Ask any mom you know what the most amazing moment of their life was and they will all say it was the birth of their baby.

Every single mom will name this single moment as the earth shattering greatest…HANDS DOWN nothing tops it.  Whether you dreamed about the mommy moment since you were four years old or you got a little drunk and had a whoopsie baby, it won’t matter.  Becoming a mother is everything.  You created a HUMAN!  I bet he or she is the most perfect human that ever graced the earth, huh?  Yeah, mine are, too.

So the best thing about having a baby is pretty obvious: You HAVE a baby and he/she is the greatest blessing in your life.

The second best thing about giving birth, though?  You will never guess it, so I will tell you. I’m a giver.

It’s the hospital underwear.

No, I am NOT kidding!  Those things are the whip, and I completely underestimated their awesomeness.  Never again, though!

In fact, I am so completely obsessed with the post-delivery granny panties that I feel as if it is my earthly duty to inform every pregnant or new mom about them.

Listen up, ladies: When you have a baby, the hospital provides you with all the free hospital panties your post-partum ass can handle. That is right, friends. These glorious mesh granny panties will straight rock your mom world.  Do NOT pass them up.  If you sit in your hospital room and balk at the grannies, then we cannot be friends.

If you are a c-section mom like me, then you will appreciate these bad boys even more.  They pull right over your battle wound and go alllllll the way up to your armpits. They don’t dig into your achy sides, rub your incision or ride up your inflated ass.  The grannies embrace you.

They wrap their gauzy love around you and offer the physical comfort that is damn near impossible to find in those first few weeks of motherhood.

When all you need is a little comfort after having a human ripped from your uterus, only the mesh grannies can provide such a thing. (Well, pain meds also….lots of pain meds.)  They are ah-mazing.

They are so amazing, in fact, that after I stole all of the meshies from my own hospital room and returned home with my baby girl, I called my girlfriend who was also laid up in the hospital giving birth and made her bring all the meshies from HER room home as well.  

I felt as if I needed to stock up on them.  I had no idea how long the sheer pain and discomfort from childbirth would last, and I was not taking any chances on running out.  

It wasn’t like I could just waltz into Target and buy more.  These were special and oh so necessary. Action had to be taken.  

Lucky for me, my bf made sure she pilfered all of the mesh grannies that she could get her hands on…no questions asked.  That is a down chick right there, ladies.

Probably a week or two post-delivery, I noticed that the hospital panties were starting to disintegrate.  Crap!  Nothing left to do but gently wash the gauze undies in the bathroom sink and pray that they make it another…ohhhhhhh…say two years?

There was no WAY I was going to chance destroying my precious mesh panties.  I walked around our little condo for weeks wearing nothing but my t-shirt, a nursing bra, my belly band and my hospital undies.  It is safe to say I became addicted and wanted nothing to do with regular underwear…or real clothes…or a hairbrush.  I couldn’t even IMAGINE returning to the uncomfortable bikini briefs of yester-year.

Finally, about six weeks after delivering my daughter, my husband pulled the panty plug.  He sat me down and told me that the hospital grannies had to go.  

I was devastated, and my hormones were going cray-cray.  I am sure I cried.  How could he not SEE that I NEEDED THESE THINGS?!  What an insensitive ass.

Needless to say, I did take a long look in the bathroom mirror and agree to separate with the second most precious thing to me.  I threw the panties out, went to Target and bought normal underwear.  Just like that I went cold turkey with the undies.

When I became pregnant a second and third time in subsequent years, my first thought was, “Yeah, another sweet baby!”

My next thought? “Yesssssssss, hospital panty time!”

This post was originally posted on Four Princesses and the Cheese. 

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About the Author

Kristin is a SAHM of four little princesses and one giant dog. In her very limited spare time she enjoys vacuuming up Legos and Shopkins, watching BRAVO, drinking craft beer and eating all things cheese. Kristin is a regular writer at Suburban Misfit Mom and a contributing writer at ErmaBombeckHumorwriters.org.