This is a post that I have been battling with myself about writing or not. I kinda decided that it is my blog and I can write whatever I darn well want to but I think a lot of women can relate to it. So what exactly are these 4 things men need to know about women who just gave birth to their child?
1 Comfort eating is a sign
About a year or so ago, a male friend of mine was telling me how horrible a person is brother’s baby mama is and how she was preventing him from seeing their child even though he contributes. According to this friend of mine, the baby mama was jealous of his brother because his brother has gone back to university to try to make something of his life whilst she’s stuck at home. I asked said friend, that considering that said baby mama was once a girlfriend, did his brother at least try to make things work with his girlfriend before calling it quits? What was the reply? That one of the problems his brother had with his baby mama was that *** [pause for dramatic effect]*** that she was now fat, that all she did was stuff her face and not want to go anywhere.
This reply has been bugging me for such a long time that I needed to get it off my chest.
I’m no expert on the subject of comfort eating but if you type in a Google search bar “define comfort eating”, this is what you get
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eating to make oneself feel happier, rather than to satisfy hunger.
This should get any compassionate thinking . . . what is going on in a person’s life that makes him/her need food to feel happier? I know it is easy to judge but anything worth having is worth working hard for. I know a lot of people think that only greedy women over eat when they are pregnant or have just had a child but I can assure you not every woman is a greedy pig.
Birthing a child very high up (if not the number one) life-changing effect that can affect a woman and there are a lot of things going on in her mind that no one else can fully understand.
2 Postpartum depression is real
In society in general, people tend to shy away from mental health discussions and some people are unable to understand why a woman is not over the moon over the birth of her child. When a woman is handed her child, she has soooooo many thoughts running through her head. She’ll be second guessing herself and asking herself if she’s any good at her latest job. Then something a lot of people don’t consider is the loss of self.
A woman was her own person before becoming a mother. Suddenly, she finds that her needs come secondary in her life. She has to put her job/career on hold for little while to raise her child. Let’s face it, even when men are supportive, the woman still does the bigger share in raising the child.
When I was pregnant, someone told me that I was bipolar and needed to seek medical attention urgently. To put this into context, when I was at university, I heard a lecturer say that every woman, experiences PMS at one point in her life or the other. At the time, I didn’t have PMS so didn’t fully understand what the lecturer meant. I can confidently tell you now that having mood swings through no external stimuli is a real thing. So you can imagine what a pregnant woman or a woman who has just given birth is feeling with this surge in hormones.
3 If physical intimacy is extremely important to you, do NOT get your female partner pregnant
In one of the mummy groups I am a member of, I have seen several posts where the woman is upset that her male partner is upset that their sex life is not what it was before their baby was born and it was having a negative impact on their relationship.
Women are superwomen and we are good at multi-tasking but let’s be realistic here. There’s only so much any one person can do to satisfy several people at a time, something has to give eventually. It is extremely difficult for one person (in this case the mom) to look after a new born baby, try to look after herself, look after and maintain the home and also look after daddy.
If physical intimacy is that important to you, do not get your partner pregnant. I feel that it is extremely selfish for a man to make a woman feel bad if she has lost her mojo. The fact that I have seen more than one post on the subject, it tells me that this is something that happens a lot and it is quite sad.
If you had to push out of your body a baby too, I am sure putting yourself in a position where you might become pregnant again is bound to kill your mojo too so why should it be different for a woman?
4 A woman’s body is not like any other
First of all, watch this video to understand something about the practicalities of a woman’s breasts
Now imagine how she feels when it is double its size after childbirth. I am not ashamed to say this but I burst into tears when my daughter tried to latch on.
To Summarise
Going through the motions of pregnancy and motherhood is no walk in the park. A pregnant woman is filled with a surge in hormones. Some women are lucky to not have pregnancy-induced nausea and vomiting, some go on to be hospitalised because of excessive nausea and vomiting. Some women end up with dislocated hip bones even before their child is born amongst a myriad of other less well-known complications of pregnancy.
Whilst I had less than 3 hours of active labour, I ended up losing 2L (2000mL) of blood and needed surgery plus 2 bags of blood and 3 bags of fluid and whilst my daughter was in perfect health, I was hospitalised for a couple of days. I was so exhausted when I was discharged, I didn’t even have the energy to comfort eat. After losing so much blood, I didn’t have a period for 18 months. Initially, I had no breast milk, then getting my daughter to latch on was extremely painful, then my boobs felt like they had tripled in size and I was having massive guilt about the period I couldn’t breastfeed my daughter then someone tried to upset me by saying I should have stopped breastfeeding at 6 months.
I didn’t intend to share a part of my personal life but as a woman and as a mother to a daughter, I find it upsetting when other people worsen life for new mothers and try to judge them on things they can never understand.
I hope that this post on 4 things men need to know about women who just gave birth to their child would clarify some things and make partners a little bit more understanding and patient and help them to show a little bit more empathy.
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