things i wish i knew before i had a baby (post-baby-bod version)
i thought of this post while sitting on the toilet last night. fear not, it was only a # 1 and not a #2. nevertheless, i was on the pot, taking my last pee time before turning in for bed, when i did something that prompted this post.
i bent in half to finish peeing.
there, i said it. i put my head to my knees, while sitting on the toilet and bent my upper body in 1/2 in order to fully empty my bladder. usually this keeps me from getting up in the middle of the night to pee, but not always. i do this all the time… the bend in half thing. i’ve done this for the last (almost) 19 months since the magoo.
and so doing this, once again, last night, got me thinking…
in terms of body-issues, vanity, bodily functions (basically leaving the emotions and gushy unconditional love stuff out of the equation), what do you wish you had known before you had a baby???
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i asked my mother, my sage, about this very thing a few months ago… the pee thing. we were in a restaurant, and both of us had gone to “powder our noses” at the same time. while in my stall and mom in her’s, knowing hoping no one else was in the restroom with us, i asked her point blank, as i bent my upper body in half.
“do you have to bend in half to totally pee??? like… TOTALLY pee…”
she laughed in the stall next to me, flushed and said, “yup, that’s whatcha do after you have kids. sorry to say.”
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thinking about the fact that i have to now bend my upper body in half while sitting on the throne of glory in order to fully empty my bladder, led me to consider other bodyish thoughts… and i realized there are TONS of things i wish i had known about my body, and what would happen to it, as a result of having a baby.
****WARNING: some of the information below may be considered TMI; however, i’m assuming those of you who are already parents, regardless of whether you are the mother or the father, are well-versed in this stuff… those of you who are parents-to-be, well… you may want to close your browsers if you’d rather just figure things out on your own. lastly, dads, please feel free to jump in with thoughts, wishes of your own.****
now for me, i obviously wish i had known that i would have to bend in half for the rest of my adult life in order to fully empty my bladder.
i wish i had known that regardless of how long a mother nurses her child (should you choose to be a nursing mother), the saggy post-nursing boobs you gain will cause this ring of sweat underneath your boobs that always makes me feel like i need to wear a sports bra to absorb the excess sweat. this also means that i constantly occasionally battle the saggy post-nursing boobs pimples due to the sweat.
i wish i had known that regardless of whether you have a vaginal delivery or a c-section, your belly will NEVER be what it once was, unless you have eleventy-and-ten dollars to spend on a personal trainer and chef. (and chances are, if you find your new family with additional funds at the end of each month, those monies will most likely NOT be spent on a personal trainer nor a chef, but on diapers and wipes and diaper genie liner refills.)
i wish i had known that i will always have (what i call) my “belly-on-belly”… this is the upper portion of my belly that includes my belly button and then folds where my c-section scar is and poofs out below, thereby creating the lower belly. though i am a size 6-8 (a 6 on VERY good days that consist of me eating VERY little due to running around with the magoo and forgetting to eat) and i stand 5 ft 9 in tall, i will always have the “belly-on-belly.”
i can’t speak for those who have blasted babies out of their vag because the 9 lb 6 oz magoo was cut and delivered out of my abdomen, but i fully encourage those of you who have delivered vaginally to explicity share TMI details for all to benefit from.
i, for one, am very interested to hear about vaginal deliveries and the aftermath of your body (ok, your vag) should our next child be a vbac baby (vaginal birth after cesarian).
****NOTE: this is in NO way meant to imply that we are even CONSIDERING getting pregnant with our second ANY time soon. the question is posed to simply serve the purpose of conversation and sharing of experiences. (sorry mom.)****
to continue… i wish i had known that my post-baby body would require so much caffeine to get through the day that the amount of money our family spends on coffee, sugar and coffee creamer would equal the amount that we spend on diapers.
i wish i had known what partially digested hypoallergenic formula smelled like and felt like when regergitated on my body repeatedly; especially when i found said partially digested hypoallergenic formula down my shirt, my sports bra, dried and crusted on my neck, and occasionally in my hair. (it should go without saying that i also wish i knew how much that formula would cost.)
alright… that’s what i’ve got so far… and now i have to go run after the magoo…
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so play the vanity game along with me and share what you wish you had known before you had a baby (post-baby-bod version.) the more explicit, the better!!!
