by Laura Falin posted in Parenting

My first child took 36 hours of labor before he decided to show up. At one point, I burst a blood vessel in my eye. I hallucinated. By the end, the two of us were battered and bruised and exhausted and when a visitor the next day asked if I was planning to have any more, I would have flipped them off if I could have mustered up the energy.
It felt like weeks of postpartum recovery before I could move normally again. I sat carefully, lowering myself gingerly into every seat. In retrospect, I really wish I'd gotten one of those inflatable donut thingys people sit on.

When I went into labor with my second baby, I was apprehensive.
When my daughter was born, I was ready to be out of commission for a long while. I had meals lined up ahead of time. I worked with my oldest to help him be as self-sufficient as he could be before his sister arrived. I enlisted friends to take him to the park or out for the first few days so he wouldn't climb the walls at home while I was unable to leave. And then -- I discovered my postpartum recovery was actually faster. My labor and delivery were shorter, and I found myself up walking around much sooner than I anticipated. I was shocked.
This happened again with my third baby. I recovered, maybe, even faster than the second. I'm not sure if I just knew what to expect or if this is some sort of evolutionary thing our bodies do because they know we need to take care of the other kids, but I've talked to severa...