One Year of Parenthood

One year ago today, after 25 hours of labor, and 10 months of pregnancy, I had a little boy. This little boy went from being a helpless little swaddled bundle of joy to a mobile and demanding toddler of joy.

Here is a sample of what I've learned this past year.

Pregnancy is the easy part. No really, anything that happened from vomiting everyday for 4-5 months to waddling around like the worlds heaviest bowling ball was resting on my pelvis was easy in comparison to now. Why? Because the Baby Buckshot was safe in my belly and not out in the world where he is only attracted to the most dangerous thing in the room. Why yes, BB, thank you for reminding me that I forgot to cover one electrical outlet in the entire house.

Babies sleep less over time. First day in the hospital, BB slept a lot. So much so that the hubs and I wondered if we had won the baby lottery. Until the second day, when he cried all night. And then the first week, when he didn't know when to sleep and when to stay awake. Then, just when we got any kind of nap and bedtime rhythm down, sleep regressions and teething hit and it was back to square one. Over. And. Over. But it is try, try again.

I am softer than I thought. Not just in the pudgey postpartum belly way, but in the, "Now, I have all the feels so when I watch a sappy movie or read a touching quote, tears" way. Something my husband, who had never really seen me cry before, is having to adjust to. There was a line in Love Actually, "Joni Mitchell is the woman who taught your cold English wife how to feel." Baby Buckshot is my Joni Mitchell.

Nothing bonds women like motherhood. I was never a girl's girl. Most of my friends were men, I had a hard time keeping long lasting friendships with women until motherhood. Suddenly, all the female friends of my past have re-emerged and there's an instant support group. Old friends, new friends, all friends. If you have a kid, I'm likely going to be your friend.  I'm going to guess this has to do with the fact that nothing, and I mean nothing, has taught me not to judge other people's lives like a little human being who has obviously been put into my life to see everyone else's perspective. No judgement here, other mamas. Just another mom trying to do her best with what she has.
 
Moms fight. Over everything. Did I also mention that nothing riles up other women against each other like motherhood? I wrote about it briefly here but I have to say it again. Nothing seems to hit a woman to her core like commenting on how she's opting to feed her infant child. Breastfeeding, formula, nursing in public, adding cereal to a bottle. Oh. My. Drama. Llama.

Poop can travel far. This is one of the early, most poignant lessons. A lifetime of only seeing excrement go into a toilet bowl did not prepare me for the ability of a tiny human to blow poop straight across a changing table, past a lamp and directly onto a wall. More than once.

The greatest expression of our love is also the greatest challenge to our marriage. My idealistic prenatal self thought that parenthood would be this amazing bonding experience where my husband and I would feel magically connected. And most of time, this is true. We have learned the ability to collaboratively take care of BB, even when upset with each other. We just seem to get upset with each other much more often. The first year of parenthood rivals the time we spent planning our wedding in terms of conflict and only now am I hearing that this is very common for first time parents. For those just starting, it takes about a year and it all works out.

Breastfeeding. There is no skill I have ever learned that is as emotionally charged as breastfeeding. And succeeding to this point give me this deep sense of accomplishment, for doing something my body was made to do. It's weird how something that was so stressful and painful in the beginning gives me sad pause when I think about it ending.

Everything is fleeting. For someone like me, who is a constant planner, learning to let go and deal with one short term problem at a time was a learning process. Solutions for some baby problems were absolutely necessary one minute and totally obsolete the next. Turns out, life seems to move slow but the moments just fly by.

My mother really, really, really loves me. It took becoming a mother in my 30s to realize the depth of my mother's love for me. It has spanned my lifetime, it has included my husband and now her grandchild. Until I loved my own baby, I had no idea the depth of a mother's love. Afterall, who goes from changing a person's diaper 30 something years ago to changing that person's child's diaper three decades later? Only a woman in love.

Happy birthday, Baby Buckshot. I love you to infinity and back.

What I Wish I Had Known about Labor

If you all have been following along, you know I like to be prepared. I feel like we were pretty prepared as a couple.  After all, the books, classes, research and blogging should have made up for the bulk of my lack of experience right?

Up to a point.  Here's where I play the game "I Wish I Knew."

I wish I knew that the labor clock starts when you tell them your water broke.  My water broke at 8pm and I thought I had 24 hours from the time I was admitted before they would push a C-Section.  I would have told them my water broke shortly before I arrived at the hospital at 11pm to give myself more time to try for a vaginal delivery if I knew my baby was a size that I could actually birth.