0 Responses to things i wish i knew before i had a baby (post-baby-bod version)
Have a Sip
I agree with it all – except the c-section part since I didn’t have one. Here is what I have to add:
First – it is post-pregnancy boobs that get the ring-o-sweat and resulting zits. I never nursed (damn inverted nipples) and still have that problem.
And let me tell you about birthing an 8lb 13.4oz baby VAGINALLY. Number one stitches in your hoohoo DO NOT feel good… not one little bit. My kid is almost 6 and I still jump about 4 feet if the hubby accidentally hits my scar. AND I am the proud owner of a set of dangling inner vag lips, I so need to get those nipped and tucked. It’s disgusting and I want my tight little vag back!
Love this! I also bend my body in half to completely empty my bladder. I’ve had a vaginal and a c-section and NO it doesn’t matter – your belly will NEVER be the same
I’ve had 3 vaginal deliveries and apparently my, um, walls have collapsed. Which I guess isn’t uncommon. But when they were inserting my IUD (NO MORE BABIES) they had a hard time finding their way because the, um, walls kept getting in their way. Sexy!
I have had 4! yes 4! all shoot out the whoo ha and along with evrything you list above I now pee a little evrytime i sneeze. cough, or laugh too hard no matter how empty my bladder is!
I wish I knew you can’t eat whatever you want when you are pregnant.
Or that having your vag torn and then stitched back up would make you very scared to poo, and probably result in some of the worse constipation ever.
I wish I knew my boobs and belly would develop wrinkles.
I also wish I knew that I may leak urine after giving vag birth…I wish someone would have just told me how it really is!
Its awful to say but I hate being pregnant!
OMG. I am never having a baby.
OMG, I feel like I’m hearing myself think!!!
After my 1st, I had the same dilemnas as you (and obviously still do): having to bend down to empty the bladder, the double belly thanks to the c-section scar (plus the emotional one, but we won’t go into details about that part…), and the sagging boobs etc.
But I also know the food allergies and the joys of the all mighty hypoallergenic formula and its smelly side effects.
I wish I’d known about that of all things. The anxiety it causes to see your child not being able to feed off you as nature intended, and then vomit everything or get major eczema…. Oh the love it takes! And I now have to do it all over again, because guess what!? My second is also allergic to my milk!
Now that I’ve given birth gavinally (I like that word like that!), I must agree with the other girls, the stitches…. The horror! The way it stings you when you pee (before you have to bend down), the way you are scared to go #2 at first or even take a shower, the way it feels and the idea that it’s forever. Ugh!
But fear not, it’s not the worse. >-}
I wish I had known that after your placenta is out, it’s NOT over… They come back to probe you a little more to see if all the blood is out.
While you’re thinking it’s all done after your 27 hour labor (I know, lucky me!), the nurses apologize for pushing harder and harder on your belly. Now I’ll stop here because the gory details of my personal experience and the hemmorage that followed might just be too much for the hopeful! Let me just say that it is possible to be plugged from all the extremities they can find. (And I thought it would be easier than the c-section, pfff)
Oh no wait!
I wish I had known about the contractions you get following birth and everytime you put your child to the boob. That God forsaken uterus needs to shrink back to its normal size, and the myth of it hurting more for the 2nd was true for me… Oh so true…. I still cringe, and wonder if it was not worse than the 27 hour labor! Ok, maybe not.
But to reassure the soon-to-give-birth, there is nothing like seeing your child for the 1st time. You’ve already been told that, but I guess I wish someone could have expressed it, but it is not describable, really. The overwhelming feeling of having this little being be yours… *Sigh* …
Oh, and it is true for most, pushing is the easiest part!
