The truth and nothing but the truth

BEWARE: The post below is a little graphic and talks about girlie stuff. If you are easily embarrassed or are my dad, you might want to give this post a miss.

I've been thinking a lot lately about how easy it is for people to share about the sunny things in life and cover up the not so great things. I think that this is particularly the case with new moms. The fact is that it was just not very easy to share how hopelessly inadequate I felt most of the time at first or that I actually had momentary thoughts about putting Elliot up for adoption so I could have my old life back. But the fact is I'm human and I did have some real lows at first. And even though things are much easier and more fun now, I'm sure that there will be plenty of times ahead of me when the idea of running away to Tahiti crosses my mind again.

I reckon all this fibbing about how well we new moms are handling stuff does a disservice to other new moms and moms-to-be. It certainly perpetuates the Hollywood-mom-version of new motherhood, (which in my experience is utter malarkey) and leaves us real people downright astounded at how difficult it can be to adjust to our new role as moms, especially in the first few months.

So now that I'm finally coming out of the haze of the first few months I thought I'd do my best to honestly talk about some of the things that have left me utterly flabbergasted about this whole birth/new mom business.

One of those things is the after-effects of birth and pregnancy on a woman's body and speaking about my body specifically, things really aren't so great yet. From all the comments I've heard from other women who've had kids, it's slowly dawning on my that my body as I once knew it will never be the same again. Now I had heard lots of moms say this before I got pregnant, but I always thought they were talking about weight gain or stretch marks or something sorta superficial, instead of the really sucky things pregnancy and child birth can do to a woman's body. Since you asked, here's a run down of the body issues I'm still dealing with:

• I still wet my pants when I sneeze or laugh too hard with a full bladder . . . not a full soaking, but enough to make me want to change my undies. The kids across the street got a trampoline for xmas and I've been aching to have a go, but I don't yet dare . . . . On top of that, sometimes when I'm having a wee, I'll think I'm finished and end up peeing on my hand when I wipe or on the seat when I stand up. I guess I'll be doing pelvic floor exercises until I die.
• I'm still dealing with my anal fissures. Although, I haven't had any bleeding when I poo in a while, I'm still using lubricating suppositories and stool softeners to make sure that I don't tear my tender asshole open yet again. It's really painful and makes me walk a bit funny.
• Thanks to some rest, physio, and orthotics, my plantar fasciitis and pulled groin muscle are way better than they were, and I'm finally back at the gym (with a limited regimen) although it's slow going. I still can't walk briskly or for any length of time before my heel starts to hurt, and even changing position in bed still really hurts my groin. I can't believe how slowly these particular little injuries heal. It's so frustrating.
• My poor poor va-jay-jay. I used to wonder who on earth would prefer to wear pads over tampons. Now I know: Moms. Technically, I can wear a tampon, but they are so so uncomfortable. I wasn't too worried about this since I figured it would get better eventually as all the little tears eventually healed. However, I was talking to a friend whose youngest is five and she still says she can't stand tampons (but wore them all the time before giving birth). What the hell! How come no one tells you this stuff! You can probably imagine that sex is a nonthing in our lives. If things don't start feeling better down in my girlie bits, Paul and I won't even need to discuss the possibility of a brother or sister for Elliot.

To be fair, there are also a couple of good changes that I probably should mention. First, I'm getting some really impressive mom guns and upper body strength from carting around my little buddha baby. Also, my huge dark brown nipples are nearly back to their original color and are slowly going back to their normal size, and surprizingly I don't seem to have any stretch marks (which is really amazing since I have stretch marks from puberty). I'm also finally starting to lose weight and get into the biggest of my non-maternity or elastic-waisted clothing which is really great. I was beginning to think that the extra weight would never budge.

All right I think that's enough whinging for now. It's funny because before I got pregnant and had Elliot, I was so in awe about our abilities as women to have children, but now that I've been through it, it seems rather less magical. I still can't really get my head around the fact that this ever-growing little cutie pie came from my body, but the process of it all is actually pretty messy and a bit less miraculous.