Mom's stress guide: babies

See the other articles in this collection:
• Mom's Stress Guide: Pregnancy and birth
• Mom's Stress Guide: Toddlers and preschoolers
• Mom's Stress Guide: School-aged children
• Mom's Stress Guide: Teens and tweens

The early weeks of life with a new baby can bring to mind the plot of a very bad science fiction movie. The people and places may look familiar, but you have this strange sense that your entire world has changed over night -- which, of course, it has. You've just arrived on Planet Mom.

"I honestly had no idea how upside-down my life would be after my first baby," says Danielle Donders, an Ottawa, Ontario, mother of two. "I guess I had just imagined that life would continue on its merry course, except there would be three where there once were two. Instead, I felt like my life had been turned inside out and I didn't recognize anything from my pre-baby life. I couldn't find time to eat, I was getting by on three hours of sleep a night, the chores were stacking up around me, and I felt completely overwhelmed."

While most moms-to-be eagerly devour information on pregnancy, labor, and birth, often those research efforts dwindle off before the true marathon of motherhood begins -- after the baby is born. And even if you do manage to find the time to hit the books before baby makes his grand entrance or to talk to friends about their own postpartum experiences, there's a world of difference between reading about sleep deprivation and actually living it (kind of like the difference between reading a review of a rollercoaster ride and deciding to try it out for yourself).