Tada
Ok, first off Amen to this entire post Nic!
I had a c-section 5 months ago, so I am totally living this OMG No one told me! life you speak of.
People say formula is expensive, people say it’s WAY more expensive with twins, but there is truly no way to know until you go through 2.5 $24 boxes a week, plus diapers, wipes and cereal. Where did my shoe money go? Oh yeah down the throats of my babies and on their sweet little baby hineys!
I have not tried this bend over to fully empty bladder thing but will be trying it in approximately 5 minutes when I go to the bathroom. Thank you for the advice!
Did anyway tell you that you would alternating numbness/no feeling whatsoever around c-section scar? That totally weirds me out!
Ok, you want TMI? I wish I’d known that even if I didn’t tear more than two little skid marks, that it could cause those little exterior vag glands to completely dry up. DRY. UP.
And… I wish I knew how much I would miss being pregnant.
Ah, time for some TMI
I wish I had known that my vag would never feel the same again after the massive tearing I had. I can tell everytime the hubs hits my scar, ouch.
I wish I had known that I wouldn’t be able to hold my pee as well as before, or that I might go a little bit if I laugh really hard or sneeze really hard.
I wish I had known that my already too small boobs we be even smaller and would also become saggy.
Ah, the joins of a post-baby body
FANTASTIC FEEDBACK LADIES!!!! (even the TMI stuff)…. it’s all good to know, even if it is after the fact for some of us.
attempting to email you each individually with thanks because your input has been so terrific, but.. the magoo beckons…
GREAT CONVO!!!
On a totally different path, it would have been good to know that the question of, “When are you going to have a baby?” does not go away, but instead becomes, “When are you going to have ANOTHER baby?” We waited 6 years for our first baby, yet people seem to think that a second baby is a time-limited thing. If my body says it is a time-limited thing, so be it. But is it really anybody’s business when we decide to try for a second baby???
In addition to the boob sweat, which is a daily occurrence for me, there’s also the whole peeing a little with every cough, sneeze, laugh, jumping jack, stretch, bend… yeah, I know.
T-M-freakin-I.
I wish I had heard of hyperemesis gravidarum before I got pregnant. My kids are 11 (yeah, count ‘em, 11) years apart and it was the exact same with both of them. Miserable pregnancies, just vomiting all day long, all ten (yeah, count ‘em, ten) months. It left me weak, exhausted and terribly underweight. My daughter still had the audacity to weigh 9 lbs. 9 oz. and she was a c-section. My son only weighed 5 lbs. 4 oz. and he was a vbac (thank you for being wee, son). The only thing that drives me bonkers about the post-pregnancy list of woes: when I have to pee, I have to pee RIGHT NOW. And yes, I Kegel. As a matter of fact, I’m doing them right now. Not really, but that line always makes me giggle.
Andrea, Beth, Lisa, and Jenni, I totally hear ya!
I wish I had known that everytime I sneeze, the Hoover Dam would freakin burst. (oh how I WISH I could say it was just a little!) I would have totally practiced my “Sneeze Posture” more. You know, where you tighten up all your lower ab muscles as much as you can (which of course isn’t much anymore), cross your legs, bend yourself in half (cuz if you can stop the pressure at the midway point you’ll be safe, right?), and then just to be safe, do a half-sneeze that will just take the edge off it and hopefully protect your panties and your dignity.
The sad thing is that after 19 years, I still don’t have it quite right. I’m considering buying stock in Depends.
Ahh, going back to remember those tears in my vajajay. How bad those damn stitches hurt and having to clean them all the time! Then having to be fearful of going to the bathroom and ripping thru them! Yikes!
Having to wear those huge XXXL pads around filled with epifoam just trying to numb those regions long enough to sit down.
