out are not as frequent as they used to be.

Tip: See as many movies pre-baby as you can. Even the really bad ones that you would never usually pay to watch.