Before I begin, I want to say this is something that I had asked the people on the app “Peanut”. This is an app where mothers sign up and can meet other moms around their towns and essentially become friends and hang out (Not a sponsor). However for me I felt it was far too overwhelming and in typical fashion I stopped using the app. I did however ask a question to the community, that question was “What is something you wish people told you about pregnancy or birth”. These are some responses and once the other parts become active I will be posting them below with links. And you are more than welcome to check them out yourself too!

What do you wish people told you about pregnancy and birth Part 2
What do you wish people told you about pregnancy and birth Part 3

Breast feeding hurts is something that popped up a few times. You guys may know my stance on breast feeding in terms that I formula feed my son and did the same for my first. I breastfed for 3 days with my first child and it was not for me. When you look at movies and things you always assumed that breastfeeding was this easy thing and any parent loves to do it. This couldn’t be further from the truth. It is something that you have to literally teach yourself. And before anyone says, “maybe it hurts because of latch problems blah blah blah” it does not have to be physical hurt. I wrote a blog about normalizing formula feeding that you can read here before we often forget the mental strain of stopping the breastfeeding journey due to guilt society and other mom’s put on others.

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Another mention someone had said was postpartum anxiety. Anyone hear the phantom crying? I know for us, my spouse and myself felt this with our first. I will also mention that the second child we had these anxieties seems to feel a bit more relaxed, maybe because we know that we have the skills needed to raise human however it doesn’t change how it felt for our first. These would be the anxiety’s that you have with your children, often times they are irrational and don’t even really make sense however they are important to note that there is a lot of anxiety after the birth of your baby. Feeling these are completely normal and if you feel like it may be something that is excessive you should reach out to a health care provider to validate those feelings and work through them as they can be hard to work through.

The physical recovery, not during child birth. I know for me I am completely guilty of this. I totally slipped my mind the use of pads and things after giving birth and only did it click when I was having my first son and a friend had given birth a few months prior had given me their heavy duty pads they used and no longer needed. I know sounds completely dumb to forget that but I never even thought about bleeding even though it made sense. That being said there is multiple types of recover. I have had the no medication birth with my first and a vaginal delivery which you can read about here. I also have had a c-section birth that I talk about here with my second child too that you can read about here. But no one prepares you for how challenging it can be to have either birth. If I had to pick I would say the c-section was the harder birth due to the fact you legit had a major surgery. I am really hoping that our last and third child when the time comes is a vaginal birth and NOT a c-section however it it happens the only thing saving me mentally is that it will be the last c-section that I ever have. The physical pain you go through, even a vaginal birth with no tearing having to walk up stairs after arriving home was so challenging holy smokes. I never even thought of that either!

Breastfeeding is not birth control. I know a few people who learned this the hard way. And based on the people commenting on this answer there was a lot of others who found that out also. Though breast feeding may delay your period and what not, it still can not be used as a contraceptive. Unless you are on birth control or using controls, if a man ejaculates inside of you there is a strong change that you could be pregnant from this. This also goes for the “having sex before 6 weeks” and you may not get pregnant. False. There is a reason why you are told to wait 6 weeks and that is due to your body healing. Saying breastfeeding is a way to prevent pregnancy is not a solid one and you may find yourself playing with fire and having a little surprise bundle in 9 months time too.

Milestone obsessions is something that is very real and I again feel like having multiple kids does ease this up. When you have one child you become obsessed with milestones. Are they crawling on time? Rolling? Walking or standing? The fact is the spectrum is so broad that your child may be doing one or all things at once and there is no really right or wrong way. Use the milestones as a guideline but there is no need to panic if they aren’t hitting everything that they need to be at the time. It is also important to note that if a few milestones are missing at one age they may catch up and have multiple milestones happening at other ages though. Sometimes milestones are grouped up and they aren’t as spread out for people.

As you can see there is multiple things that may seem pretty obvious to others however this is not the case. This is something that maybe by writing these out a new parent may know before the situation arises! And if you are pumped to read this I can’t wait for you to read the other ones when they come out too!