Hey mama, you're listening to the Postpartum Prep Podcast. My name is Ceridwen and I'm here to help you prepare for the part of having a baby that no one really tells you about, what to expect after birth. This is the show where we dive into all the questions you didn't even know you needed to ask about life with your new baby.

So let's get you ready, because birth is just the beginning. Hi, welcome back to the Postpartum Prep Podcast. It's been a while, if you're listening along as I'm publishing this episode, you'll know there's been a huge gap between this episode and the last episode, but everybody needs a summer break, right? And we definitely needed a summer break here at the Postpartum Prep Podcast.

I say we, but the podcast is actually just me. I record, I edit, I publish every single episode, and every blog post that goes along with it, and every social media post that goes along with it, so I needed a little break, but hopefully it gave you enough time to catch up on the past episodes. Today I have a brand new episode, and it's another solo episode.

I think the last episode that I did was a solo episode. Yes, it was. It was about whether you really need nursing bras.

That was a really fun episode to make, because we had a bunch of moms giving their input, but today I'm actually going to talk about me a little bit. This episode is kind of some things that I did not know to expect after birth. If you've been around a while, you may have heard me say somewhere before about how after birth, I kept asking myself, like, why did nobody tell me about this, and it would just be thing after thing, situation after situation, that I just couldn't believe that nobody had told me to expect this after birth, and that was like the spark that ignited the flame of what ended up becoming this podcast, and my career as a postpartum doula, and a lactation counselor, now podcast host of the Postpartum Prep Podcast, which is all about trying to prepare you for the things that I was not prepared for myself, and it all started with this question, why did nobody tell me about this? So I'm just going to go through a little list of things, and this is probably in no way a comprehensive list, I could probably go on and on and on and on, but it's a few things that personally I thought, why did nobody tell me about this, and instead of letting you get to postpartum and asking this question yourself about these things, I am telling them to you right now, so you don't have to ask the same question that I did, at least maybe not so often.

So the first thing was just how much of, so I was breastfeeding my baby. This is probably true, though, even if you're formula feeding, because it's just how much of my day would revolve around breastfeeding my baby, and like, so just imagine, your baby feeds around every two to three hours of their breastfeeding, and say they feed for even like half an hour at a time, well if they're feeding every two hours, by the time you've gone half an hour, it's actually only really like every, let me do the math real quick, 90 minutes, 90 minutes until the next feed. It seriously can feel, and this is 24 hours a day, like it really can feel like your whole life is revolving around feeding, but it really is, because that is pretty much the main care that your baby needs, I mean, obviously your baby needs their every need cared for, they're literally a helpless newborn baby, but feeding is definitely one of the more frequent acts of care, aside from just giving your baby loads of cuddles, and skin to skin, that's also, you know, I'm pretty sure that most babies would love to do that 24-7 every second of the day, but feeding is definitely a close second, because I know so many moms who say that it feels like their baby literally feeds all the time, and I'm sure that there are some breaks, but especially once they're cluster feeding, which, I don't know, I see this most often start to happen like around two weeks, they'll kind of go through a period where it can feel like they're almost feeding every 15 minutes.

All this to say, if you are concerned about whether your baby is feeding too often, and maybe you're wondering, like, is it because they're not getting enough milk, or something like that, check in with a lactation consultant. It's one of those things that you can either just get some reassurance that actually, yes, everything is totally fine, or if something is flagged, then you have support to help with it, and this is why in my postpartum prep checklist, I have on there, like, before birth, figure out who your go-to lactation consultant is going to be, in case you do need breastfeeding support. Okay, the next thing that I was like, why did nobody tell me about this, is how often babies wake.

Now, let's go back to, like, imagining, say that your baby is on that lower end, where they really are feeding like almost every two hours. That means that they're waking up about every two hours, and that you're probably up for, let's just use this example of half an hour for a feed. If you're up for half an hour for a feed, you're only really getting then, you know, by the time you put the baby back down, and they actually stay in their crib, you're only really getting a little chunk of time to sleep before the next feed.

