The only thing that I can remember taking me by surprise was finding out that nursing was a 14-18 hour per day activity. I fully expected newborns needed to eat frequently and around-the-clock, but I thought you could nurse for 20 minutes and then move on to other things until the next hour’s feeding. I didn’t know they would become a semi-permanently attached fixture that stayed there for hours-long stretches, making it impossible for me to do anything but morph into a useless lump on the couch. Other than that, it’s been about what I expected, albeit less miserable than parents made it out to be prior to my having kids.