"main gifts" for the Super Early Days (postpartum)
Ok, so you went 9 months of making Pinterest boards and shopping online, setting up your nursery and fantasizing about holding your brand new baby in your arms. You pictured something like this:
Then your labour hit... and shit got real and your first moments (and first pictures were more like this)
Look at me! Look at my face...and after baby #3! and years of being in the this room on the other side of things. I'm a mixture of relieved, grossed out, dazed and then relieved again.
It all hits you like a mac-truck going full speed ahead and you find yourself somewhere back there trying to catch up. If you've had a hospital birth; your quickly discharged from the L&D department and moved to your room. Nurses bustle in and out to check on you and check on baby and soon they're telling you to get up and walk around and you're like WHAAAAAAA?
Next up the lactation consultant comes to check in on baby's latch. A nurse walks you through diapering, body-feeding, swaddling and bathing and tells you to listen to baby's cues. Then they send you on your way and tell you you'll be fine! You're discharged and you're grateful to go home.
You step through your front door and you sigh in relief. It's good to be home... your baby starts crying, NOW WHAT?
Let's stop right here—
It is completely ok to feel totally unprepared.
It is completely ok to feel scared.
It is completely ok to be immediately overwhelmed.
*Every time you sense these big feelings bubbling up, take a big, deep grounding breath and remind yourself that through and through you got this! and it will NOT be perfect and it will NOT be easy, but as long as you work as a team—you, your partner (if you have one) and your bebé. together, you got this!!