I just had no idea. I also had no idea that my baby would not just sleep in the crib. In my mind, I just envisioned, okay, I'll, you know, he'll wake maybe once or twice a night, and it will be hard, but, you know, once or twice a night, I have insomnia anyways.

I often wake once or twice a night anyways. I'll just pick my baby up, settle him back to sleep, he'll go back in his crib, I'll go back into bed, and then I'll go back to sleep. That was just so not the case, because my baby did not want to sleep in his crib.

He was one of those babies that did not want to be apart from me for a single second, and I say one of those babies, but actually that's a really normal thing for babies, and that's why I always recommend that even if you have absolutely no intention of bed sharing, if every plan that you have revolves around having your baby sleep in their own separate sleep space, in their own crib, I always say still learn about bed sharing safety, because you never know when you've been up for every two hours, every 90 minutes, every three hours in the night, and your baby doesn't even want to go back to sleep, because as soon as you put them down in their crib, their eyes blink open, and they are wondering where you are, and they're tossing and turning and crying out, and you never know. You know, your mindset right now could be very different from your mindset when you've been through that, and it's also now like 2.38am, and you've been doing this for two or three weeks, and you're just absolutely exhausted. You never know where your mind, what choice you might prefer to make in that moment.

You might lean towards bed sharing, and what I always say is way safer to bed share intentionally with safety precautions in place, than to just accidentally fall asleep with your baby on a sofa or somewhere like that, where it's way riskier to fall asleep with a baby. Personally, I did end up, you know, I had every intention that my baby would sleep in the crib, but, and I had every intention of never even like getting into the bed with him, even if I was awake. Like, I really had every intention of having him sleep in his own separate sleep space, and I work with families all the time who do, that is how they handle sleep, but every family is really different, and sometimes parents, there's some families who have a lot more support overnight, or a lot more support during the day, so they can catch up on sleep during the day.

There's some families where both parents are really actively involved in the night. There's some families where only one parent is doing the night, every single night, and all of this to say is sleep can just look so different depending on your circumstances, and I'm not saying that like you have to bed share, or that it's inevitable that you'll bed share, I'm just saying it's always a good idea to be prepared, and I do have an episode that I did with Katie from Sleepy Starts that I will be sure to link in the episode description so that you can check that episode out if you are interested in learning more about bed sharing safety guidelines. Boy, that one really got away from me.

Let me move on to my next point. I feel like I could talk about baby sleep and like the importance of learning about bed sharing safety guidelines all day, so that was me like totally on my soapbox there. Okay, my next point, things that I was like why did nobody tell me about this, why did nobody tell me how difficult it would be for me to do basic things like eating, showering, using the toilet, brushing my teeth, like nobody told me that these things can actually become really difficult.

When I work with families, I actually recommend that they keep a list somewhere really visible like on the fridge or by the front door, a list of the absolutely bare essentials when it comes to self-care, um eating three meals a day, drinking water, using the toilet, brushing teeth, showering, and then every single day everyone can be checking in on the mom, has she done this, has she done, has she eaten today, has she had a chance to shower, has she had a chance to brush her teeth, because it's so easy. I remember one of the things that I remember telling my mom is that I did not have time to scratch my head, that it's, it's like I did not realize how often I needed to scratch my head until I had a baby. Now granted this was, my mom actually came to visit us to help with the baby but she didn't arrive like two weeks after I'd given birth, so once I had my mom there and had loads of support, things did, you know, I did have time to scratch my head, but in those first two weeks I just, I did not realize how much help I would need.

So I guess that's another thing that nobody told me, I just, I, nobody just, nobody told me how much help I would need. Or let me say this, I wonder if people did try to tell me how much help I would need, but I either wasn't willing to listen because I just thought that, well, I'm gonna do it my way and I, but, but obviously I had no idea really what to expect. Okay, that's one side of it, but then also I kind of wonder, maybe people did tell me that I would need support, but they had their idea of what support should look like for me and I didn't like, it just didn't fit kind of me.

