7 Things I Wish I Knew Before Having a Baby

My life changed dramatically the moment my son was born. Some of those changes I was prepared for, but some of them—specifically the ones I struggled with the most—I did not see coming. So this is a little love letter to Kyrie a year and a half ago and to anyone like her, a little heads up about all the things I didn’t know were coming. Becoming a mama is a whirlwind. It’s beautiful but so much to process. Now that I’m pregnant with my second, I’m finding myself reflecting on those early months all over again. I know I’m about to go through another big season of transition, and I’m sure there are things about mothering two kiddos that I’m not ready for either.

But I can’t help that. What I can do is give Kyrie from the past a hug and all the girlies like her a little more knowledge about what’s to come.

I’m going to split this into three sections: Birth, Postpartum, & Babies

Birth

1. A natural unmedicated birth can take a long time.

I decided when I was a couple weeks pregnant with my son that I wanted a natural unmedicated birth. From there, I launched myself into all the best information YouTube had to offer. I watched practically every video I could find on pelvic floor exercises, labor positions, and all the positive birth stories I could find with natural unmedicated births. I drank the red raspberry leaf tea. I ate the dates. I did the birth ball exercises. I got my 10,000 steps. I was a woman on a mission. I told myself I knew labor could be long but in my bones I felt like mine wouldn’t be. I mean, I had done absolutely everything right. Right?

Well. I read somewhere that God gives us the birth we need for our sanctification. I guess ya girl needed 62 hours of sanctification. And that is no joke. My contractions started at 4:00 a.m. on a Sunday morning, but they weren’t too crazy and I was able to go throughout my day with them. But by 11:00 p.m. that night, I knew my baby was coming. And he was. Just not until the following Tuesday. Which meant Sunday and Monday night of no sleep and continuous contractions I thought I couldn’t survive. I don’t know if it was better that I didn’t know birth could take this long. I was adamantly against interventions of all kinds and because I wasn’t even 39 weeks yet when everything began, there wasn’t much the hospital could do to begin with.

I ended up having my water ruptured in the hospital to speed things up on that final Tuesday and I had a little Pitocin toward the end of the last day (at the threat of an emergency C-section that didn’t really make sense but that’s a story for another time). But anyway, all that’s to say labor can be long. Especially when it’s unmedicated. Now that I’m pregnant with baby #2, the question is, would I do it again?

Unequivocally yes. But I’m hoping and praying it’s a shorter process this time. We’ll see what happens! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

2. Find a like-minded medical professional.

When I found out I was pregnant, I scheduled my first prenatal appointment with my OBGYN. Apparently this is what most women do. I liked her for my well-woman care, so I figured it made sense to go with her for birth too. As I dug into the research surrounding natural birth, I saw over and over again to interview multiple providers and make sure your medical team has the same view of birth as you do. But I liked my gynecologist. I enjoyed talking to her, she seemed to care about me, and I really didn’t want to ruffle any feathers by switching practices. Once I hired my doula (one of the BEST birth decisions I made), we went over some of my expectations for birth and she suggested I talk them over with my OB. When I brought up my questions about hospital protocol and her perspective on different interventions at my next appointment, I could feel the tension thicken between us. At that moment, I started to get a nagging feeling that things were not going to go smoothly in the delivery room.

But I’m not a confrontational girly. So I shrugged my shoulders, said a few prayers, and assured myself everything would be fine. Then at my 36 week appointment, I faced the threat of induction, and that smoothed itself out, but the alarm bells began to ring louder and louder in my head. My doula told me it wasn’t too late to switch providers, but I dug in my heels. I don’t like confrontation, but I like rules and I like things that are set in stone. This was my OB and she’d be my OB to the end.

We have instincts for a reason. My instincts told me this woman and I did not have the same perspective on childbirth (she had a medical mindset while I had a more physiological vision for my birth). But I told my instincts to shut up and shut up and shut up again. All the way to the day I was in labor and threatened with an emergency C-section because I didn’t want to take Pitocin (even though my baby was showing no signs of distress and I was also physically fine).

