Baby Blues?

People can tell you everything about their own experiences with their newborn children, but nothing quite prepares you. There are a lot of things I'm surprised about dealing with the postpartum period, kind of the same way I was surprised about a lot of things that happened to me during pregnancy. Then I had random nosebleeds, my feet swelled so much that I couldn't wear my own shoes the last month, I had more back pain than I imagined I ever would, and labor was not as easy as portrayed in my Lamaze class. Now that I've had Sophie, I realized pregnancy was the easy part. My back hurts twice as much as it did when I was pregnant, and I thought that pain would go away. I had a c-section that I wasn't really prepared for, so I never thought to ask what recovery would be like. I also didn't realize I would need to be off my feet as much as possible. And I know this sounds absolutely ridiculous, and perhaps I'm just a pessimist, but it wasn't really real in my mind that I was actually going to have a baby at the end of the pregnancy until I heard her cry for the first time. Another thing that surprises me - she sleeps a lot, and eats even more than I could have predicted. Speaking of eating, I assumed that breastfeeding would be easy, and now I am pumping only and supplementing with formula until my milk supply can catch up to the twenty-five ounces a day that Sophie is eating. Nothing has surprised me as much as the way my body is handling everything that is going on.

It's called the baby blues, I've read. It's not PPD (postpartum depression), it's just... hormones, from what I've read. Now that I'm no longer pregnant, my hormones are causing me to feel all sorts of crazy. One minute I'm the happiest person ever, the next I'm being so incredibly paranoid about everything to the point that I can't sleep. Sometimes I can't wait to hand her over to someone else so that I can shower or get some rest, and other points, I just want to hold her and not share her with anyone else. Sometimes I feel like I'm starving, and other times I couldn't be less interested in food. I think I just keep eating because I know I have to. Sometimes it's my confidence in myself as a mother that I lack, other times I lack the confidence in other people to be able to take care of her. I either feel the need to scrub the house from top to bottom when I am busy doing something else, or I feel completely apathetic about the way it looks when I actually have the time to do something about it. I've even found myself getting mad at Justin for being impatient or frustrated when the baby won't sleep. It's a reasonable way to feel, but I guess I got upset because I haven't said anything about how frustrated I can be.

The part that bothers me the most? Feeling this way is completely irrational to me. I shouldn't be paranoid. I haven't started crying yet, and I'm absolutely terrified of becoming depressed. I guess the good part is that the one constant thing that I am completely sure of 110 percent of the time is that I love Sophie. I know that deep down in my heart. Even when it's late at night and she's crying and I've done everything I can think of and I'm beyond exhausted, I still love her and all I want to do is make her feel better. I'm so very tired but it's worth it in the end.