What "They" Don't Tell You About Post-Partum Hormones

A young friend of mine has been battling an undiagnosed disease for around a year now. They can't tell her if it is M.S. or Parkinson's or something else, so she has been through the ringer with a wide range of quickly-progressing and often surprising symptoms. She has held onto her sense of humour through this, and today I read her blog from start to finish. It really spoke to me that she could find laughter in what is a really shitty situation, so I thought to myself (after several hours of trying to avoid a panic attack), "dammit, I am going to write a funny post instead of talking about how anxious and depressed I am!" Here it is.

What "They" Don't Tell You About Post-Partum Hormones

1) BOOBS. When your milk comes in and you are not nursing, your boobs are going to expand to roughly the size of planets and develop gravitational pulls...and they are going HURT. No, "hurt" is too mild a word. It will feel like breast explosion is imminent. They will turn warm and hard and knotty, and you will try anything to relieve the pain. Like putting frozen cabbage leaves on them. And, if you're like me, your mind won't be thinking logically (see #13), so you'll go to bed with the leaves still tucked into your huge sports bra, thinking that the magical curative properties will continue to work through the night to give you back your sanity (and normal-sized breasts). Then you'll wake up the next morning to the most sour, putrid cabbage stench imaginable (a little like hot garbage juice). I can still recall that smell in vivid detail. Apparently, you're not supposed to leave them after they get warm. But if you do, just know that triple-washing your sheets and clothing probably won't even come close to getting the gag-inducing reek out.

BOOBS AGAIN. On the topic of boobs, having your milk come in (what a tame expression) means that they will be leaking. Everywhere. Like enough that your husband has to wait outside the shower with breast pads waiting so that you don't soak the bath mat. You will find a way to turn this into a game.

These might actually be Salma's regular boobs, but even so, these are small
compared to what milk boobs usually look like! (Image credit here)

2) YOUR VAGINA. Do yourself a favour and just don't look. And don't let your partner look. Though if you're like me, you'll have a very strange pulling pain in your stitches one day and you won't be able to see well enough to check if there is something wrong, so you'll make your poor husband take a peek. His face will turn green, then ashen, then red, and he might gag a little, but he will still love you afterward. A friend's husband described it as "Sarlacc-gina," but I still think that's too tame.

SARLACC-GINAAAA! Geek reference for the win. (Image credit here)

3) YOUR HAIR. Your hair is going to fall out either in clumps or in a never-ending stream. It'll start innocently around two months after birth, then kick into overdrive around two months after that. The heaps of hair will be so large that, if you hot-glued some googly-eyes onto them, you could probably sell them as pets. Also, because your hair is all falling out and thousands of new hairs are growing in, your head might be unbearably itchy and flaky. If you are a dummy like me, you will give in to the itch and scratch so hard that you draw blood. YEAH! You'll find stray hairs stuck to your socks, in your food, and maybe even in your butt crack! What joy. Maybe you'll even discover that you are a long-lost cousin of Edward Mordake and find a face hiding in your (remaining) hair! Okay, that part didn't happen to me. But the Ewok hairballs and bloody, flaky scalp part did. In fact, it's still happening. To be fair, someone did actually warn me about this, but I really thought they were exaggerating. Nope!

4) PHEW! You're probably going to start sweating more and you'll smell bad. Sorry, babe. Turns out pregnancy hormones were actually awesome and now your body is in withdrawal. I have gone through so much more deodorant since birth!

5) THE RABBIT HOLE. Deep depression. Raging anxiety. Uncontrollable crying. Insomnia. These can happen to you whether or not you get to take your baby home. They can also strike anywhere from immediately to several months later, so you might think you're home free, then WHAM! you're eating boxes of ice cream bars and sobbing at episodes of Call the Midwife early into the A.M.

6) PIZZA FACE. You'll be able to play "Connect the Dots" with the pimples on your greasy face. And your back. And boobs. And arms.

