You Didn't Tell Me Marriage and Motherhood Would Be Like This - Part 2

By Yetty Williams

The first part of this article spoke about the reason someone will say ah..ah you didn’t tell me, which is when one gets married and starts to adjust to life as part of a married couple. There are all sorts of things you will be reacting to and experiencing that no one could have prepared you for. After sometime as a newlywed there is an expiration date, the newlywed tag has a limit and it also ends faster when a baby is brought into the union.

For a mother, a baby arrives after 9 months of changes to your body, carrying a child and planning for the delivery. The couple experience emotional ups and downs thanks to pregnancy hormones, and the woman experiences changes in her body directly.

There are the popular physical changes, which are mentioned such as the increase in breast size that most people are pleased about, the stretch marks which most people are not happy about. However there are other changes that are not so pleasant and not so widely talked about.

Anyway everyone tells you things will go back to normal your body will return to pre-pregnancy state, the truth is what they should say is that your body should or might go back to normal. There have been some women who their bigger feet never go back to normal and they need a whole new set of shoes. There are some body parts that stretch and stretch permanently…no going back to pre baby size no matter how much dieting you undergo.

Anyways the bundle of joy arrives and no matter what you went through to give birth, they lied when they say that after you give birth you forget the pain! No you don’t! Forget? How? Even if you decide to get an epidural how can you forget the experience of being screamed at to stay still while a HUGE needle is inserted into your spine for fear of paralysis? If you went the natural route how can you forget the process of labor and pushing to get the baby out?

Then the breast feeding…why don’t they tell you about the fact that it is not as natural and seamless for baby and mother as is popularly suggested. The mother has to learn the right way to breastfeed, there is a process to it, the latching, the caring for the breast to avoid infection and cracks. What about the famous second day engorgement that can be soo painful because the milk is finally coming in?

The sleepless nights? Ha they can’t warn you enough about what the sleepless nights mean. How sleepless it really is. Yes you need all the help you can get - so plan for it well before the baby arrives. No you are not meant to do it all alone and No you are not lazy for needing help. There is also no set formula for who the best person to help you is, sometimes it might be your mum and sometimes it might be your Mum in Law or even a total stranger who is a suitable carer.

Then what about intimacy? The truth is who can think about intimacy. Do you realize that based on the amount of time between feeding you actually leak milk? I leave you to imagine what this can mean for your intimacy as a couple. You can have all sorts of situations following natural childbirth that the idea of having sex is downright scary and far from your mind! For some men they cannot imagine their wives as sexy again after seeing her as a carrier of their child.

There is a lot of work to do, the washing and the feeding and the burping and the changing and caring for a newborn is a lot to do and you are expected to do it all while smiling. No one can explain the amount of love you feel for a child. You know the saying of wearing a piece of you heart outside you. This comes into actuality when you have a child, you might have thought you loved your spouse but wait until you have a child and you understand what love is!

Ah no one told you that after you have started to master marriage, giving birth to a child comes to get you back to basics. Whatever you thought you knew, childbirth comes to let you know that you didn’t know anything and you have to learn from scratch.

Like I now say not a lot of things humble a person like marriage and parenting.

Sorry for leaving out the men though they have their own experience of being new dads too, I'm not in the best position to do that. Maybe the men will help us out.

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Yetty Williams is a wife and mother, and the editor of LagosMums