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13th January 2019
06:30pm GMT
Despite having nine months to prepare for the arrival of your newborn, when they actually come out they can seem, well, pretty alien.
It's a strange experience going from knowing them so intimately that you feel them when they roll around or hiccup inside you to then suddenly being presented with a baby in the hospital and feeling a bit taken aback because they look different to what you'd expected.
This is probably a bit of a shallow approach to the whole thing but weirdly whenever I pictured my baby while pregnant I sort pictured a mini version of me, so when he came out covered in thick dark hair it was like he was boldly announcing:
"Here I am! I'm not you! I'm my own person and there is a f*ckload you don't know about me, lady."
And he was so right...
Here are 15 mad things no one told me about newborns:
1. Sometimes the baby sleeps for AGES
I was frantic. Should I wake him up to feed him? Is he hungry? He hasn't eaten in two hours? How often do they eat? How can he sleep through the chorus of other babies wailing on the ward?
2. Sometimes it seems like the baby has been awake for days
How does he never tire????
3. Their first poo looks like black tar
It was like that puddle thing from Alex Mack.
4. They're covered in hair
Sometimes. Mine was anyway, all over his back and shoulders and even his ears.
5. They come out ...blue??? Red? Purple?
This was the most jarring thing for me in the delivery room. Maybe if I hadn't been banned from watching One Born Every Minute during pregnancy I would've known this – though admittedly the crying was out of control during Reeling in the Years, I don't think I could've handled OBEM.
6. Newborns have the most perfect hands and ears and noses and lips and fingers and eyelashes and...
Well you get the picture.
7. Newborns get drunk on milk
And it's too freakin' adorable.
8. Newborns know their parents
This is magic, but from the moment they're out, they seek comfort from their parents.
9. Newborns look a bit like like worried old men... sometimes.
Sometimes they look like your Aunty Kitty too. Or George Hook.
10. Their tummies are small
They're actually wayyyyy smaller than you might imagine
11. They snore
But it won't keep you awake. Nothing will keep you awake.
12. Even just hours old they have a very tight intense grip in those little hands of theirs
It's like a politician's handshake.
13. They don't actually like the mittens, and will flick them off repeatedly so just forget them.
They've come this far without little mittens so presumably they'll continue to get on fine without them.
14. They might have a tooth already.
Is this not the definition of advanced???
15. They're absolutely addictive.
Family, friends and well-meaning strangers will try to hog the baby, they literally can't help themselves.
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