There are a lot of different perspectives on childbirth out there. If you want a type of birth that’s different than mine, all the power to you, but realize your practitioner should align. If you want a low-intervention unmedicated birth, it is of the utmost importance you find a practitioner who is extremely comfortable with that.

Postpartum

3. The exhaustion is real, but it isn’t as bad as you think.

One of my least favorite pieces of advice I got while pregnant was “You better sleep now! Because once that baby gets here…” I heard this so many times I had to refrain from rolling my eyes when somebody told me. Yes, it’s true that becoming a new mom is exhausting. Yes, it’s true that you will be sleep-deprived for a while. But guess what is also true? The female body is pretty dang amazing and it’s designed to cope with exactly this.

Like I mentioned above, my birth was extremely long. I went through two sleepless nights and baby was born so all I wanted to do was close my eyes and rest. And I sorta did. That first night, he woke up almost hourly to nurse, but even the faintest glimmers of sleep were welcome. I felt delirious for a while and my husband and I were practically nocturnal during those earliest months of his paternity leave. But when I started seeing my friends again, I told them I felt mostly fine and I truly did. I wasn’t a zombie. I didn’t hate my life. I was a little sleep-deprived and that was it.

Don’t let other people scare you. It will be hard but it will also be okay. It’s a season that will pass. Now that I’m a year and a half away from it, I can’t imagine waking up 5 or 7 times a night. If Luke wakes up once, I’m exhausted the next morning. But when I was in it, I could do it. And when you’re in it, you’ll be able to do it too. Oh, and there’s always coffee. And matcha. 😀

4. Have realistic social expectations.

One of the hardest things about becoming a mom for me was the isolation I felt in the months after my little guy was born. I don’t think I processed how quiet and empty and slow our days would feel. It wasn’t too bad when my parents or in-laws were staying with us, but once they left and it was just my husband and I, it felt like we were in some kind of aquarium, watching the world continue on without us while we stayed in our little bubble of new parenthood.

In some ways it was sweet—just the three of us on little park walks, hubs and I binge-watching Suits while Luke slept—but considering we are both pretty social people and love being in community, the emptiness ate away at us. We had a Meal Train set up, which was a huge blessing, because we still got to have people over and introduce them to Luke, but even apart from that, our social life was cut in half. And something I especially wasn’t ready for was watching everyone else’s lives move along at the usual clip while ours grinded to a halt.

One of the realities of parenting is you are going to be excluded from things. This is especially true if you are one of the first people in your circle to have kids. It’s not because people don’t want you around, but more because life goes on for everybody else too. Even though this made sense to me in theory before I became a mom, the postpartum season revealed to me that I had an unrealistic expectation for the way our social life would look when we became parents. Now, a year and a half later, things have normalized and I don’t feel lonely the way I did then. But there are still moments. Becoming a parent means saying no to some things you would’ve said yes to before you had kids. Sometimes this is easy and I don’t think about it. Sometimes it’s challenging and I do.

5. Find friends in your same life season.

This piece of advice radically changed my life for the better and it’s an area of my life that I’m still working on. As I struggled with the isolation I mentioned above, my mom nudged me repeatedly to find a mom group to join. I kept brushing her aside and putting this off because it felt like too much to fit something like that into my schedule when I was still figuring out how to function as a normal human being with a baby. It wasn’t until my son was around six months old that I finally joined two different mom groups.

I won’t say that simply joining these groups *cured* my isolation. It’s still something that I’m working through and I still don’t have a tight-knit group of gals that I can spontaneously have over who are in the same life season as me. Currently, I don’t even have tight-knit girlfriends who aren’t in the same life season as me (at least locally, shout out to my long distance besties 😭). But friendships, especially deep meaningful ones, take time and effort. And even though I’m still growing in friendship with the women in these groups, I have really enjoyed getting to walk with them in motherhood, hearing their stories, watching them parent, bringing them meals as part of postpartum meal trains. These groups have given my life structure and they’ve made this crazy wild ride of motherhood feel a little less intimidating.

