Our theme this week has been babies. If you’ve been stopping by, you’ve already read about how you can’t spoil a baby and fun baby games. Today we’re talking about women after pregnancy. And babies.

The babies, with their floppy heads and constant drool are pretty cute. Women after pregnancy?

If you’re a woman and you’ve just had your first baby and you’re reading this, you’re still in your pajamas.

It’s two o’clock in the afternoon and the baby is napping. Or not.

If you’re not in your pajamas, maybe you’ve managed to take a shower, get dressed and perhaps make the bed.

Your cognitive self doesn’t think showering and putting on clothes are worth celebrating but you had to tweet it to your postpartum mama friends because, after all, you’re feeling rather successful.

And clea—

Except the baby just woke up to nurse and you put him over your shoulder and he burped. All over your non-pajamas.

If you’ve never had a baby (though perhaps you plan to or are even pregnant), and you’re surfing the Web sipping a strong cup of coffee, you’re scoffing at the scenario above.

You can’t imagine a day, and you know it won’t ever come, when getting dressed would actually feel like an accomplishment.

You’re an energetic, determined, talented person. Taking off sleepwear and putting on clothes is something you do every day.

Even if you are pregnant and feeling a bit exhausted from those trips to the porcelain goddess, you still have plenty of time to get dressed.

That will change.

If you’re planning to have a baby, be it next week or in the ten years, everything in your life will change.

We realize that many well-meaning strangers will annoy the bejeezus out of you by telling you as much with knowing smiles on their faces while patting your belly.

You nod and smile. You, of course, have no idea what they’re talking about.

But after you have a baby your life will be so altered that you won’t recognize it, or yourself.

That’s okay—you have the rest of your life to learn. And the baby’s.

Just don’t listen to the people who warn you that once you become a parent you will never do _____________ (fill in the blank here with the thing you love the most) again, you’ll lose all your friends, you’ll become obsessed with the size, shape, and frequency of your offspring’s poop, and you’ll have no time for anything.

Okay, women after pregnancy do love to talk about baby poop.

But just because you’re still in your pajamas today doesn’t mean you’ll be in your pajamas tomorrow.

If having children teaches us anything it is to embrace change

And buy nice pajamas.

This post was adapted from a column that originally appeared in the Ashland Daily Tidings. Jennifer Margulis is the author of The Business of Baby, a book that has nothing to do with pajamas.

Photo credit: Adobe Stock #40611009