I wasn't expecting...

There have been a few things that I wasn't expecting to happen right after birth. Such as:

- Being able to eat SO MUCH in one sitting.
My stomach being squooshed by my beautiful baby happened so gradually that I forgot how much I could eat before. There were a few times that I got my meal in the hospital and looked at the food and said "wow! That's a lot of food, I don't know if I'm going to be able to finish that" and then... a few minutes later I had eaten it all and I could still eat more. That was definitely a surprise.

- How comfortable it was to lay flat on my back.
I remember going to take a nap and rolling from one side to another and stopping on my back and stretching my legs out. AAAAHHHHH, it felt so good! I would do that while I was pregnant, but it didn't feel so good, and I had to remind myself that I needed to sleep on my side. Not anymore!

- How good it feels to be close to my hubby when we hug.
Again, my belly grew so gradually that I didn't realize how far apart we had to be when we hugged. But once I had Cambria, all that changed, and I could get close to him again, and oh how good that felt!

- How awesome it is to cuddle without a belly!
That one's self explanatory :)

- How quickly my belly bounced back
Don't get me wrong, it's not where I want it to be, but it's a lot flatter than I thought it was going to be at this stage. (Ok ladies, don't forget that this is my first baby, and a lot of women bounce back a lot faster with their first...)
This one I debated even mentioning... But I wanted to because I think there's a reason behind it. First, I wasn't expecting to not have abdominal muscles that could hold in my internal organs. It totally makes sense that they would be stretched out, but for some reason I didn't think about that. I was expecting to have a nice flabby tummy (people told me about that) but I was expecting it to be skin, not my organs too... Well, I have a friend who lent me all of her maternity clothes, and in that wardrobe there was a little support thingy like this one

well, you can also flip it around and use it for postpartum support. I did that and within a few days my belly felt more normal. I felt like my internal organs where were they were supposed to be. I really think the band helped. I didn't love it for pregnancy, just because of the nature of garments and everything else, it was just one more layer to deal with, especially when going to the bathroom... ugg... :)

- Speaking of going to the bathroom...
Ya... you remember what I said about eating... same thing with my bladder :) It's so nice to not have to make a trip to the loo every half hour!

- How thirsty I am
Holy cow! I can chug a half a liter and not blink an eye! And then do the same thing 15 minutes later! That shocked Jonathan too... actually, he's the one that brought how much I was drinking to my attention. When I was pregnant, he had to strongly encourage me to finish one liter a day... now I am easily drinking two, and if my cup stays full, and close by, I could probably do three!

-How often I need to eat
a meal every two to three hours, with snacks in between... that's a lot of food. And so much protein, I didn't realize that protein helped with healing... but apparently it does. So eat your protein if you need your body to heal.

And then of course there's the things with recovery that nobody talks about. ... I heard there were things that nobody talked about, but ... nobody talked about them to me. Come on now! I wanted to know :) (If you want to know, I'll be more than willing to talk about them to you...)

Just thought I'd share :)