I will add a caveat for this particular piece of advice. I am a stay-at-home-mom, and because of that, my schedule is a lot more open for things like mom groups. A lot of mom groups happen mid-morning on weekdays, which is a challenge for women in jobs with less flexible schedules. But not all mom groups follow this rhythm. If you’re really longing for community and you do have a schedule that doesn’t give you that kind of freedom, don’t be discouraged! There are groups that meet during lunch breaks, on Saturday mornings, and even on weeknights. And if that isn’t practical for the season of life that you’re in, lean in to “phone call friendships.” I recently reconnected with a college friend who is also a new mom and talking on the phone with her has been absolutely life giving. There are lots of ways to seek community. Some of them just require a little creativity.

Babies

6. They don’t need a ton of stuff.

I saw the YouTube videos that said this. “Babies just need love, food, and a safe place to sleep.”

Okay, okay, sure, but what do I put on the registry?

I spent hours watching videos about what to buy, what not to buy, what people wished they bought, what people bought and didn’t need. I am a planner, and I wanted to have absolutely every single thing we could dream of needing by the time we brought our baby home. We received a lot of wonderful things from our registry for our baby shower, but there were still quite a few things that we needed (or thought we needed?) and so I went down the list purchasing them all. I could tell you what to buy and what not to buy, but the reality is it’s different for every family. We bought a bunch of glass baby bottles and didn’t use them at all because my son is EBF (exclusively breast-fed). But if you’re bottle-feeding, you probably need bottles. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ At the end of the day, what I wish I realized is that anything we needed we could’ve just bought after our son was born. I got into this mindset that if we purchased everything before baby arrived, I’d somehow be more prepared to be a mom. The reality is nothing can prepare you to be a mom except mothering.

7. There’s no secret to interacting with babies.

Some of you might read this and think “No duh,” but I didn’t grow up around small children and the first diaper I ever changed was my son’s. The first baby I ever held, I’m pretty sure, was also my son. I’ve always wanted to be a mom, but when I imagined motherhood, it was always with older kids, not necessarily babies. Babies always made me nervous because I just didn’t know how to handle them. I worried I’d hold them incorrectly or drop them or that they’d cry and I wouldn’t know what to do. I’m sure other people who are less comfortable with little kids can relate to this. But since having my own child, I’ve come to realize babies are pretty straightforward. They aren’t as fragile as you think and they ultimately just want your attention and affection. I’m always so grateful for the people in social settings who are comfortable holding and playing with my son, even though I know I wouldn’t have been that kind of person prior to having a baby.

8. Mother’s intuition is real, even if it’s hard to tap into.

This was something I really struggled with in the early months of caring for my son. I wish I could’ve had someone to tell me over and over again, “You are his mom. You know what’s best. Trust your intuition.” But I trusted anything but my intuition. I watched YouTube videos, scoured Reddit, let other people tell me what to do and how to do it, but I had no idea what I thought about anything mothering related, and amidst so many other opinions it’s pretty hard to figure out what you think. Some people won’t struggle with this, but I’m a generally indecisive person and hearing so many other opinions and ideas made it practically impossible to hear my own. What I wish someone would have told me is that it’s okay to silence the noise and just do what you think is best for your kid. If you have an idea about the kind of mom you want to be, the way you want to do things, lean into that. I wish I wasn’t so easily swayed by other people’s opinions early on and that I was a lot more confident in how I wanted to do things.

There you have it! 7 things I wish I knew about birth, postpartum, and general mothering before I have a baby. There’s probably a lot more I could say, but these are the ideas that immediately came to mind. The transition from maiden to mother is sudden and confusing, but I promise that even in the most difficult moments, it does get better! These are the things I learned transitioning from zero to one kids. Soon I’ll be transitioning from one to two and I’m sure there’s even more for me to learn there!

Thank you for reading and I hope you have a wonderful rest of your week! Drop a comment if anything I said above resonated with you!

Verily,

Kyrie