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.