All the Things That Mattered Before: The Postpartum Diaries

Before baby boy was here, when we were preparing for him to be here, there were a lot of things that we thought mattered. Having all the right items on the registry. In the right color. The right pattern. Having all of his little clothes laundered and folded and put away in just the right drawer. Having all the furniture in just the right place in the nursery. Having a very detailed birth plan. Timing the baby shower just right. Making sure I walked enough, ate the right things, stretched. Left very detailed notes for my sub. Published blog posts in a timely manner.

Those were the things that mattered before.

But the things is, my very detailed birth plan was for a vaginal birth I didn't have. Out of a page and a half of double spaced bullet points, only two were relevant for my c-section. 

We excitedly set up his swing and his bouncer, two things we knew we just had to have...only to find out that as a very little dude, he didn't really care for either. That could change...but right now they are more for show than anything. Sometimes they hold things that we pick up off the floor (toys, blankets) and don't put away right in that moment, but rarely do they hold our baby.

He has so many cute little outfits--and he spits up all over those, just as often as he does on a burp cloth. More, actually. 

Oh, and diaper blowouts...those don't care about how cute the outfits are, either.

I guess what I'm saying is that a lot of the things we thought mattered before, really didn't--or more accurately, don't anymore. And that's okay. Everything has its own time. But it is kind of funny, when I think about what matters now. 

What really matters--and I mean most importantly, REALLY freakin' matters--is that we are keeping this sweet little boy safe, happy, and healthy. 

What matters is that we try everything--all of the things--to make sure that safe, happy, and healthy happen. 

What matters is that we are his safe place. While he is learning more about this world, his needs are fairly basic. Mama=safe. Mama=comfort.

What matters is that I am learning to advocate for him and for myself when I need help or when something feels off, because it really, really matters now that I'm worrying about something bigger than just me. 

What matters is that we are learning what he likes and dislikes, and what his cries mean.

What matters is that I drive really safely, whether he is in the car or not--because a boy needs his mama.

What matters are the quiet moments when he falls asleep, snuggled against our chests.

What matters are the loud moments, when even though we don't know what's wrong, we are there to hold and comfort him.

What matters is the weight of him on my chest as I bounce, sway, rock, or carry him.

What matters is when his sweet little hand grabs on to my collar while he's nursing.

And many more things like that.

Two Months Postpartum

Postpartum highlight: Parenting is weird. We get so excited when he farts. Or poops. Or sneezes. 

As the first-time mom of an 11 week old, I can officially say that the first 11 weeks are the hardest! But ask me again next week, and I'll probably tell you it's the first 12. I never understood people who said they didn't want kids. I never made them feel bad about it, never tried to convince them otherwise. But as someone who really wanted kids, wanted to be a mom more than anything else in the world, I didn't understand why they wouldn't want that, too. But now? Now, I get it. This is HARD. This is NOT for everybody. And props to everyone who knows themselves well enough to definitively say that. And no, I'm not saying that I regret becoming a parent--I'm just saying that I get how this isn't something everyone would want. 

What to Expect After You've Been Expecting

A lot of learning has happened for us in the last 11 weeks, the last 6 especially. The best way I can sum up the learning process is that you have to learn what to expect from your baby...and then be ready to expect something completely different. For example, our little boy who once napped for 1-2 hours at a time, suddenly started napping only half an hour or so. At first, it was jarring. It gave me anxiety. Why wasn't he sleeping? What was I doing wrong?! Why was it taking as long to put him down as it took him to nap? This went on for several days, until finally I learned to expect him to just sleep half an hour. And let me tell you, life got a lot easier after that. I learned how to plan my day in half hour increments. First nap=eat breakfast. Second nap=start laundry. Or pick up the house a little. Maybe make a phone call. Third nap=eat lunch. Fourth nap=also nap. And so on. And then one day--surprise! He slept for two hours during one of the afternoon naps. Great, I thought, things are tipping back the other way. Then bed time happened. Or rather, didn't happen for several hours. So I now expect a longer nap in the afternoon, but don't let it go longer than an hour, hour and a half tops. 

At 7 weeks and 4 days old, Rett smiled in response to Chelsey's voice--and it's hands down one of the sweetest things I've seen in my whole life. I was changing him upstairs and she came in the room and started talking to him, and as soon as he saw her, this big smile broke across his face. It melted our hearts. Since then, we have gotten many more smiles--mostly on the changing table, oddly enough. That's where he seems happiest. We call it his reset pad, because when he's really fussy, sometimes we just take him in there and lay him down and talk to him and sing to him, and it seems to reset his mood.

