Funny blog

I just read a great blog and wanted to share it. It's called Mama Drama and it's on the Austin-American Statesman newspaper's website. I believe the author is Tara Trower. Anyway, I could definitely appreciate this particular blog:

March 11, 2009

Lies women tell pregnant women

In my more than two hour commute to work today (thanks rain and all of you on MoPac), I heard this on Mix 94.7’s JB and Sandy show. It’s from an upcoming book “Backwards in Heels: The Impossible Art of Being Female,’ by Tania Kindersley and Sarah Vine.

Here are the lies women who have had children often tell a pregnant woman:

1. It doesn’t matter if she gets fat, the weight will drop off afterwards, especially if she breastfeeds.

2. The birth itself isn’t that bad, and anyway your body is biologically programmed to forget the pain.

3. Breast-feeding can be a little tricky to start with, but in the end she’ll get the hang of it.

4. You get used to not having as much sleep as you used to.

5. The experience of looking after a newborn can really bring two people together.

Here are the truths, according to the authors:

1. Her stomach will never be the same again, not even if she goes to the gym every day (which she won’t be able to because she won’t have the time), breast-feeds until her child goes to university and observes a strict vegan diet.

2. The birth is quite terrifying, gas and air doesn’t work like they say it does, having stitches is horrible, midwives don’t always get it right, there will be more blood and bodily fluids than an episode of “CSI Miami,” and having half the world staring at your most intimate parts while you make noises like a demented pig is not, in any sense of the word, empowering.

3. Breast-feeding can be very hard indeed, you feel like a useless failure if you can’t do it, you will almost certainly get mastitis (which is like the worst toothache you can imagine, only in your breast), old ladies will give you horrid stares if you try to do it in public, breast-fed babies do get colic, you may have curious and uncomfortable anxieties about being a prize heifer, you will leak in public, your nipples will feel like they’ve been sandpapered and your breasts, like your stomach, will never really recover.

4. You will go insane with sleep deprivation. You really will. Even the hardiest of military men were reduced to wrecks after three days of no sleep in Japanese prisoner of war camps, and you were not trained for this. There will be days when the very act of putting clothes on your shattered body will feel like a major achievement.  

5. Once the initial euphoria has subsided, you and your partner will effectively become shift workers: when he’s awake you will be dropping off to sleep, and vice versa. You will become resentful of his ability to leave the house in the morning, bound for the comparatively stressless world of work. In the back of your mind will be the sneaking suspicion that he is spending longer and longer in the office because he would almost rather be anywhere than at home sterilising bottles and dealing with a frazzled you and a wailing babe. Sex will be implausible, not so much because of the physical changes wrought by giving birth, but because you will both be spectacularly exhausted, and no one feels like having much sex when they’re tired. And smelling slightly of sick.

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So true!! I will post an update soon about going back to work this week. *sigh*