Three weeks and two days

Short wispy hair falling in my face, plopping down on pristine white carpet as was in good taste in the early 90’s. It was bright and early on December 25th when I opened up a gift from Santa. It was a water baby, you guys remember those right? I wonder if they still make them. At the ripe age of six I had myself a little baby doll to tote around and pretend to mother. The joy of this gift was short lived as my little brother was opening Hot Wheels racer tracks and Domino Rallies, his gifts were way cooler than my dolly that just sat there. I mean you could put warm water in the doll and it was supposed to feel like a real baby, that was kind of cool I guess. Quickly my little dolly was cast aside as my brother and I began setting up the battery fueled race tracks that we could start spitting cars through.

I’ve never been a big girly girl or the mothering type so to speak. Maybe that’s why I was so drawn to an educational path that could make up for what instincts I sincerely felt I was lacking. Some people have Bachelor’s degrees in business or marketing, health or English. Me? My degree was Child and Family Studies. My degree sounds fluffy but the coursework was grueling, so much so that I took a step back and questioned whether I would continue on to my graduate. I learned a lot about relationships and families during my four year stint but no amount of statistics and research, exams or group projects, could have ever prepared me for this crazy thing called parenting.

I have been a mommy for three weeks and two days now. There are a lot of things I didn’t know before hand that I wish I had known so I’ll share some of my experiences.

Recovery is hard:

Being pregnant wasn’t very difficult for me. I side stepped nearly all of the most dreadful symptoms. I wasn’t afraid of being pregnant. Most fears come from the unknown, being pregnant I had books and apps to guide me through each symptom as they occurred. “Feeling a lot of heartburn this week? Here’s why and what you can do to help it!” Likewise I was surrounded by friends, family and coworkers that warned me constantly about how hard the transition to parenthood would be. While their words were terrifying it helped me to mentally prepare myself for the coming sleepless nights, or at least I was able to kid myself into thinking I was prepared.

The one aspect I hadn’t thought over too much was my recovery. I don’t know how I glazed over this “4th Trimester” so easily in my thoughts. It was as though I really thought I would waltz into the delivery room, pop out a baby, and dance back to the car with my bundle of joy and begin my crash course in parenting. What I didn’t consider is the pain. I didn’t realize that I would desperately need those three days in the hospital and that coming home was going to be the scariest thing yet. I see so many new parents expressing excitement at coming home but I had to leave the comfort of the hospital. I would no longer have a call button on my bed and a nursing staff waiting to take care of whatever need I had, no matter how small.

I had severely underestimated how out of shape I had gotten during my pregnancy. Couple that with fresh stitches, a uterus trying to shrink back to normal size, and lack of sleep from hanging out with a newborn 24/7 and I was starting to get the sensation I would never feel well or normal again. I was so tired of being pregnant that I had developed this idealistic image that pushing out the baby would solve all the discomfort I had accumulated while being pregnant. The reality is I was a hell of a lot more comfortable at 40 weeks pregnant than I was 2 weeks postpartum.

I could tell when my four hours was up and it was time for another dose of my pain meds. My prescription was small, no refills. I had assumed that meant by the time my pills were gone would be the same time I no longer needed them… oh how wrong I was. I tried to push it and make the pills last longer, maybe I could go six or eight hours… by the eighth hour it was as though my body were shutting down and the pain would consume me. I’d get the chills like I had the flu and start trembling all over. It is downright impossible to take care of a fussing baby at 4 o’clock in the morning when it feels like you are going to die. Finally I decided to call my doctor and ask for one refill. I was so afraid that I was going to come off like a junkie but the pain simply wasn’t manageable. She granted my wish and I feel like it saved my life because by the time I ran out of my refill I no longer needed them, or at least I felt like I wasn’t going to die anymore without them.

Here at 3 weeks I’m feeling a lot better, definitely not normal yet, but I’m feeling better. I’m still not healed but I finally feel well enough to get out on walks which leaving the house for a walk at this point compared to how I felt just a few short weeks ago is nothing short of miraculous.

Breastfeeding is hard:

Much like recovery I had this illusion that breast feeding just happened. I mean, its nature, its what us mammals do, whip out a nip and let the babies suckel. I thought it would be that simple for me even though I had heard stories of women struggling with it, for hells sakes women close to me had expressed their hardships with it. I was foolish and arrogant enough to believe that wouldn’t happen to me.

The thing about breastfeeding for me is there was little I could do to prepare for it. The lactation specialists kept telling me that I would get “used” to it and that my nipples just had to toughen up. It was so incredibly difficult to go from zero to sixty in such a short amount of time. Literally, no action and then biting, chomping, and sucking every few hours. Three days in and I’m bleeding and blistering, to which the nurses could only tell me I’m not doing it right, that he isn’t latching on properly, but then they would observe me getting him to latch on and they would tell me it looked perfect… if it was perfect then why did it hurt so bad?

At home I continued my efforts to breastfeed. I was determined to get over this hurdle, I had those voices still nagging, “you just have to get used to it,” “its not supposed to hurt,” or “your nipples will toughen up,” but I was failing… I couldn’t do it. For any inquiring male minds find yourself a couple clothespins, clamp down on your nipple till it hurts, release, then clamp that sucker down again, repeat process for ten to fifteen minutes every 3 hours and if you think that hurts, wait until your nipples start bleeding and you still have to clamp a clothespin down on them.