Another favorite moment so far was baby's first blowout. He has been a very gassy baby, and we've tried a lot of things to help him work it out--gripe water, gas drops, reflux meds, tummy massage, Windi, bicycling his legs, tummy time, giving up dairy--anything to help our little boy! At some point several weeks ago, his tummy was so tense and we could tell it was hurting him. To make a long story short, as Chelsey handed him off to me one afternoon, she realized he felt wet--and then she saw it. Parents, you know what I'm talking about. The discolored onesie. The kind that makes you afraid to take it off, let alone unfasten his diaper. I got him upstairs to change him, and when I unsnapped his onesie, all I could do was laugh. Ya'll, the blowout was so intense I had to just cut the onesie right off of him. Chelsey was gagging at the sight of it, and we were both so happy he had finally pooped--we busted a gut at our poor son's expense. Later, when retelling this story to friends, I was reminded that the little shoulder pieces on a onesie fold down so that you can slide it down over their body instead of pulling it up over their head. It's one of those things I forgot in the moment--I just knew I wasn't pulling that mess up over his head!

Postpartum on the Real: Bonding

So there have been a lot of fun moments. A lot of learning moments. But let's get really real for a minute. One of the greatest expectations when you have a child--one that everyone talks about--is feeling that special bond with your child. Especially when you're breastfeeding. There's this magical bond between you and your baby. It's something Chelsey worried about finding, because I'd be the one feeding him. But here's the rub: I realized one day, that I wasn't feeling bonded. Thinking back, I kind of recognized it in the hospital. Oh yes, I loved this little boy--this tiny human I grew and carried inside of me for ten months--from the very start. From the moment I saw the word "pregnant" come up on the digital screen on the pregnancy test. But bonded? Not something I was feeling. And once I realized that, I felt a lot more things. Like guilt. Anxiety. A feeling of not being enough. 

As I thought more about it--why I wasn't feeling this wonderful, magical feeling that everyone talked about--I realized that it was partially because of all of the frustrating aspects of motherhood that I had encountered up to that point. A big one was nursing. It's been a damn journey. And a hard one. And those really frustrating moments had made it hard to feel bonded to him. Not to mention that he started out as a gassy and fussy baby, and we didn't know about wake windows, so there were a lot of moments there that really seemed to test my fitness as a mother. 

I read somewhere, on some Instagram post, that it is in fact completely normal to not feel bonded with your newborn right away. Normal, but not really acknowledged. In talking with Chelsey one late night when a lot of emotions and hormones were tripping over each other, I discovered that I was not alone: she wasn't feeling that magical feeling, either. There are many moments where I'm glad parenting is a team sport in our house, and this was one of them. To not feel alone, to be able to share the burden of that guilt, to name it and put it out there and and work through it--took two of us. (PS, check out this sweet photo by the one and only Janet Catherine Photographgy)

Then one night, after he had gone to bed, I found myself sitting downstairs, watching videos of him on my phone. And at night, after he nursed, I found myself holding him in the recliner long after I should have put him down and gone back to sleep. And the next day, while he napped, I found myself missing him. I found myself in many more moments thereafter, looking at him, nearly in tears, because he brought me so much joy. 

There are still moments where the bond doesn't feel quite so strong. I think another realization I've had about bonding is that my expectations for how it would go and feel didn't match my reality. I imagined  my child needing me: reaching for me, calming instantly in my arms.

What I had was a child crying to be fed. A child crying to have his grumpy tummy soothed. A child, crying. It took some time to realize that he was, in fact, telling me he needed me, in the only way he knew how. I had to learn to see every cluster feed, every instance he woke after only an hour to eat yet again, as him telling me he needed me. That his little fussy noises in the middle of being put down for a nap may very well mean he's wet again, even thought I just changed him. And as I learn more about his needs and how to meet them, I feel more confident as a mom, and more bonded with my baby. 

Another mama friend recently shared that what she shows the world--really what we all seem to show the world--is the highlights. The good times. The best angles. The wins. But that's not the full picture. And I do my best to paint an accurate portrait of my experiences here when I write, no matter what the subject matter is, because people need to know. People need to feel validated in their experiences, and if I can help create that validation by sharing, then I am glad to do it. 

So here we are. I go back to work in three weeks, and I cry at least once a day about it. I know I'm not the only mama who has ever felt this way, but this grief looms so so large. The thought that he may be with someone else when he hits his milestones tears me apart. It is also especially hard because two of my mama friends who I have shared this journey with are fortunate enough to be able to stay home for the rest of the school year with their babies. We've taken every step of this journey together, but this one I have to do alone. I keep joking that I was hoping if I complained enough, someone would start a GoFundMe page and raise enough money so that I didn't have to go back to work! To be fair, I didn't start playing the lottery, either, so there's no one to blame but myself. 

For now, I am trying really hard to focus on the moments I'm in, and not worry about what comes next. And on we go.