Being a mom has opened my eyes to a few things no one tells you about while you are anticipating being a mother. It’s not that they don’t love you, it’s just that it’s better experienced than told. But I love you so much I want to spare you the agony of being taken unawares about some roller coaster experiences you will go through when you get pregnant, go into the labour room and have your dream baby.
1. Body awareness – there are a class of people whose bodies are the perfect 10; they never have to exercise or watch their diet to stay fit. I used to be in this category. Chances are the changes that occur with pregnancy will fascinate you a lot. Even if you had to work out to keep your muscles toned, or have the illusion of a six pack before pregnancy (yeah women love those too) it means you really do love your figure. After delivery, your body will never quite be the same again. Sure, celebs in Hollywood look great after 3months of pregnancy but be honest, as a Nigerian, do you really have the time and money to get a personal trainer or hit the gym like they do to have that smoking hawt body? Truth is no, not really. You could be among the lucky few whose bodies didn’t change at all during pregnancy or whose bellies disappeared after 2weeks of delivery, if not, welcome to my world of body awareness. With pregnancy, changes which not only affect your skin like facial discolourations or sagging belly skin; your body size like broader nose or increase in feet size (e.g. from a 39 to a 41) and your weight like from a maybe 55kg to 84kg, worries emerge on how to get back to the old you. Suddenly, you’ll find yourself obsessing about your body like you never have and doubts such as, ‘will my partner still find me attractive or still love me like he did before’ will begin to emerge. All of a sudden you’ll find yourself investing in body shapers, corsets and what not just to give you the appearance of pre-pregnancy body and allow you wear certain outfits. So before you judge all those women embracing cosmetic surgery, understand that child bearing does wonders to a woman’s body and can make you more conscious of your fashion choices, your figure or your relationship.
2. Time consciousness – have you ever sat in a meeting and wondered why so much time was spent discussing an issue which should be slam dunk to decide on especially because in your mind, you have a ton of things to do and this didn’t rate high on your priority scale? Well, take that feeling and apply it to the first few months after delivery and you’ll get what I’m driving at. With babies sleeping between 2 – 4hours at a time, every spare minute becomes extremely precious, especially if there is no one around to assist with the baby or with career goals. Even watching, movies feel like a waste of time (unless of course, you are the type of person who blogs about movies or absolutely can’t live without that past time) because there are a ton of other things demanding your attention like the need for a nap. Even resting sometimes can feel cumbersome in relation to all you hope to achieve in a day. Suddenly, being a mother makes you time conscious as you subconsciously start gauging all your activities and deciding what is higher on the priority scale so as slash down on any irrelevant activity and become more efficient in whatever you do. If you already feel you are this way now that you aren’t a parent, don’t worry, the feeling will intensify after you have a child. And if you have more than one child, this feeling will be accompanied with a myriad of emotions like frustration, exhaustion and short temper.
3. Lack of energy – you might wonder why people tell you to rest a lot after delivery and focus on just taking care of the baby, eating, bathing and sleeping especially when after the second week you feel fine and ready to cook your own meals and make decisions around the house. The term ‘Rest’ slowly begins to sound like solitary confinement as you watched the whole world go about their daily routines and you feel jobless. But the minute you violate your rest time with work, you’ll feel so fatigued that even handling burping of the baby after a meal becomes stressful. What you don’t know as a new mother is that the older they grow, the more time they’ll demand from you. And when you spend the time you are supposed to use to sleep for other activities, you’ll find that they never really get done completely any way. If you still keep pushing, you might catch yourself drinking energy drinks just to keep up while compromising on other values (like your relationship with your spouse). One way to keep your energy up besides sleeping – preferably a month after delivery – is actually through exercise. Mild exercise like stretching exercises like Yoga and Pilates, a few cardio or muscle strengthening exercise done briefly for about 10mins – which can be done twice a day if you have the time – can really do wonders for boosting your energy. Also, try to set aside time for resting and time out for your personal space so as to avoid burn out and stay revitalized while raising your kids (this helps to also prevent you from resenting your kids or blaming them for all your woes).