I wish I would have known that no matter how much weight I lose, even if I get back to my pre-pregnancy size, my body will never be the same. I will never fit in my “skinny” jeans ever again. How depressing of a sentence to write!!
I wish I knew about this bending over thing and emptying out my bladder sooner…could’ve saved a lot of trips to the bathroom.
And what is up with as soon as you push out one kid out, your are supposed to be working on your next one!?
I wish I had known my boobs would look like deflated water balloons when I got done nursing, though I’m not sure it would have changed my mind on whether or not to nurse. And I also wish someone had told me that for six months post partum I’d feel like my insides were going to fall out if I was on my feet too long. Oh, and that I’d pee when I sneezed, laughed or just got up too fast.
There is absolutely nothing I wish I had known first. If someone had told me I could look forward to the following list of changes to my body, I would not have had kids.
So, really, health teachers should feel free to take this list, add to it, and tell the teenagers about it:
1. Deflated boobies. Even DD’s can be flattened.
2. Twin skin. It’s like stretch marks, but on crack. Your skin is soooooo overstretched that after the babies, it is like crepe paper.
3. Labia majorly changoria. That’s all I’m saying about that.
4. New hairline. After every kid, I grew a new hairline.First it is a little itchy and then it looks like I tried to give myself the short bangs look. SInce my hair is super curly, it isn’t a great look.
5. Floating rib issue. The twins displaced one rib so completely that it takes nothing to pop it out of place.
6. Pelvic pain. After the twins I had physical therapy because the ligaments in my pelvis were so overloaded with the hormone relaxin that I developed something called pubic symphysis separation. It was incredibly painful throughout the pregnancy and it resulted in recurring numbness, pain, and sometimes an inability to walk.
7. I asked Husband, and he says everything is tighter. Sex was incredibly uncomfortable with the twins, and then postpartum was a little rough with the pelvic rehab, so we basically did not have relations from Sept 08 til May 09.
**I want to clarify
If someone had told me before I had kids, I would have been a very young selfish 20 year old womanchild and I know THEN, then I would not have had a child.
I would have waited until I was 40 and things were going south anyway.
I wish I had known that the bladder and bowel are both a bit sleepy after an epidural and if you try to hold it…..it’s impossible and you’ll wet yourself.
I wish I had known that when you’re midway between sitting on the potty and actually sitting on the potty anything in your bowel and bladder will slide right out (only for the first couple of days but it’s still awful)
I wish I had known that having that very first bowel movement after delivery would be just as hard as the delivery of the child.
I wish I had known that my belly would still look 9 months pregnant for the first three months after having the baby.
I wish I would have known that labors REALLY can last for 24 hours. That the contractions will come every 30 seconds and last about 10-15 seconds for the ENTIRE 24 hours.
I wish I would have known that even after getting the epidural you’ll still feel pressure from the contractions and pressure from what the doctor is doing pre-delivery, during delivery and post-delivery.
I wish I would have known that the epidural needle going in hurts much worse than anything I can ever imagine, even the contractions I was feeling before I asked for the epidural.
I wish I would have known that arching my lower back while nine months pregnant is impossible…..(I also wish the guy giving the epidural knew that too-My husband had to push my shoulders down to get my lower back to the right position.)
I wish I would have known that right after delivery the catheter comes out. I had no idea I was no longer attached to the catheter (still couldn’t feel my bladder though) and had peed an ocean in the bed after delivery. The nurse EMBARRASSED THE SNOT OUT OF ME!
I wish I would have known that that first pee after delivery would look like I had peed nothing but gallons of blood.
I wish I would have known that a healthy baby isn’t always guaranteed even if you take every single pre-natal vitamin, eat fresh fruits and veggies and drink plenty of milk all while getting an adequate amount of exercise and rest.
I wish I would have known the extent of how exhausted I would feel, even 2 or 3 months after delivery.
There are many many more things I wish I had known, but these are among the top. . .
I am probably just restating what others have said but I definitely wish I would have known about all this stuff before I pushed two 7 and 1/2 pound babies out of my vajayjay.
