My name is Somi Javaid and I am a mother of 3 and a practicing Obstetrician/Gynecologist. I hope to share and make you laugh with my pregnancy/motherhood blog.
I had just given birth to my first child and I fell in love. I looked into his eyes and I was hooked. Nothing else in the world mattered at that moment and time stood still. I know it sounds so cliché, but it is so true.
It’s amazing, that moment is so serene in my memory. Yet, motherhood has been anything but. I swear there is a secret pact that exists among mothers to not “clue-in” those women who have not yet have children. I am writing this to break that pact and to reveal that motherhood is first having to admit that we are human and that we are from from perfect.
I was a fourth year medical student when I gave birth to my son, and my husband was already a physician. Needless to say, we thought we had it all figured out. We thought medical school had prepared us. After all, we had worked 36 hours straight; we had gone for hours without food, bathroom breaks, or rest. We had operated on human beings after being up all night. I now realize that was a 5 star vacation compared to what we were in store for, and I first realized we were in trouble the first night we brought him home.
I chose to nurse my son, and we were both inexperienced. He would “nurse” for forty-five minutes, sleep for an hour, and then wake up to feed again. My husband was loving the fact that I was so determined to nurse, because he slept. After five nights of this, I called my mother and asked her how people have more than 1 child? She told me with a smile that medical school should have prepared me for staying up all night. I told her that I was not on call every night, so I did sleep when my pager was off. The baby, however, was up every night. No one talks about how hard it is, but we survived, we cried, we bonded, and I would not have had it any other way. This little man had turned my life around. I realized that I had to sleep when he did. I learned that I could not control every moment, but had to rather have to live it. According to John Lennon, “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” As a mother, it’s a good mantra to adopt.
Stay tuned for all the physical changes of pregnancy and the “aftermath” that no one tells you about next week…
