I didn't know

Hours after Aida was born, I rose from my hospital bed, put two feet on the ground and then felt the entire contents of my bladder empty onto the hard floor below.

I had no idea this could happen. None. But when I mentioned the experience to other mothers, no one seemed surprised.

"It happens!" a nurse and mother of two told me later.

Really??? It does??? You stop being able to go to the bathroom like a normal person???

It wasn't the only time I've been completely floored by what I didn't know would happen after giving birth.

In truth, what has surprised me the most about motherhood is how much I didn't know -- especially considering how many millions of women since the beginning of time have gone through the same thing. Couldn't someone have mentioned these things?

Sure, everyone talks about the sleepless nights and the exhaustion. But I didn't understand the physical toll motherhood takes on you for the first six weeks your baby is alive.

I didn't know I would be buckled over with abdominal cramps every time I finished breastfeeding in those first couple of weeks because that's the way it feels when your uterus contracts back to its normal size. I had to Google that when it started happening to me. Then, I called my doctor's office.

"Sounds normal," the nurse said.

I didn't know that I would have to "work up to" walking even one block from the house, let alone lifting myself from bed to reach Aida in her bassinet, parked right next to our bed.

I didn't understand that the reason you get no sleep is because you can't stop staring at your baby when she sleeps. And, when you do sleep, you have to set the alarm to sound every two hours so you can feed her so that she doesn't die.

I didn't know that by breastfeeding I could get a breast infection that would leave me delirious with a 103 degree fever, buried under blankets for 48 hours while, every two hours, my mother and husband would have to bring me Aida so she could feed through my fog.

I didn't know that it is actually very, very difficult to talk about anything other than the adventures of your incredibly beautiful baby because your incredibly beautiful baby takes every ounce of energy, strength and love you can muster for the first few months, disconnecting you from almost everything that happens outside your front door, including all the current events and workplace gossip you once used to discuss with conviction over Wednesday night sushi with your friends.

In December, when Aida was barely a month old, my cousin Jolie sent me a Facebook message asking me what motherhood is like. I didn't answer then because I knew I needed some time to think about exactly how to describe it based on my new (and admittedly limited) experience.

Here's what I've come up with so far:

Imagine gaining 40 pounds in a span of a few months, doubling your chin count, growing out of all the clothes you used to wear, then catching a glimpse of yourself in a mirror in a bathroom at work and wondering who that new employee is. Add severe short-term memory loss, hemorrhoids, heartburn, relentless sleepiness, a mystery rash around your ankles, crazy bad acne, and, for some women (not me), unpredictable nausea. Then imagine waiting for the day to arrive when all these symptoms might disappear. And on that day, what you experience feels like a locomotive repeatedly blasting through your insides every few minutes for, say, 14 hours, shaking you so fiercely that you can't speak, can barely breathe. Then, just when you think you can't do it any more, this little life you've been obsessing over for months makes its debut, tearing through your body to take her first breath. You open your eyes and she is resting on your chest and she is looking around, breathing, shivering. Her hands and feet are wrinkled. Her hair is a wet mess. You are drenched and relieved and tired and overcome and she is here. And when you see her and when you hold her and when you feel the moist warmth of her forehead on your dry lips, that electric pain, that discomfort, those months of feeling like a fat, ugly mess, become a dull, faint memory.

Because here you are. And here she is.

Yes, in a few hours, you feel your bladder explode when you get up to go to the bathroom. And in a few weeks, you will take your first, plodding walk around the block with your husband and the baby and wonder if you will ever run again.

And then days, weeks and months will pass and the insanity of growing a seven-pound baby inside of you, then pushing it into the world, will become little more than an anecdote, a prelude to Her, the one who is lifting her wobbly head or making funny eyes at the fan or smiling when she sees you or grunting when she eats. She is the story now. You're quickly forgetting the rest.

So, now, when I think about the things that no one told me, the things I didn't know, I guess am starting to understand.