The transition from pregnancy to parenthood
I still remember those days when I was heavily pregnant; feeling
like I was constantly carrying a beach ball sized weight on my abdomen and
giving death glares to strangers in the street for simply glancing my way. I
honestly thought that I could not feel any more exhausted than I did then…
Spoiler alert! I was wrong.
When you tell people that you’re expecting, or even that you’re
trying, no one tells you what it’s like when you take your screaming bundle of
joy home with you. Well, unless it’s said in the patronising manner of “You wait
until they’re born”. But here it is. A recent first-time mother (AKA me!) is
here to tell you exactly what to expect when you’re expecting.
In my experience there are 5 stages to pregnancy and beyond.
The first is the joy (and/or apprehension) of finding out you’re
expecting. Within this stage, you are excitedly telling everyone about the bundle
of joy you’re expecting and getting generally prepared (or so you may think!)
for what’s to come.
The second stage is the MISERY of being heavily pregnant, hormones
raging and experiencing the sleep deprivation (for some, for the first time).
The third stage is my favourite, overwhelming happiness. This is
the first 24 hours of your child being born. The feeling you get the first time
you hear that little cry, is better than any drug known to man. When people say
they have never felt love like it, they aren’t lying (although for some it may
not be straight away you feel that, and that’s okay).
Then comes the fourth
stage. THE EXHAUSTION. When people say that you can sleep when the baby sleeps,
they’re lying. It does not work like that. You will be sterilising everything
when they sleep, especially if you are expressing to breastfeed. This is the
moment for me, I realised I was not longer the main character. My baby was premature,
and I had to have an emergency C-section, and even with having just had major
abdominal surgery, I was still expected to provide everything for my baby on my
own (When my husband was working). He had to be fed every 2 hours. In that time,
it took him approximately 1 hour to feed, I spent 15 minutes expressing, and 15
minutes sterilising. That left me 30 minutes to sleep before the next feed. This
was my new reality.
The final stage is the fifth stage, acceptance (the stage I’m in
now). In this stage I am still exhausted from having a baby, but he has begun
to sleep through the night, and if I’m honest, you just get used to being tired
all the time.
For those in stage 4, you will get through it, it feels like the
end of the world, and you wonder how you’ve managed to survive the day on an
hours sleep, but as parents we get through it. I mean, people have more babies,
so it must get easier, right?