Your Body After Baby: 8 Things You Need to Know

Hundreds of books are written about pregnancy, but not much is said about what happens to your body after the baby gets here. Sure there might be a paragraph, or if you are really lucky a chapter of the book devoted to this topic, but in my opinion it is worth a separate book altogether. What follows is my account of what really happens to you after the baby comes.


#1 You will be an emotional train wreck
With the huge hormonal shift that takes place after giving birth, it is no surprise that you are a little bit more emotional than normal, but it seems nobody really tells you the crazy things that you will end up crying about. I would break down in tears every day the first month over the silliest things. I may or may not have had a meltdown over my husband controlling the remote and picking a TV show I did not want to watch.

#2 You will shed like a dog
I had NO idea that loosing hair was normal after giving birth. The hair loss started slowly and before I knew it I was pulling out wads of hair every night in the shower. After a shower session where I lost more hair than my golden retriever does in a year I turned to the holy grail of new moms, Google, and found out that yes indeed this is a very common issue.

#3 Hemorrhoids
Think of little grapes hanging from your butt, and sticking around for months. Invest in some Preparation H and stool softener. Enough said.

#4 You will sweat like never before
Tell all family and friends to dress like they are going skiing in January when they come to visit you the first few weeks after you get home from the hospital. You will sweat and be hot ALL the time. Another tip, wear deodorant to bed. You can thank me later.

#5 All your shirts will seem too short
This is still a mystery to me, I can't figure out if they actually are shorter or if I was just used to wearing longer shirts while being pregnant. Either way you will need to go shopping for some longer shirts or get used to feeling like you are wearing a shirt 2 sizes too small.

#6 Bye-Bye Memory
I think they took out part of my brain when my son was born. I have totally forgotten appointments and showed up to places on the wrong day. I even forget if I have already shampooed my hair when I'm in the shower.
#7 Sleep when the baby sleeps is easier said than done
If you are anything like me, the last thing you want to do when the baby is sleeping is sleep! You have laundry, cleaning, cooking, e-mails to return, Facebook to catch up on and a workout video calling your name. Oh and if you do decide to take a nap the baby will wake up the second you fall asleep.

#8 You finally know just how much your parents love you
You really can't understand the love of a parent until you are a parent…and that love makes everything I mentioned above absolutely worth it!

This post was originally written for and published on Newparent.com