Things I Was Not Prepared For Entering Motherhood: The Good, The Bad and The Stinky

This is a guest post from my friend and Bloggers Helping Bloggers mentee, Catherine, who blogs at Plunged In Debt. Make sure to stop by her site or follow her on Twitter when you’re done reading her post. She writes some great stuff (and she’s a pretty cool lady, too).

My husband and I welcomed our first child this past June (Jana’s note: Yay for June babies! We’re the best!). I know it’s a total cliché, but it really was a life-changing event. There’s no other way to describe never using the bathroom unattended again.

I am a planner. I am a type A personality in almost every way. If I don’t know the answer to something I become near compulsive until I find said answer. Google is my crack. Needless to say, as soon as I found out I was pregnant I became a Google-monster, book-reading train wreck. If I was driving myself nuts with researching everything to do with pregnancy and parenthood, I can only imagine what my poor friends and family were going through having me around (Jana’s note to future moms: stay the hell away from baby sites and books. People never want to tell you the good things, only the bad, scary ones, and you will, in fact, make yourself nuts).

Becoming a mother is a funny thing. You very quickly realize that no matter how prepared you may think you are, it doesn’t matter because your baby has other plans! Becoming a mother means disengaging the type-A, overachieving personality traits, and letting go. You learn to roll with the punches and re-live your entire life in a different way. Entire life.

As prepared as I thought I was, these are things I could never have foreseen going into Motherhood.

Poop is exciting

You learn an entirely new diagnosing process through poop. As a mother you become a poop-stalker. Learning scientific, analytic-type skills you didn’t know you had in you. Maybe all my years spent dissecting stuff during my first undergrad weren’t totally wasted skills? A baby’s health can be very obvious through their stinky diaper. You learn to love seeing normal poos everyday. (Jana’s note: This is completely true. My husband and I discussed poop every day when our daughter was a baby. Now that I think about it, we still talk about poop every day. We’re very classy.)

Socializing is defined around necessity to wear a bra

I’m on maternity leave. My kid spits up, oozes poo and spits food at me. I don’t wear my finest when I’m at home. Unless I have to go somewhere you can usually find me lounging in my comfy clothes or pj’s that I don’t care about. When you have a baby breastfeeding on demand, a bra becomes annoying and cumbersome. Don’t get me wrong, I still remember how to clean up, and maintain an acceptable level of cleanliness, but I often find myself making decisions based on whether or not a bra would be necessary. A decision making process I didn’t know existed in society pre-baby. (Jana’s note: as a well-endowed lady, I am not afforded the luxury of going bra-free. I am a tad jealous of Catherine right now).

There is rarely a right answer

After our daughter was born I would continue to look up anything and everything in books and on the internet. Was she latching properly? How the eff do I make her sleep? What is this rash? How do I learn to change a diaper with my eyes closed? I looked for everything and quickly came to the conclusion that there is no right answer. There are a lot of good reference materials out there, but nothing could really prepare me entirely for parenthood.

If someone had asked me before her being born if I would co-sleep I would think you were nuts. Sure, she might share a room with us the first few nights but that would be it. Ha. Ha. Ha.

I had a c-section. Between discomfort levels and tubes connected to me, it was difficult for me to get up and re-position throughout those first few nights. Even with my husband sleeping in the same room as me at the hospital, it was much easier and very natural, to have her sleep beside me in bed, within an arm’s reach. I never intended it to extend beyond the hospital stay.

When we arrived home, in her bassinet she went (though still in our room). After WEEKS of searching for ways of trying to get my kid to sleep I decided that it was more important that she sleep than where she sleeps. In bed with us she came and guess what? We all slept better instantly. (Jana’s note: I differ from Catherine a bit here. I am not a supporter of co-sleeping but I won’t tell you not to. You need to choose what’s right for you and your kid and if you do co-sleep, please just do it safely).

Time goes fast

No amount of reading and research could prepare me for how fast time goes when you have a kid. Nowhere did I read time increases at warp speed. I cannot believe almost nine months has passed and she’s almost walking. I’ve really learned to stop cut back on sweating the small stuff and enjoy all that motherhood offers, good and bad. (Jana’s note: Yup. Time goes very fast. My daughter is 6 and I swear she was an infant yesterday).

Love grows

I fully expected my baby to be born and for me to instantly be madly in love. I wasn’t. I certainly felt connected and my instincts were to protect her, but my love for her had to grow. It continues to grow every day. I love her more than any words could possibly describe, but this is a feeling that has developed over the last nine months. It wasn’t brought upon me instantly. I initially felt bad about this but realized it’s a totally normal process of emotional growth.

Any parent will tell you having a child is the best thing in the world and it really is. When else in one’s life do you get the chance to instill as much dysfunction as you want? I kid. Seriously I love being a mom so much more than I ever thought possible. Even more than Google told me I would. It really is the best, and stinkiest job, in the world. I wouldn’t trade it for the world.