So childbirth, it’s a beautiful thing! There’s no denying that. It blows my mind that a woman can quite literally grow a human and then bring it into the world all inside her own body. But not everything about childbirth is beautiful. A lot of it is gross and very unexpected. I remember reading horror stories about what some mothers had gone through during childbirth or pregnancy, to the extent where they had to call firms like Lawtx.com to help them get justice from cases of birthing injuries and medical malpractice. I was glad to know these mothers could get some sort of compensation out of such an awful situation but with irreversible injuries on babies and their mothers, you’d think these doctors would be more careful! It scared me so much, but I was still so excited to meet my little one; I knew cases like this were rare. But I think my number one tip would be not to read up on things that can go wrong, and picture how right everything will go in your head instead. You never know, you might not feel a thing! (I’m kidding!) So anyway, I can, and will, write at length about all the things friends, doctors, family members and strangers on the street tell you about pregnancy, childbirth and newborns. But here’s a quick and dirty list of just a few of the totally false things I was told when I embarked on this journey of motherhood. Don’t worry, I will expand on all of these in due time…
- You have to eat a lot when you get pregnant.
Um, no. Yes you should be healthy and not eat a lot of junk, but there’s no reason to suddenly double your caloric intake or pig out. You will naturally be hungrier, so just continue eating good food and don’t drive yourself crazy. But yes, drink lots of water.
- Sleep now because once baby arrives you won’t get any rest.
And yes in the first trimester you will be narcoleptic and fall asleep everywhere (at your desk at work, in yoga, at home at 5pm for the night), but in the 3rd trimester forget it, you will simply be too uncomfortable to sleep well. You will have bouts of insomnia, your whole sleep schedule will be upended. And yes, you will want to strangle every person that chimes in with that dumb sleep now advice. Yeah, I get it, but it’s not going to happen, so shut up already.
- If you get an epidural, you won’t feel any pain.
Yes, I’m a scaredy cat, and thought my labor would go something like this: feel a few pangs or pre-labor, nothing serious, call my Hubby and mosey over to the hospital where I get my pain relief, then coast through until the little one pops out. No one bothered to burst this bubble of fiction for me, so I was very pissed, to put it mildly, when not only did I have to wait an hour to be admitted and receive the injection into my spine (all the while feeling serious contractions that made me cry, moan like a wild animal, and almost made my husband pass out from witnessing all this), but then when I was fully dilated and had to start pushing, the epidural stopped working. No, there was nothing wrong with the drip, no technical difficulty, but they TURNED IT OFF!!! Other moms have told me the same happened to them, something about needing you to be able to feel everything in order to effectively push the baby out. This makes sense I guess, but couldn’t they have warned me?!
- Getting induced is no big deal.
Mark my words – make sure you get an epidural BEFORE the pitocin, trust me.
- Breastfeeding is a natural thing that will come easily to new moms.
While it would be great to think so, and there is some element of truth to this, um, no. NO. Unfortunately breastfeeding isn’t this super easy process by which women just coax the newborn toward the nipple and voil , he suckles seamlessly. There are techniques, different positions, right ways and wrong ways to do it. And while my son had no problem feeding right after birth in the hospital bed, it was afterward that he decided to make tartare of my nipples. So by all means, go to a support group or a lactation consultant if you have difficulty.
- The first 3 months are hard, but by then baby will be sleeping through the night and you’ll be fine.
Um, again no. Try the first 6 months are super tough, and THEN your baby MAY sleep through the night, and no promises with that. And can we talk about the definition of “sleep through the night?” To me this should mean that I sleep through the night, not just baby. So when people tell me their babies are sleeping through but by this they mean only 5 hours from 8p to 1am, I say hell no. When your kid falls asleep and doesn’t wake up until 6am or after, THAT, my friends, is sleeping through the night.
We’ve polled you gals, and we know many of you are Hot Mommy’s or Mommys-to-be, so we’d like to welcome “Upper East Side Mom” Diana Nikkhah Harfouche who will be blogging with us regularly. Gorgeous Diana is a journalist living on New York City’s Upper East Side, trying her best to navigate this thing that is “both a terrifying black hole and life’s greatest pleasure: Motherhood.” She is mom to adorable Jean-Luc, whose “future unfortunately will probably include a few angst-ridden years on a therapist’s couch, thanks to her.” What we love most about our very own “Upper East Side Mom” is she won’t feed you any bullshit. She will be frank with you (childbirth hurts) and honest (stop stuffing your face with cookies) and you will appreciate every glorious, sisterly truth. Here she debunks some of the biggest myths.