Some things that I have learned:

1. Breastfeeding is hard.  If you have a bub who latches on straight away, you’re damn lucky.  I wasn’t, and it took a lot of hard work to get to where we are.  We still have some bad days if Liam is fussy, but most of the time it is wonderful.
2. I’ve dealt with fatigue from illness for a long time.  I thought I knew what tiredness and sleep deprivation were.  Hoo boy, I was wrong.  In the first few weeks, I was so sleep deprived that I was hallucinating.
3. People who offer help are angels, and you should take them up on it as much as possible.
4. My husband is truly awesome.  He did so much in the first few weeks, including dealing with many messy nappies in the middle of the night.
5. The smiles you get from your baby when you enter the room are the best thing ever.
6. Cloth nappies are awesome and awfully cute.  And dreadfully addictive.
7. Same goes for baby carriers.
8. You’ll find yourself doing things that you never planned on for the sake of your sanity.  For us, this was using disposable nappies fulltime for the first six weeks and introducing a dummy.  Still unhappy about the latter, but it keeps us sane and Liam happy.
9. For me, trying to get any work other than caring for the baby and looking after the house (a bare minimum of that) is impossible for the first few months.
10. That said, I’ve managed to do all of my judging work for the Australian Shadows Awards, and have started to plan a new novel in the last month.  I plan on returning to slush reading soon as well as trying to get more fun reading in.