the brood, circa Aug 2019
last night, I slept at about 9.30pm.
After a week of high fever, roseola and then back to fever AND a cold, Alex slept better, waking up every 4-5 hourly, which meant I had more sleep. That was how I woke up this morning at 6.30am feeling like a decent human being. 9 hours of sleep. Good grief. How to sleep so early every night siah haha.
The house looks terrible. With Alex crawling all over the place, there were palm and foot prints all over the place. I couldn’t really swiff the living room properly, cos the playmat was right smack in the middle of it. Mopping wasn’t really an option either. Didn’t help that Alex is super clingy these days after her sick stint, which effectively meant I was doing everything with a baby on my hip.
But really, the clean up is not so much of a priority. The house is not that dirty (I promise you, my friends, if you come visit). I have a fairly high standard of cleanliness hahah. Clean uniform/clothes, keeping the kids alive, are top of the priority.
So in between packing my suitcase for the multiple guilt trips, pondering about life, freaking out slightly about our #YOLO trip to Taipei, I scrolled through the multiple Facebook parenting groups I am in and laugh about the memes about parenthood/motherhood. After four kids, I have my version about what they don’t tell you about being pregnant and life post pregnancy.
1)Ā Breastfeeding for moms.
Not only do you have to deal with engorged boobs, or mastitis, lack of supply, feeding position, say hello to a hunched back. I..don’t have the luxury of getting a nursing chair, budget or space wise. Maybe in the early days when the laundry doesn’t really pile up on the only other chair in my room. At some point in time, you do what helps easiest. Pick baby up from the cot, sit at the edge of my bed and feed. Instead of bringing baby to my chest, I usually hunch over to latch. Sure, I could probably lift them when they are newborns. But how to lift an 8kg baby?? I do see a lovely chiro at Kissun Chiropractic, they sort out my back.
2) Babywearing
I wrote in a post before, about how mummies need to be not only educated about proper support for baby, but also for the mummy. How improper babywearing could also lead to poor posture to counterbalance the weight. I am not saying babywearing has lead to me getting cervical spondylosis, but it could have been one of the factors cos I use the phone a lot (cue sticking your head forwards alot more to look at the phone), I carry my kids improperly (with or without a carrier) and I use the computer a lot in my younger days (compounded).
3) Mummy the contortionist
Given the way you would be sleeping when you have kids in the bed, dear mummies, you are wonderful contortionists. Marvel at how you can squeeze your side to the edge of the bed whilst sleeping and not fall off. Wonder in disbelief as you can twist your body to side latch a baby and yet still allow your toddler to sleep on your jelly belly. Co-sleep, and more often than not, we are curling towards our little ones. How to sleep straight or in a proper position leh??
Cirque du Soleil hiring? hahah
4) Rich/Poor diet
Damn if you look after yourself, damn if you don’t look after yourself. Kidney stones aren’t the only stones that can appear in your body. Say hello to its cousin, gallstones.
According to the surgeon who was attending to me for gallstones, gallstones can appear if you have had a rich diet whilst pregnant. I didn’t really have a rich diet, but I had a poor diet during my latest pregnancy, which meant a lot of junk food. And gallstones formed. OMG, I was in such pain during one of the attacks. Worse was not being able to get the stones out earlier because I had just only popped. FML. Fortunately I didn’t have any attacks in between the time I got diagnosed and the surgery to remove my gallbladder.
5) Exercising
When crunches and ab curls could be bad for you. Get familiar with the termĀ diastasis recti. Multiple pregnancies later, I read about this condition and discovered that I actually do have a gap between my abdo muscles. Whilst pregnant with Alex, I had been trying to strengthen my core to help with labour, incontinence (helloooo pee pads) and my posture. So I guess it did help a little. No, it has got nothing to do with NOT doing postnatal massages, nor not wearing a binder. Wearing a binder doesn’t help to strengthen the muscles. Proper exercise/physio would get the gap closed. In serious cases, an operation may be required. I would like to believe I am not there yet haha.
6) Knee replacement wannabe
All that bobbing baby to sleep? Yep. Dancing from 10pm till 2am at Zouk in heels is nothing. Pfffpt. Bobbing since 2012, bitch please. Now with school pickups, I clock nearly 7000 steps a day with an additional 8kg stuck to me most of the time and rarely get to sit down at home cos I keep walking around the house, constantly clearing stuff or doing chores, or prepping food. I think I do have worn out knees, given the number of times they have buckled slightly whilst walking down stairs or the occasional locking of knee joints causing some sharp pain.
7) the closest thing to a solo vacation
…is getting hospitalised! hahahha.
I’m a SAHM. I don’t have that much of a budget to go on holidays, and I am a kinda clingy mother who wants to spend as much time with my kids possible when we are all happy (not cranky and not when I wanna strangle them cos of that shitty attitude). So solo vacation out of the country is out of the question for me.
Those 5 days under observation for gallstones at CGH, in an A class ward, fully paid for by insurance. BLISS. I don’t have to yell at kids, nor hear the kids fighting. I don’t need to do housework (got housekeeping everyday!). There is a legit reason to be away from the kids. Okay, granted I missed them a lot, they came to visit for an hour or so, then they left. I watched HBO the entire day. Hospital food wasn’t great but hey, I don’t have to cook and clean. The outfit wasn’t fantastic but I’ll take it. It was so nice and peaceful.
I hesitated writing this post. I couldĀ almost hear the ‘see, tell you take care of yourself, you don’t want la’, on the basis that I didn’t do confinement for all of my pregnancies (I don’t believe in them). But I chose to write these cos it didn’t matter whether or not I did confinement, these issues would still appear. These are some of the ‘ugly’ sides of motherhood, that we may need to put up with until at least kiddo grows older. I was even worried about getting pubic symphsis after reading Cindy’s post cos my babies have been on the L scale during my pregnancies.
So yeah, these are the things they don’t tell you about life after having kids! What are yours to add on?