My body was already in so much pain but the babies don’t wait, when they are hungry, they are hungry. I would brace myself for him to latch on because the latching always seemed to hurt the most. The pain was mind numbing and shot through my whole body. I could feel myself tensing up every single muscle in my body as I suffered through nursing. One week after being home I had actually pulled one of my glute muscles from tensing up.

The physical anguish was only half of it. My parals in breastfeeding lead me to my first experience of mom guilt. It hurt so bad to feed him that it almost made me angry. What kind of mother was I? I was resenting my sweet little baby boy because he was hungry. That line of thinking of course made me the worst kind of mother that could possibly exist. I was so upset with the world and all these images of women blissfully nursing their newborns and bonding with their sweet babies, meanwhile there was me crying quietly in the rocking chair trying to let him feed as long as possible so that he could get the nourishment he needed.

I started telling my mom about how much it was hurting and I burst into tears. I was afraid to feed him because it hurt so bad and I knew I wasn’t bonding with him. Finally we gave him a bottle of formula which some kiddos hate, but not my baby boy. If its food, he’ll take it, so long as its not cold. The relief I felt that for one feeding I could take a break. Of course the mom guilt remained because then I’m told that my milk could dry up because I’m not breastfeeding and that once again, I am doing it wrong. A week into parenting and I’m already making the wrong choices. Mom guilt is awful.

Finally I decided to just pump my breast milk. This was no easy task. I set up an alarm on my phone to go off every 3 hours to remind me to sit down and pump some milk for him. I’m sure some specialist out there somewhere is reading this and thinking that I did it wrong. But wouldn’t you know it, at his two week check up he gained nearly a pound, so my sweet little boy was doing just fine and getting plenty of food.

The pump was so much more gentle and after taking a week or twos break from nursing him, all my sores healed up and I was able to breastfeed him the other day without being in excruciating pain, which felt miraculous as well.

The only hardship I am facing now is that it seems like my supply is diminishing. I’ve looked into foods I can incorporate into my diet to help pump up the supply but I am to a point that if I dry up then I dry up. It is so incredibly hard when it feels like everyone around me is an expert at this breastfeeding stuff and everyone wants to offer me advice, the likes of which I have already heard over and over and over again. To any well wishers, whatever tips and tricks you think you have that I haven’t heard, I’ll stop you there, I’ve heard it and while I appreciate the intentions behind it I can say that the advice only makes me feel worse, not better.

There is no going back to normal:

What I knew as my normal no longer exists and the way things were before never will be again. Life is rather fluid anyhow, always changing and evolving, there is always a new normal to get used to right around the corner. I had a bishop that always used to say there was no parking in the comfort zone and there really isn’t, because just as I get used to this new phase of life my little boy will continue to change and grow, and I will have to change and grow with him.

Even though I have been with my sweet boy all day and all night, it hadn’t quite settled in that he was mine and that I was his. That is until the pediatrician’s office called me and the girl on the other end asked, “Is this Hayes’ mom?”... yes… yes it is. Its kind of like when you’ve just had a birthday. For a whole year you’ve told people you’re 27 and now all of a sudden you have to remind yourself that, oh yeah, I’m 28 now. Maybe that’s an odd way of describing it but that’s sort of what it feels like. Oh yeah, I’m a mom now.

We were watching the superbowl last week, Tycen and my parents and I gathered around a flat screen eager to see a good game and of course the highly anticipated commercials. History has proven to have hilarious commercials in between game play. I can say that I don’t remember a single funny commercial because I was reduced to fits of tears as a result of the mushy advertisements designed to tug at your heart strings. I felt blind sided. I’ve always been kind of tenderhearted and have been known to tear up a bit, there isn’t a Disney movie out there that hasn’t brought me to at least one or two tears. I’ll never forget that superbowl. A softened acoustic version of that 80’s song, a sweet little puppy befriending a clydesdale. It was a freaking beer commercial for hell’s sakes! The commercial was meant to make you feel, but I felt way WAY too much! Tears were streaming and before I knew it was bawling. I wish I could say that was the only commercial that did that to me but the truth is I had an emotional break down seven times that day… I guess that’s part of my new normal.

My new normal means sleeping a lot less. My once coveted 9 hours of sleep is now reduced to 4 hour stints, if I’m lucky. It means I no longer put myself or my needs first. Showers take a back seat, eating takes a back seat, laundry and cleaning, relaxing, watching tv, writing blogs… all take a back seat when that little guy needs me. My new days drag on and yet are moving incredibly fast at the same time. My new body feels like a nightmare. I’m soft and squishy and my dreams of fitness and the stage seem so far away. My new normal is really really hard… but it isn’t bleak, in fact it is far from it.

My new normal means a sweet little human that hears my voice and will crane his neck just to see me. I have a tiny person that is soothed when held in my arms and snuggles into me until he drifts off to sleep. My new normal has me loving in ways I never knew possible. My new normal is so full of love that there isn’t anything I would ever trade to have my old normal back, as hard as my new normal is, it is the best normal I could ever hope for. It is a normal that will only get better.