No one really prepares you for what becoming a parent actually feels like.
Not the Instagram version. Not the “you’ll manage somehow” version.
The real one.

This isn’t a guide.
It’s not advice.
It’s simply a list of things I wish someone had told me before I crossed that invisible line between before and after.

1. The exhaustion is not just “being tired”

I thought I knew what tired meant.

Before becoming a parent, if I went to bed at 10 p.m. and woke up at 7 a.m., I still felt exhausted. Especially if my partner was in the room with a lamp on or working on his laptop.

After giving birth, my definition of exhaustion completely collapsed.

There is a level of sleep deprivation that comes with physical pain.
Chest tightness.
Shortness of breath.
A constant feeling that your body is shutting down.

At one point, I told my husband that if someone pushed me into a pit, I wouldn’t even have time to touch the sides — I’d fall asleep before hitting the bottom.

And that’s when I realized: this isn’t tiredness. This is survival mode.

2. You give birth, but you don’t immediately “come back to yourself”

You give birth… but you don’t quite know who you are anymore.

Your body has been through something enormous.
Your mind is foggy.
Your emotions are raw, loud, contradictory.

And yet, everyone suddenly expects you to know how to care for a tiny human — or two.

With twins, everything is amplified.
The love.
The fear.
The confusion.

You’re there, physically present, but mentally scattered — trying to understand your baby while still trying to recognize yourself.

3. Crying comes without instructions

A baby cries.

Is it colic?
Hunger?
Overstimulation?
Too hot? Too cold?
Gas? Pain? Exhaustion?

No one hands you a manual.
You guess. You doubt. You second-guess everything.

And the hardest part isn’t the crying itself — it’s the feeling that you should know, and somehow… you don’t.

Over time, you learn.
Slowly. Imperfectly.
With tears of your own mixed in.

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There are so many more things I wish I had known.
And I’m sure I’ll remember them later — usually at 3 a.m., while rocking a baby and wondering how this became my life.

If you’re here and any of this sounds familiar:
You’re not weak.
You’re not failing.
You’re just living something no one can fully explain until you’re inside it.

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