I wish I knew that babies can go into distress based on which side of your body you lay on.  Ben's fetal heart rate dropped when I laid on my right side. I don't know how often he did that when I was pregnant but when I was admitted and they hooked me up to fetal monitoring and I moved from my left to my right side for comfort, he had a steep heartrate drop.  I would have avoided laying on my right side during the pregnancy had I known there was a risk of compromising baby's bloodflow.

I wish I had known that once I was admitted, there would likely be some reason to require being hooked up to monitoring and as a result, I would not be able to freely go to the bathroom.  I actually should have known this but the childbirth classes led me to believe that most people have a free range of motion to labor as they wish.  I packed a birth ball for goodness sake.  All for nothing. I would have made sure I went to the bathroom before going to to hospital to empty my bladder and bowels so I would be comfortable and not need to go to the bathroom and not be allowed to.  

I wish I had known that contractions compound the feeling of needing to void one's bowels but nothing will come out.  When my contractions started, I thought I just really needed to go the bathroom.  I wasn't allowed to because of the whole fetal distress monitoring but when I was finally allowed to go, I wasn't physically able to void.  It was so uncomfortable.  During the pushing period of my labor, the nurse manually excreted my bowels to make more room for the baby to pass through what was already a too narrow passageway.  I would have had an enema before going to the hospital to make sure my bowels were empty and not have to deal with any of that mess.

I wish I had known that I wouldn't be able to eat or drink at all starting from when I was admitted to hours after surgery.  I was allowed ice chips and that was it. I was dying of thirst.  I don't know what I would have done differently in this case, as I did vomit water during the end of my labor, but I just wish I had known to prepare myself mentally. 

I wish I had known how distant and violent a c-section would feel like.  Where the labor process felt animalistic and primitive down to the core, like being nothing more than an instinctual experience, the c-section felt clinical and detached.  It was almost futuristic in comparison to all the reading I had done.  The drugs made me woozy so I couldn't hold my baby comfortably for hours after birth.  It underscored my confidence as a mother.  I wouldn't have done anything differently because I was able to experience both sides of the coin but I would have liked to understand that those feelings were a natural part of c-section instead of feeling insecure in myself post birth. 

But mainly, I wish I had known that everything I had stressed about, the time I spent on my birth plan, everything that was disappointing or surprising wouldn't matter in the end.  It all feels like a past life. I became a mother.  I would have read less books about childbirth and more books about parenting. 

Because this is seriously a wild ride.

The Bright Side of Symptoms

During my first pregnancy, I was constantly tired with breast soreness and very little nausea.  When I miscarried, in my furious research for an answer, one of the common themes with women who miscarry is a lack of morning sickness.

This pregnancy, every little discomfort, soreness, pain or nausea (of which there has been plenty) has been reassuring as though the worse I feel, the stronger the baby must be.  For instance, the mere thought of seafood (one of my most favorite kinds of food) now makes me physically gag.  I wonder if I'll ever be able to look at a piece of salmon an not throw up a little in my mouth.

And I've tried everything.  Eating a small breakfast, eating a big breakfast, having a breakfast smoothie, snacking through out the day, eating 3 normal meals a day, no dice.  Everything either makes me nauseous, before, after, or while eating it.

And my chest is going through some serious soreness.  Sometimes it hurts just from the light movement of walking or from an accidental brush up against something.  Other times, usually when I've had plenty of rest (read 10+ hours because that's how much I've been sleeping) there is no pain and then the paranoia sets in.

In fact, at any given moment if I have the coincidence of feeling no nausea, no breast pain, no tiredness and no headache I then have paranoia that there's something wrong. I remember distinctly that before I started spotting as a sign of my miscarriage, my symptoms had disappeared almost overnight. No more sore breasts, a renewed energy, no big craving to lay on the couch and do nothing.  Naturally, any sign of feeling like my normal pre-pregnancy self is now met with insane paranoia.

And I'm glad to feel crummy if that means this baby is going to make it.  And I don't think I'm ever going to stop worrying.  Ever as long I live.

Is that the true essence of motherhood?

Is morning sickness and all the pains of the first trimester a lesson in the pain and selflessness that is supposed to come naturally with being a mom?  The paranoia and worry over things that are no longer completely in our control? In fact, are all of these symptoms and the range of emotions just getting us mentally trained for the reality that lies ahead?

I'm going to think about that while I lay here curled in a ball hoping trying to ease my nauseous stomach.

Note:  These posts have been delayed because we have waited to announce our pregnancy until after the first trimester.