It didn't fit our family, it didn't fit how I envisioned motherhood. So either like, either I rejected support or it just, the kind of support I was told I would need wasn't the right kind of support. Or it was like unsolicited advice about what kind of support I needed, but it wasn't advice that actually fit me.

So even though I was being told that I needed support, the kind of support wasn't the right kind of support for me. And that's the problem with unsolicited advice, because even if it is really well intentioned, like yeah, you do need lots of support after birth, if it's not from a place of truly understanding you, unsolicited advice can kind of just go in one ear and out the other, which honestly it should, because if it's not advice that's tailored to like who you really are and what you really need and your values, that makes sense that the advice might not fit you. And it could even be the wrong advice if it's not suited to you.

Okay, this is the last why did nobody tell me this thing. It was about how leaving the house just took so much effort. And if you think about like all the steps involved in leaving the house with a baby, getting myself ready, which remember, like I said, I didn't even have time to scratch my head.

So how, you know, getting, finding the time to get myself ready. One thing that I will say was dresses, which had easy access for nursing, those were super helpful because then at least I didn't have to put a whole outfit together. Okay, so that's like step one, is just getting myself ready.

And all the things involved with that, showering, brushing my teeth, that's step one. Then step two is getting the baby ready, which when you're a first time mom, everything to do with getting your baby ready is brand new. I'm just specifically, I'm thinking of our first pediatrician appointment after birth, which must have been maybe four days after birth, you know, is changing the diaper, which I'm still getting used to changing the diaper and the baby's crying the whole time while I'm changing the diaper.

And then getting baby dressed and having to figure out like what temperature, what kind of clothes do I need to put my baby in for this temperature? And how do I know if it's the right kind of outfit for this temperature? And making sure that the baby is fed or trying to time leaving the house around baby's feeds, packing the diaper bag. And as a first time mom, this is my first time leaving the house. I have absolutely no idea.

Do I have everything? That was really nerve wracking. What else? Oh, getting baby in the car seat. I mean, to figure out the car seat when you're not used to it.

And then driving, especially driving with baby by yourself for the first time or when you're not used to it. That is a whole new thing because you can't see your baby. Maybe you have one of those mirrors, but what happens when your baby starts crying in the car and you can't go to your baby because you're driving? Some people will just pull over.

But these are all the things that nobody told me about how leaving the house just requires way more planning, way more, just way more than, you know, before I had my baby, I'd grab my keys and go. Now, I feel like all of this is kind of like these were the things that I found really hard. What nobody told me about the first few weeks with my newborn is also how enamored I was going to be with my baby.

Oh, you know what? The thing that nobody told me, which maybe it's because nobody else has experienced it like this, but for me, the thing that nobody told me about meeting my baby was hearing him cry for the first time. His voice, let me tell you, his voice sounded, this is what I saw in my head when I heard his voice. I saw sunlight shimmering on the ocean.

That's the only way I can describe it. Like his voice just sounded like absolute magic. And everyone would tell me, oh, you know, you're gonna get sick of this crying.

But like, to me, obviously there were times when I wish he would stop crying, but his voice, and it's even the same for me, he's three and a half now, is still the same. His voice is like nothing else. And I think these are, you know, there's, there's things that are harder that nobody tells you that you might not have expected about having a baby, but there's also so much joy and I truly can't explain it.

Just so much magic. That's the only word. The first time, the first time your baby smiles at you.

Oh, the first time, the first time your baby does something and you can tell that they feel proud of themselves. I remember the first time that my son stood, not, not, not really, not standing by himself, but standing with us, kind of holding him under the arms, still helping to hold his little head up. But he must have been around two months old.

And he was, he was kind of bearing some weight on his feet. He had this smile on his face that was like, he just looked like he was proud of himself. And obviously we're looking at him like really smiling and like, oh wow, look at you.

And so he's probably just smiling because he sees us smiling at him. But that was so cool. And now I have a three and a half year old and we get to have actual conversations together.

And nobody told me about how awesome it is to talk with my baby, getting to hear the thoughts inside his little head. And it's such, it's so much joy. And you know what? That's one of the other, I could keep adding to this list forever.

