Category Archives: Newborn

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Breastfeeding won’t make you skinny (and other postpartum pains)

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One of the many, many things women are told when they’re pregnant is that breastfeeding will make you skinny. “It literally melts your fat away!” “Your baby will suck you right back down to your pre-pregnancy weight!” Sounds great! Sign me up! What they don’t tell you is that for as long as you breastfeed, your body will basically stay “soft,” no matter how much you work out. Something to do with the hormones and oxytocin or something. Which is fine, as even at my smallest, I never had 6-pack abs anyway, so whatevs.

I also was constantly told that being in good shape before pregnancy, and keeping up working out as long as I did would help me soo much during childbirth and recovery, and would make me “bounce back” super fast after having the baby. That was so encouraging, and I totally believed it!

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I just had a baby – now how the f*** do I dress myself?

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Well, I’ve been feeling pretty guilty lately about not writing in over a month. I have no excuses. There have been so many things I’ve wanted to write about, but as I start forming brilliant ideas for relevant, funny and insightful posts (at least they are all of those things in my head!), I start to get overwhelmed thinking about the time it will take me to write, and then edit my always-too-long thoughts. Then I think about how I haven’t done anything cool with the layout of this blog, or even added photos…. and so I just do nothing.

But anyway, here I am. With the changing weather and the necessity to start digging into clothing for a new season, I want to revisit this topic I jotted down a long time ago and saved to write about later…

How To Dress Yourself After Having A Baby

Congratulations! You had a baby! You spent the last 9 months constantly adjusting your wardrobe to fit your growing belly, and boobs, and feet. You figured out what shoes you can wear every single day without having to bend down to put them on or tie any laces. You discovered 5 million different ways to wear maternity leggings. Now you’re done with all of that! You have a baby! You now can go back to wearing all of your cute and familiar pre-pregnancy clothes and not have to worry about anything except for cuddling with your sweet baby who sleeps 12 hours a night and never cries!

Wait, that’s not right.

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Stop skinny-shaming my baby!

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Everybody LOVES fat babies.

“Fat rolls for days!” 

“95th percentile at 2 weeks!”

“Wearing 9 mo. clothes at 2 months!”

“That kid loves his mama’s milk!”

And so on. These are things that parents of chunky babies brag about online, and I don’t disagree that pudgy babies are pretty dang adorable. I mean, those cheeks! Those thighs! Those bellies! You really do get why people “just want to eat them up!” I haven’t really noticed moms of skinny babies bragging about percentile stats and clothing sizes, but in my experience parents of skinny babies do hear a lot from other people; from strangers to lactation consultants to pediatricians. (We are very lucky that our pediatrician has never said these things to us. She has been totally supportive and amazing and does not at all make me feel like a failure!) As the mom of a skinny baby with some minor to moderate breastfeeding challenges, here’s what I’ve heard:

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Advice for new parents… with disclaimers

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I always thought some of the things people say to expecting or new parents are pretty hilarious. “Your life is about to change!” (No shit.) “You’ll never love anyone as much as you’ll love your baby!” (Well, duh.) And one of my favorites: “Oh man, you have NO idea.” (Um, obviously, since I haven’t done this before.) And is that even advice, really? Or is that just your passive-aggressive way of making me feel even more clueless and inferior?

But really, I get that *most* of what people say comes from a good, well-meaning place from parents who have been there, done that. And I did seek and receive some very valuable advice, mostly from friends with babies and younger kids who actually remember what it’s like to bring home a brand new person. If your kid is older than 5, then you might want to skip out on giving advice to people about pregnancy, childbirth and the early days of child rearing. Instead, take some notes on how to cope with the toddler years (3 is the new 2!) and how exciting/awful the first day of kindergarten is, and send it to your friends along with a bottle of wine once their kid approaches those stages.

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Breastfeeding is so easy! (Is not something you’ll ever hear me say)

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Last week was World Breastfeeding Week – At least I think it was last week, it might be this week, or it could have been last month. I’m never really quite sure what day it is anymore… Anyway, What a fantastic week to have, to promote and celebrate breastfeeding across the world; to help normalize it in all countries so that mothers might not be gawked at or shamed if they dare to attempt to breastfeed in a restaurant or airport or mall or other public place. Actually, I’m pretty sure America is one of the few places have to worry about the gawking and shame thing. But, hey. Breastfeed your babies! It’s the best thing for them! If you don’t breastfeed, your baby might end up like this guy!

And breastfeeding is soooo easy, right? You see photos of beautiful celebrities and models like Gisele Bundchen breastfeeding while in the middle of getting ready for a photo shoot, and the videos you watch in childbirth class of boringly real people make it look totally normal and natural. Even the creepy animated video that shows what happens to your nipple when your baby properly latches make it seem perfectly logical – like showing you how it’s supposed to look will completely ensure that your baby will hone in on your nipple right away and start sucking. Ha.

For me, and for many mamas I know, it just ain’t that easy. Once little J finally got his alien-shaped oblong head through me and the rest of his body followed, he was immediately put on my chest, as is the ideal situation right after birth. But he wasn’t there long, as they whisked him over to the baby warmer for a little jump start. (More on that later when I post my birth story.) Once he was crying to the satisfaction and relief of everyone in the room, I had him back on my chest and my boobs were there for the taking, and he just didn’t. He cried for a really, really long time, and wanted nothing to do with the nipple. By the time we got to the Mother & Baby floor, still no suckling had happened. I was discouraged and confused and hurt and worried.

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Read to your newborn or their brain will shrink!

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Long before my son was born, and even before I became pregnant, I knew reading would be an important part of my child’s early years. My mom read to me early and often, and I credit that as one of the reasons why I had such a love of books, that grew into a passion for writing (remember me, the book nerd?). I wanted to pass on that passion to my child, so there was no question that we’d read stories every night from the time he or she was tiny to the time when he or she started reading to me. And then my child would write a best seller by age 20 and make millions from the movie adaptation, and we’d be set for life.

Lately, there’s been a lot of news about scientific evidence showing how awesome it is to read to your children (YAY! Go mom for doing that for me even before the “experts” said it was good!). But for it to really work, you have to start reading to them when they are tiny little babies. One NPR story I recently heard about it actually used the words “from birth” to describe when you should start reading to them. I’ll come back to that later.

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