Unexpected

As I type this post on my new iPad (yay!), my son is asleep on my shoulder and I'm taking a moment to reflect on the last 10 weeks or so. The feelings that I have for him have evolved into something that I was never expecting. What started as disbelief and evolved into a tad bit of resentment (I'll admit it) has turned into that rainbow and sunshine feeling that I had been waiting and wishing for. We still have fussy days and I still get puked on, but I'm ok with that now. I've become the mom who can tell you what his crys mean and who can nurse in public without a nip slip (I fist bumped myself for that one). I've become a mom who can feed, dress (him and me), pack and be out the door in 1/2 hour. I've become a mom without even realizing it. Everything just seemed to click. Maybe it was because I didn't have a ton of help after the first two weeks. Maybe my hormones leveled out. Or maybe I just accepted that this was the new normal.

Five weeks ago, I remember telling Nick...begging Nick to stay home and let me go back to work instead. There were tears and irrational conversations. Through it all, he supported me and had faith that I would find my groove as a momma. He would encourage the smallest victories and interactions, hoping that I would latch on and build on it to find my confidence and new self. Through it all, I kept changing diapers and wiping spit up, hoping that I would start to get it. I had no idea what "it" was or when I'd know if I had it. I'm still not sure if I know when I got it, but I know that I did and it feels really really great.

What is "it" you might ask? It turned out to be funny faces during playtime, dancing in the kitchen, making up songs and being the one that he needed for comfort. It became outings to the mall and a television turned to the "off" position. It was walks in the sunshine and and fewer tears. It was Nick asking me questions and me answering confidently and passionately. It was mastering the Moby Wrap. Most of all, it was new feelings of purpose and the creeping feeling of working mommy guilt. Before, I was counting down and so ready to go back to work and now I find myself dreading it. This feeling is so unexpected that it caught me off guard. Suddenly, Motherhood doesn't feel like an obligation or a business transaction,. It feels like a reason to make sacrifices and hard choices. It also feels like a reason to play with toys and dance in the kitchen and its something that I definitely want to experience to the fullest.

Six Weeks

When Baby B turned 6 weeks old, I realized how important it was for me that I took the full twelve weeks off for my maternity leave. The first 5 or so weeks were spent healing, learning, crying and questioning. At six weeks, it was like a switch turned on and all of the sudden there was more laughing, smiling, dancing and sleeping. Had I not been waiting for that kind of moment, I may have missed it.

The first weeks of Baby B's life were hard for me. I was hormonal. I know that I had a case of the baby blues. They weren't severe, but at times I was struggling with loving him so much but not liking him and then feeling the overwhelming guilt of the combination of those feelings. I knew that having him was one of the greatest things that we'll ever do, but during those times, I questioned my feelings and wondered when it would get better. I'm so thankful that I have friends who told me the real story about being a mom. They told me that it would be wonderful, rewarding and fantastic - but they also told me that it would be hard. Really hard. I am lucky enough to have friends that prepared me for how it would feel to go cold turkey from the pregnancy hormones. Knowing that my feelings of being not normal were actually normal helped so much.

When the calendar turned to 6 weeks though, something fantastic happened. Baby Bean started to eat and sleep at regular intervals, making him somewhat predictable for the time being. He started to smile, on purpose. Seeing that face respond to us was something that I had been waiting for and it was just as awesome as we thought it would be. He also began to play with us, kicking and watching his little toys, stretching his growing body on his play mat. I also began to gain some mommy confidence. I found myself identifying his cries, knowing the difference between the hungry cry, the annoyed cry, the dirty diaper cry and the tired cry. I knew what tired eyes looked like and what to do when he was refusing to sleep. I was starting to really get to know him, which is a big difference  from just taking care of him.

For me at least, six weeks marked a time that my body had healed and that my mind was beginning to clear. Instead of thinking of what I couldn't do, now that I was a mom, I began to think of what I could do. Bean and I started venturing out more together, by ourselves. I stopped flipping out at Nick when he wasn't ready to leave at the exact moment that Bean was done nursing. I stopped fearing the idea of publicly breastfeeding and was able to take care of him at restaurants, malls and stores without slipping a nip. We had a lunch date and many outings to the mall. I also mastered the Moby wrap and I was even able to take Bean and Chino to PA to visit my parents - by myself.

For me, 6 weeks seems to have marked the beginning of the fun part. The tears, poop and spit up will still happen, but the smiles, laughter and cooing will balance it all out.

Posts

Since I've become a mom, I've had visions of blogging every day to capture the moments and thoughts that have become my (our) new normal, since the arrival of Baby Bean. Most of my eurekas come in the middle of the night while I'm nursing. When I have my phone with me, I add the possible title of the post as a note, when I don't have it with me - I hope that I'll remember it the next morning (I rarely do). Instead of dedicating entire posts to each of my ideas, I'm going to dedicate a post to a couple of the posts and hope that I do better with blogging.

• Sleep Deprived Dairy Farm
• This title is pretty self explanatory. At the beginning, I was having a lot of trouble with breast feeding. Thankfully, the trouble wasn't with my milk supply (Baby Bean has rolls galore), the problem was with the technique, which caused a lot of pain for me while Baby Bean feasted every 1 1/2 hours. 
• This title also may have been thought up during our first induction into "Cluster Feeding" - which is something that THEY don't tell you about. Once I knew, I was a much less bitter person about the irrational, screaming baby who wanted to eat every hour...at least.
• Smiles
• I'm a self-proclaimed non-baby person. My baby is one of few exceptions that I've made to my rule that an infant must be able to hold its own head up before I'll hold it. I prefer babies who interact and who don't look like baby birds. Thankfully, my baby has been working hard at holding his head up since day #1. Its like he knows. Anyway - I had been searching for the light at the end of the infant tunnel, and that light came in the form of a smile. Not a milk drunk smile, or a sleepy smile, or a gassy smile - a legit toothless grin - all the way to the eyes. That moment made me really excited about all of the other moments to come and made the not-so-great moments fade a little from my memory.  

I have a few other potential posts, which seemed like brilliant blog ideas at the time. Some I remember what I was thinking and some I don't, which is probably for the better. I'm going to do my best to try to capture both the good, the bad, and the blow outs. The bad and the blow outs make the good so much better, and those moments tend to be hilarious (usually after the fact). Speaking of blow outs - here's a little gem that we'll be sure to add to Baby B's wedding slide show.