4. Pains – childbearing is always associated with pains and for good reasons too. During labour, people assume pain intensity is synonymous to progress in the delivery process but this is not always the case. The dilation/opening of the cervix which signals the journey of the baby out of the womb is not necessarily dependent of the contraction pain intensity felt. This is why some women feel no pain and suddenly the head of the baby is already in the birth canal or why doctors insist that once you see any of the signs of labour, you should head on straight to the hospital. In a bid to have a speedy and pain-free delivery, women have woven a myth out of the birth of captive Israelites in Egypt during bible days called it the ‘Hebrew women delivery’ forgetting that pain threshold for individuals vary and can be held responsible for why some women experience less challenges with their delivery than others. I did a number of tweets on this issue of Hebrew women delivery a while back on my twitter handle (annkite0), you can visit my favourites tweet tab or the hashtag #anafricanwoman’stale for my breakdown of the actual Hebrew women and their delivery. Speaking of pain, whether you deliver normally or with cesarean (CS), you will experience tremendous pain. Starting with the multiple vaginal examinations done before and during labour till the actual delivery. With normal delivery, it is contractions and labour pains which may last for hours or days depending on the circumstances surrounding your delivery while for CS, the spinal anesthesia may take away the pain of the surgery for about 12 hours or thereabout after which you have to learn to overcome the numbness of your limbs and deal with the pain post operation which could linger for days or weeks. All these are with reference to safe deliveries without further complications (because complications like hemorrhaging, loss of the child or the womb is a different story altogether that go with psychological pain). In the words of my mother-in-law, “all things delivery involves pain so just cross your mind and bear it”.
5. Gift giving – when it comes to getting gifts for a newborn, people are majorly clueless because they have no idea what the parents have or what they need. That’s why abroad, they have a culture of baby shower where the parents put out a registry of possible gift items to be bought by friends and well-wishers. In Nigeria however, that custom does not involve the registry. While some friends are wise enough to just ask you what you would like them to get, others feel you should appreciate whatever is given whether you need it or not. Kinda like weddings where people buy you a ton of plates or drinking glasses that you can never exhaust using in your lifetime. So here are a few gift-giving advice to help make this phase easier: You can do the unmentionable and get a gift for the mother. Yes you heard right, not the baby the mother. You could get her snacks and juice, green tea or chocolate drink (Milo or Ovaltine) which she can eat while waiting for food during the first 2months of delivery. You could also get a pack of disposable breast pads or tops/clothes ideal for breast feeding when she’s out for a function. For the newborn, the principle is get things the child can use way after the time of birth (0-3months) like you can get baby wipes, diapers for 3-12months, cerelac/baby food for when the child starts migrating to semi solids after 6months, clothes for a much older age like 6months to 1 year old or older. You can also get age appropriate toys or little things like Milton’s sterilizer for when the kids starts using feeding bottles, frames to put up pictures of the baby around the house to photo document the baby’s growth, etc. The gift ideas are so many but if you are in doubt, simply put your cash in an envelope and bless the family with it. Money is a defense and hardly anyone would reject monetary blessings because they are seeds sown into the life of a child which the parents could use for the child either by opening an account, an education fund package or meeting needs when economic challenges hit the family. Just put a lot of fore-thought into the choice of a gift item, no matter the cost, and you can be sure the parents will definitely appreciate it.
6. Diet consciousness – nothing like the burden of knowing you are responsible for the existence of another human being to make you want shape up diet-wise. Some people are blessed with such a good body that anything they eat doesn’t cause their weight or physique to change but others are not so lucky. Those who aren’t lucky but are health conscious will probably already be working on their weight issues while those who are may be in for the shock of their life when pregnancy changes that dynamics. The fear of having a big baby may prompt some women to watch what they eat but the baby’s growth only increases exponentially in third trimester, so before then all the excess food you eat just get stored as fat. After the baby is born, tendencies are you will be on a diet to enhance milk production and in Nigeria, it’s usually pap, rice with vegetables and pepper soup. Milk is usually not recommended because it gives babies a nasty case of gas which can be hell for nursing mothers at night but you can replace your intake of the usual full cream milk with skimmed milk which is easier on baby’s system in terms of digestion. And guess what? A protein rich diet with loads of water, fruits and vegetables does more for milk flow than all the carbohydrates our culture says we must take and the former are way healthier. Once the baby is off breast milk, the possibility of slipping into old habits may arise but if the weight gain caused a disfigurement in your body (e.g. under arm ‘chicken wings’ or bulging bellies), worries on how to regain what was lost becomes a motivating factor for one to be conscious of what foods are eaten because weight gain is 80% what you eat. Another reason to watch what one eats is the need to avoid healthy challenges that can cut short one’s life and the ability to live a long life and see the growth and evolution of their kids.
Being a woman isn’t easy and it is far more that changing one’s outward appearance or internal organs. But these issues aren’t isolated to being female, they are realities most people, male and females deal with in different way it’s just that pregnancy amplifies them. If you weren’t already aware of how pregnancy brings all these to the fore of a woman’s life, you are welcome. It’s been my pleasure educating you.
