New little roommate

After nine long months, we now have a new little roommate.  She's very cute, and cuddly, but I have to say, being a mom, from the very beginning, is not exactly what I expected.
I mean, of course, the best laid plans go awry, and frankly, we should planned our plan B way more carefully.  Neither my husband or I had ever been in the hospital before, and we were completely unfamiliar with area hospitals, so when all of a sudden I was diagnosed with pre-eclampsia and had rush to the hospital, we had no idea what we were in for.  While I am grateful for everything the hospital did, the process of becoming a mother for me was no where near the empowering, mother-goddess experience that I had somehow come to expect.  The stay before and after labor was degrading at best.  The labor was traumatic: NOTHING like what I was taught to expect from what I had read or heard about.  There was no rush of overwhelming motherly love; our baby did not have a halo or seem dreamlike in her debut.  Other than sheer exhaustion and relief at the labor being over, I was mostly struck at how similar she looked to a very tiny, wet, old man who had just lost a boxing match.

yeah...still super cute

As we drove home from the hospital after our five day stay, I honestly considered that guy from Alien lucky.  Granted, that guy didn't have anesthesia, but after the thing emerged from him, it ran away; no one slapped a bow on it and asked him to breastfeed.  No one tells you about the blood, and the pain after the birth.  The crying- and oh God there is SOOO much crying- and sleepless nights are not so funny or cute when you are actually going through it.
And now... well... she is still super cute, and she is kind of getting more fun, but caring for a newborn is really hard.  It's hard to write about, though.  There is so much pressure to only express bliss and joy at the arrival of your newborn, that I feel like expressing any kind of ambivalence or frustration makes me a pariah, or at minimum suffering from postpartum depression.  But I can't be the only woman who feels this way.  I find it very hard to believe that all woman give birth and meet the challenge with unendling love and patience.