-Agree with the sweaty under boobs with pimples (Yay). Also want to add that after having kids my hormones reverted to that of a 16 year old girl. At 25 I suddenly have crazy acne again and sweat like crazy. It seems my body still thinks I’m pregnant even though it has been over two years since baby number two.
-Boobs? Yeah they look like deflated balloons.
-Why is it that when I run on the treadmill I can HEAR MY BELLY flapping against my legs. WTF??
-I really wish someone would have told me that after two kids my once completely overactive sex drive would be nonexistent. I always thought people couldn’t have sex as much once they had kids because they had no time or were too tired. But for me, even when we find the time I feel no longer interested.
Also, I found that there does seem to be a time limit on baby number two. But now that I already have two and want one more I find everyone seems to freak out. Like ‘OMG a you planning on having a THIRD?! REALLY?! What is wrong with you. You have enough children.’ Is there some sort of limit on children I was unaware of? What’s wrong with 3? It’s not like I could do anymore damage to my body!
Goodness. I’m still not sure if I want kids. This is certainly pushing me in the direction of adoption, LOL! ;p
Although I’m also hoping that Medicine may have figured out more in the next few-several years!
I’ve had 3 vaginal births, the most recent being 8 months ago. My first was 8lbs., my second was 10lb. (yep, vaginally!), and my last baby was 9lb. When the Dr. was stitching me up with my second he asked my husband how tight he wanted him to stitch me!
The only thing I wish I had known that I didn’t know before is how all-consuming the love I’d feel for my children would be. The peeing, the sagging, the wrinkles, those were things I expected!
Ohhhhhhh hell no! you gals are scaring the crap out of me! I’m gonna go home and take a month’s worth of birth control!!
I agree with it all too. Everyone keeps telling me that it takes a year for your body to go back to the way it was, but we’ll see…I’ve still got five months to go. I’m pretty sure that’s a load of bull to make you feel better because I for one don’t know any women who’s body has gone back to “the way it was”. There’s always something that totally gives away the fact that you had a baby. I doubt I’ll ever be able to hide my Tim Burton smile. haha
Vag delivery here. Everything is a bit more “stretchy” down there. But not what I expected. I was expecting it to get stretched out of shape like a piece of clay, and not go back at all to what it was. Instead, it’s more like the neck of a turtleneck. Yes, it stretches out. But what it looks like afterward depends on the individual woman. Just like different manufacturers turtlenecks stand up to the same amount of use differently, different vaginas deal with birth differently. Mine seems to have gone in the “Spring back to shape” route. But it took about a year for it to not feel “loose”.
The labia are definitely a little more pendulous, but not horribly so.
Personally, what bothered me the most about post-baby body (other than the fact that 3 years of breastfeeding has transformed my perky once-D’s to non-perky B’s), was the belly button thing. I’ve got this little wrinkly floppy bit at the top of my belly button and I HATE it. :p
I also wish that someone had told me that after you give birth your belly is going to look like a large deflated beach ball for a while. And to not panic, because that’s not necessarily the permanent state of its being. :p
Oh, something everyone should know- breastfeeding doesn’t cause the saggies. Being pregnant and having your milk come in– which it will– is what causes the saggies. Breastfeeding postpones the saggies. So you can keep larger less deflated breasts for longer. Heck, mine are still larger and less deflated at the three year mark than they would have been if I weaned.
Wish I had known that before giving birth so that I didn’t spend 9 months mourning the slight increase of saggies of my breasts and being a bit pissed off at the whole breastfeeding thing.
Oh, and I wish someone had told me ahead of time that apparently sitting cross legged is better for strengthening your pelvic floor than the kegels are. I HATE KEGELS. But I’m more than happy to sit around like an Indian all damned day.
BTW, thanks for the tip on how to bend to pee. Hadn’t figured that one out! Might also be helpful with reoccurring UTIs.