My feet changed sizes when I was pregnant with my first son.  People don’t tell you this – at least no one told me.  Sure, I expected the swelling in the last trimester, but I didn’t expect my feet to get bigger by a half size and NEVER GO BACK.  So now I’m not only stuck with pre-mom clothes that don’t fit, but I also have an entire closet full of awesome shoes that make my toes bleed when I try to wear them.

With pregnancy does come lustrous and full hair, though.  Both times I was pregnant, I also had a thick luscious mane of hair.  It also sprouted up in unexpected places… like my toes.  The hair then fell out in mass quantities, though, after I gave birth.  I lost most of my hair around the forehead and above the ears – which caused my ears to stick out through my stringy, no-time-to-wash hair.  I have yet to lose the hair on my toes.

It was also winter the first time I was pregnant and none of my jackets would close around my midsection.  My mother-in-law took pity on me and bought me some warm, cape-like things that I still have to this day in my closet.  I never in a million years thought I would own cape-like things as part of a regular wardrobe.

Motherhood itself took a totally different toll on my body.

I realize that since I first became a mother four years ago, I’ve spent an obscene amount of time hunched over.  My upper body is folded forward to accommodate the baby strapped to my chest, or in my arms, or the child riding piggy back.  I’m also constantly bent over scooping up toys, wiping up spills, and kneeling over a bathtub.  Put all that together with the weight of holding two human lives in my hands, and I’ve lost a full inch off my height.  I’m getting shorter and shorter as the days go by – I’m sure of it.

Taking off that extra baby weight is also hard… especially when breastfeeding makes me absolutely ravenous.  Plus, I get up around 5 am and eat breakfast.  Then after I’ve fed everyone else, packed a lunchbox for preschool, gotten my son dressed, made it back from school drop off, and put the baby down for a nap – it’s 9 am and I’m hungry again so a second breakfast needs to be had.

My powers of deduction are pretty good, and I think it’s pretty clear what has been and is happening to me.  I just wish someone would’ve freaking warned me about it before hand.  So, that’s what this post is for.  This is for all the future mothers out there.  Lots of people tell you about the spit up, the diapers, the lack of sleep, the strength and wisdom you never thought you were capable of.

Well I’m here to tell you what they won’t.

It’s possible that motherhood will turn you into a Hobbit.

image from Wiki Spaces

*  Stringy hair.

*  Shoe-less, hairy feet.

*  Ears that stick out.

*  Ill-fitting clothes.

* Short.

*  Needs a second breakfast, second lunch, and second dinner.

*  Walks around in capes.

Your welcome.