All of the blotches. (Image credit here)

7) IT WOBBLES TO AND FRO. Even the slimmest of us don't usually get lucky enough to avoid what my friend affectionately calls the "meat curtain." No, it's not that kind of meat curtain, you perv, it's the soft blob of loose flesh that dangles under your belly button in a lovely fold that feels like bread dough. Personally, I like "skin skirt" better. A week ago, I squashed my spongy muffin top back into my favourite pre-prego pants and called it a win. This bod will never be the same, but that's okay. I think I can cut it some slack since it grew a human being then pushed her out all on its own! In fact, I think it deserves another box of ice cream bars.

8) IT RUBS THE LOTION ON ITS SKIN. Well, turns out it doesn't really matter if you did this or not while you were pregnant; stretch marks are mostly hereditary and they affect almost every mother. I kind of lucked out with the belly marks and escaped with a small patch on the bottom left and one scar above my belly button that looks like an eyebrow (like it is permanently saying, "are you kidding me?") I did, however, get a whole lot of stretch marks on my boobs, so reserve your hatred for energetic pregnant women and moms with sleep-through-the-night newborns. (Just kidding, don't hate anyone please!)

The lotion ain't gonna work, honey. (Image credit here)

9) THE BOOM. Sex is going to suck for awhile. I'm sorry. It just will. You'll finally scrape together enough libido to take a stab at it (or to let it take a stab at you...yeah, I really did just make that joke) and then you'll be surprised to find that your attempts are much like trying to drive a Buick through the eye of a needle. The good news is that it'll get better. I PROMISE.

10) AUNT FLO. If you are not on the birth control pill, your period is going to come back with a vengeance. Maybe not right away, but it will. My first one was this gentle three day spotting and I thought, "that's it?!" And then I had a nine-day period about three weeks later that I thought might be the end of me. I could have soaked up a whole flock of sheep and a cotton factory just in the first three days and I had every period symptom in the book - it was worse than puberty! Oh, sorry, I didn't mean to scare you. It wasn't all that bad. (Hrrrmm...shuffle shuffle).

11) NUTTER BUTTER. On the topic of cycles, you might go bat-shit crazy when you get PMS for the first few cycles. I am talking psychotic. That happened to me almost a month ago. Now I am "eagerly" awaiting Aunt Flo's return. Oh goody! I wonder what she will bring with her this month. Paranoia? Surrre, why not? We'll just heap it on top of the sharp increase in anxiety, cramping, mood swings, insomnia, panic attacks, and all the rest. It'll be a party up in here!

Eyeballs and teeth. (Image credit here)

12) OW, OW, OWWW! You're going to hurt. I'm not even talking about the stinging of your nethers when you go pee for the first week or the throbbing of your bosoms. I'm talking about all of that sweet, sweet Relaxin hormone leaving your bloodstream, making your loosey-goosey joints suddenly feel quite geriatric. Oh, and you're going to probably still have low back pain and stiffness for a few months, bee tee dubs. If you're really unlucky, your pelvic pain will also stick around. Lucky you!

13) THE FOG. You'll discover that your "pregnancy brain" was permanent and you're going to be a little dumb forever. This is something I find endlessly irritating, as I like to believe my mind was sharp before pregnancy sapped it of its memory and thinking juices. Alas, I am now so absent-minded that Husband has long since stopped chiding me (I just get an exasperated "seriously?!" from time to time).

Yeah, I know I ended with the number 13. That's because you're going to be feeling pretty unlucky when you're a sweaty, spotty, mammoth-breasted baldy with a dangling pooch, an angry vagina, and a side of crazy and ouch.

While I genuinely believe that it was all worth it and that birth is a beautiful, magical thing, it isn't easy on the ol' bod. I'm trying to tell you what "they" won't; enjoy your pregnancy hormones while they last, sweetheart. They're a cakewalk compared to what comes next.