1. Hormones are real. Don't let anyone give you crap about them and stop holding them in. Your stress is the baby's stress. Release your hormonal fury and chill.
2. Find a strong, outspoken friend to be your advocate when you can't speak for yourself. Especially when you're alone in the delivery room and the doctors and nurses are ignoring you as the baby's head is coming out.
3. Depression before, during, and after pregnancy is a real thing. If one doctor's treatment is "just don't be depressed", get a second opinion. If you talk to someone who insists it's all in your head, get a third opinion, or forth, or fifth and so on.
4. You don't owe it to anyone to have your baby in a certain place, in a certain way, or to make yourself uncomfortable to convenience anyone other than yourself and your baby. This is YOUR journey.
5. Don't let people treat you like a surrogate or a vagina. When people talk about you having their baby, or thank you for having the baby for them, correct them. This is YOUR baby. You are a woman about to bring life into the world. You deserve a little respect for that.
6. Don't let people tell you that you don't matter or make YOUR pregnancy all about themselves. People who have had their chance played the game already. People who are waiting on their chance still have no right to undermine or belittle you. This is about YOU and YOUR BABY.
7. Fight for your rights and for your respect early. You won't be in any shape to when you're crying at 3AM praying the baby stays asleep while you feed him while you work out your bad feelings from an earlier conversation with an insensitive person.
8. There is such a thing as maternal instincts, and all of yours will be right, despite the lack of support to follow them.
9. Anyone that wants to be involved with the baby? Tell them you may not need help with the baby right away as you try to settle in and bond, but you'll need all the help you can get with things around the house. Make or take suggestions for ways any willing volunteers can help and keep that list closer to you than your bottle of Benefiber. Take all this help at least for the first week, if possible, a month. Once you're sure you're not going crazy and had your special time with your baby, THEN everyone else can come. Put you and baby first.
10. Take volunteers up on their offers to help both before and after baby's arrival. You need to relax as much as possible and may be glued to the bed for awhile after birth.
11. Don't just quietly mention that you want at least a week to yourself (aka visitor free) after birth. Repeat it firmly and often. You will be on a hormonal high for about a week or more and trust me, you'll appreciate every last drop that you can squeeze out of that just for you and your baby to bond rather than to be used smiling through pain and entertaining excited guests that don't want to leave as you pray you don't poop your pants in their prescence.
12. Pain. Not a joke. Your instincts will be right, those bitches WERE contractions in early February. They will last until birth in mid-March. Labor will be all natural, speedy, dream-like, emotional, incredible, and deeply missed. 4th degree stitches will pique your curiosity. You will question whether stitches are supposed to hurt like that. They are, but only when someone leaves gauze inside you and it gets infected. By your 2nd clueless week, the infection will increase and be worse than labor pains. Uterine cramps will be similar to medium period pains. None of your pregnancy, labor, or post-partum pain will ever be as bad as your endo pain. Nevertheless, stock up on painkillers so you can focus on caring for the baby (and YOU!).
13.4th degree stitches mean you will feel pain to sit, stand, lie down, walk etc for an unknown amount of time at the stitches site. Once you can tolerate using the stairs regularly, the pain will be brought down to only feeling a slight pull of healing muscles/tissues as you move. Keep the baby in bed with you, have food brought to you, and focus on nothing more than eating, drinking TONS of water, feeding baby, and lying down for at least the first week. Lying down is your new best friend.
14. Sitz baths (with Savlon/Dettol, hot water, and Epsom salts) were a gift to humanity from the gods. If you can't do them 3x a day, do them once a day, but do them. They WILL make a difference. Perineal irrigation with warm water, Savlon/Dettol, and Epsom salts during bathroom visits was a gift from superior alien life forms to save your life. Do it. Every. Single. Time. On that note, the handheld showerhead thing you hardly ever use in the bathroom? Say hello to your new best friend.
15. Your first bowel movement after birth won't be so bad because you researched what to expect. 4th degree tears mean your sphincter is damaged which means that every bowel movement after birth will make you think of your labor: you can't stop it from coming and there's some level of pain involved.
16. Constipation. Benefiber and prune juice will not be enough. Be religious about whole grains and fruits and veggies, even when Taurus Man insists on buying food. You will be chugging water like a champ because of breastfeeding anyway.
17. You will have an over-active letdown, or over-supply of milk. Nothing you do will work until you start hand expressing and pumping to relieve engorgement and slow down the flow so your baby can eat properly. Two sanitary pads per boob every few hours will be the best nursing pads you can find. Nevertheless, always keep two thick rags or big hankerchiefs with you as back ups.
18. Everyone will have an opinion on everything from parenting to your recovery. Don't take people talking smack about you from anybody. One little comment from a good person, a paragraph from a good friend, a condescending lecture from a relative; none of it matters. Stop it in its tracks or have your appointed advocate help you out. Hormones are a bitch that will drag you through hell. Opinions, demands, lectures, insults, and drama can suck Eric Cartman's balls.
19. Everyone does NOT bond with their baby as soon as he/she is born. That's what movies are made out of. The hormonal high after the birth will help, but bear in mind this high will feel like a combination of being drunk and taking a super strong dose of some kind of happy pills. There will be this kind of woozy feeling like if everything is floating by and so amazing and you will cry for every. little. thing. for at least a week. When it's gone you will be in shock and feel like you've just been slapped in the face (to say the very least) and thrown out naked in the cold.
20. That being said, post-partum depression may not start right away. Once you realize it's rearing its ugly head, get help right away. It can happen to anyone at anytime without a logical reason. Do not talk to people you know will belittle you, blame you, and insult you for feeling that way. Find an alternative early on. Your advocate will come in handy here.
21. Have someone to go to with everything. Capricorn Girl will be your saving grace and keep you going when all seems lost. This is not a journey to venture into alone. Find a support person or a support group. Whichever works.
22. Prioritize you and your baby above all else.
23. Read my lips. D-E-L-E-G-A-T-E. You hear me? Don't nod your head at me that way. Delegate like your life depends on it.
24. Give yourself a break. OCD, ADHD, anxiety, and all their friends can also suck Eric Cartman's balls. Take in the moments as they go by and love yourself, encourage yourself, give yourself credit, and be proud of yourself for the amazing thing you're doing and for the amazing thing you're about to do. (Also for not committing hormonal murder)
25. Write down, take pictures, record; whichever way suits you. You'll cherish being able to re-live the emotions and every moment you materialized one day, whether it's to relay every detail to a curious soul, remind yourself of everything you WILL forget by the time you're ready for another child, or to convince yourself that you do not entirely suck as a mother when everything gets you down, capture the moments. At least whenever you can.
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