But one of the other things that nobody told me is yes, there's a lot of challenges and there's a lot of joy. And the thing that nobody told me is that there's room for both. Genevieve from A Mama Friend talks about this and I have an episode with her, so I will definitely link that below.

But she talks about feeling both, feeling conflicting feelings at the same time. And I don't know, I think I, I never knew I even had the capacity to do that. And I don't think, and you know, nobody told me I'd have to do that.

Everyone kind of just tells you like it's, it's going to be hard or they tell you it's going to be the most miraculous thing of your life. But nobody, at least nobody told me that both can be true at the same time. Now, if listening to this did make you think, wait, I actually do have questions about what it's going to look like for me.

If listening to this episode suddenly made you think, wait, there's so much that nobody has told me. Now I have so many questions. Hold on to those questions, because I have a workshop coming up where you can ask me those questions.

If you're wondering about how you're going to manage the practicalities of life with a newborn, or if you're wondering how you're going to manage things like sleep or feeding your baby, or balancing things with your partner, then this workshop is for you. I'm hoping to host this workshop every month or every other month. So if you're listening to this episode way past when it's being released, there could still be a upcoming workshop.

So be sure to check out whether there is a workshop coming up. But if you're listening to this episode when it is being released, which is September 2026, then next month is the first workshop, our postpartum prep workshop, which is a one-hour live Q&A where you get to come and ask me questions about preparing for life after birth. I, like I said, I'm a postpartum doula.

I'm a lactation counselor. So the main thing that I do in my work is I help with breastfeeding, but I also have training in perinatal mental health and postpartum recovery and postpartum nutrition. I've also, I'm just a mom who's been through it all myself.

So if you're looking for support from someone who knows about postpartum and life with a new baby, I would be more than happy to answer your questions at the workshop. One other really cool thing about this workshop is that you get to submit a questionnaire, which I will review. And if there's anything in your questionnaire that I flag as something that maybe needs more attention, I absolutely will let you know.

This typically tends to be, you know, I'm screening for things like risk factors for low milk supply, for example, or risk factors for postpartum mental health. I'm just checking to make sure that you are going to be fully supported as you enter this chapter of life with your new baby. And based on your questionnaire, I'll also be able to tailor the workshop and which topics that we touch on based on your needs and your interests.

There's only a handful of spaces because it is such a personalized experience. So if you're interested, be sure to check out whether there is space left in the workshop. And if you're listening to this episode in September, for the rest of September, the workshop is on pre-sale, so it's 50% off.

And I plan on doing the pre-sale in the future with future workshops as well. I would usually update you through my email newsletter about when we're in pre-sale. So if you're not already subscribed to my email newsletter, you can subscribe by downloading my free postpartum prep checklist.

And you'll also be subscribed to my email newsletter, where you can keep up to date with upcoming workshops, as well as new podcast episodes. And sometimes I also share upcoming guests in the email newsletter so that you actually get a chance to submit questions to future guests on the podcast, which is really cool because we have some really awesome guests on the podcast who really know their stuff. So like I said, you can subscribe to my email newsletter by downloading my free postpartum prep checklist.

This checklist, I didn't even talk about the checklist, by the way, is a step-by-step guide for how to prepare for postpartum. So grab that checklist when you subscribe to my email newsletter, and then you'll get updates about future workshops. And if you already are like, okay, I definitely have questions and I would love to ask, come sign up for the workshop.

I would love to have you there. All the links that you need will be in the episode description. If you have any questions about where to find the links, you're always welcome to send me a message over on Instagram at mother baby wellbeing, and I can direct you where you want to go.

I'm really looking forward to the workshop just to get to actually connect in real time with you guys. I feel like sometimes I'm just talking to a microphone. So it's so much fun when I actually get to connect with you guys.

Even if you're not coming to the workshop, just send me a message on Instagram because honestly, I just love to, yeah, get to connect with you and remember that there are actually real people on the other end of this microphone. So all that being said, thank you for listening to the postpartum prep podcast. I will catch you in the next episode.

Bye for now.