Surprises after a baby with Sarah

I stumbled upon Sarah's blog while asking for advice on who cloth diapers on twitter.  She has a lot great information and I'm sure I will be asking her a billion questions about tips, washing, etc. Besides cloth diapering she has a lot of great ideas and recipes when it comes to kids.  Definitely check her out. Thanks Sarah for being here today.  I hope you don't get sick of all of my questions :)

Hi! I'm Sarah Eleanor, and I blog over at Spoon Fed Baby. I have a 14 month old who is {thankfully} not walking yet, and an awesome hubby who {sometimes} reads my blog! You will find me tapping away at the keyboard about topics from must have's for cloth diapers, memories of my 1st year with baby boy, to 10 things that need to be cleaned! I am so glad that I was asked to guest post for Stephanie as she has her BABY! What an exciting time. It feels like just yesterday that we were driving home (in the rain) after having baby boy, and a huge mix of emotions was overcoming me. "Is he warm enough?", "Is hubby driving too fast?", & "Where is my Motrin?". As many of us know having a baby is a wonderful, passionate, emotional experience, that really can't be put into words. AND as many new Mom's know it comes with it's low points, desperation, and sleep deprivation. It's all part of the game (smile)

5 Surprises After Having a Baby

1. You're busier than you thought you would be. Babies, sleep, eat, and poop when they are newborns (I could write a whole post about the poop). In fact they sleep A LOT. I remember being worried about the amount of time that baby boy spent sleeping...in hindsight, DON'T WORRY ABOUT THAT! haha. With all the sleeping though you would think things would move pretty slowly and there would be a lot of down time. NOT. I was nursing so I had to make sure baby was eating every 2.5 hours or so. We created a nice sleep, eat, play schedule. Even though he slept for 1.75 hours usually there were always things to do as a new Mommy. Things that aren't tons of fun either....like (TMI alert) sit on a sitz bath, put hot compresses on full boobs, squeeze in a nap, shower, etc. etc. etc. I remember feeling a bit sad that I was relegated to the feeding job and others had the playing jobs.
2. The laundry is never ending. I was looking at our water bill for the past year or so recently to see how much it went up because of washing cloth diapers, and I noticed the first bill after having baby boy was about 50 more dollars than normal...because we did laundry about twice. every. day. There were so many diaper leaks, pees when the diaper was off, spit ups, and random other fluid leaks that we would run out of changing table pads, burp clothes, and clothes. Glad my Mom was here to do it!
3. You have visitors galore. Really it's no surprise that people want to come and hold, kiss, and touch your baby. Who doesn't love a newborn? When visitors would ask to come over I would usually suggest in the morning sometime, because by the afternoon was when I needed my nap!! And it's OK to not offer food etc. They will be happy with just holding that sweet baby of yours. But seriously, family and friends will want to visit! Accept it now, because it will come to an end and you will wish you had some visitors to save your sanity!
4. Your emotions get the best of you. I think this is what surprised me the most. I have always felt like I have been an emotional person, but when need be I could hold them in check and be pretty even keel (my husband may disagree). But after that baby comes it is a whole different story. I knew and expected to not feel great and the happiest I have ever felt. I knew there would be emotions and some that I wouldn't be a big fan of. I remember being jealous of my husband because he could tell our son that he loved him first...for some reason it took me caring for him for a couple weeks to start to feel this. And that is OK...don't beat yourself up if you are not head over heels in love and rapture with this little being...it is something that takes getting used to!
5. You will want a new camera. The point and shoot camera that worked so well for you before, will be sub par now! Because this newborn time lasts for such a short time, you will be snapping away like crazy for weeks/months/years to come. We headed out before baby boy came and bought an SLR camera and never looked back. 1500 photos later our boy is 14 months old! I look back on those older photos when I start feeling sentimental (umm...about every other day) and love how perfectly that time was captured. Our month by month photos are also an awesome testimony to his quick growth!

These are just a *few* of the surprises that will come your way those first weeks after delivering. The biggest surprise that you start realizing a couple months into this new little life, is just how much you love your new addition (especially his/her snuggles) and how you would do ANYTHING to protect them (smile).

You can also follow Sarah at
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SpoonFedBaby
Twitter: https://twitter.com/spoonfed_baby
Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/sarah2280/
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