She’s two weeks old today. Which means I became a mom 14 days ago. It’s still hard to comprehend. I’ve taken hundreds of pictures of her. Thank goodness I just got a new phone and opted for the extra storage, Lord knows I’m going to need it.

She’s gorgeous and perfect. I can’t stop looking at her pictures.

I’ve taken several of me, of my postpartum body. To see how my belly changes, as well as the rest of me. I recognize myself. I feel like myself. Don’t get me wrong – my body looks quite different, but it’s been looking different almost daily for the last year – so I’ve gotten used to witnessing the evolution. My pregnancy evolution and now postpartum evolution.

I’ve taken a few of me and her. Honestly part of it is vanity – the bags under my eyes, the initial bloat of my face, and my hair being less than my usual bleached and proper silver (other than the multiplying gray hairs popping up!) – I didn’t want to ruin her beauty with...me. The other part is I still find it hard to understand, visually, she is mine.

New roles take time, I get it, and 14 days is hardly enough to fall into something as jarring as motherhood. But here we are, literally thrust into it with a few well-timed pushes.

I don’t mean in the “this isn’t my baby, get it away” sense, but it’s all so surreal I’m a mom and I have a daughter. New roles take time, I get it, and 14 days is hardly enough to fall into something as jarring as motherhood. But here we are, literally thrust into it with a few well-timed pushes. Don’t get me wrong – I love doing all the mom things. I love the nurturing, the fatigue, the wonderment of it all. But it still doesn’t compute fully. Visually.

There’s so much to think about, what’s happened in two weeks. What’s happened to me in two weeks. To Ben in two weeks. We’re new people. As cliched as it is, we are completely changed. Those first few days were the most raw. We were in awe of her and awe of each other. Of who we’d become.

Mindshift

Those first 2.5 days as a family were spent in a hospital. One room. Two patients. One room, Two attending physicians who came in – one to check on me, one to check on her. Those days blur together for me but something was abundantly clear – I was not the most important person in my life anymore.

Throughout my pregnancy people would ask “how’s the baby doing?” and it was weird to me. Especially prior to 34 weeks when everything was going so well – I was only going to the OB office every month and then every 2 weeks. The last ultrasound they did was at 18 weeks for the anatomy scan so I honestly had no idea “how the baby was doing”. I knew I felt like shit, but as far as the tiny human in my pelvis, I had no clue. I felt her move – which is a good thing – but beyond that, in my mind, she wasn’t really a ‘she’ yet or a baby.

She was a concept. This idea, this vision, this potential reality which hadn’t come to fruition quite yet. I knew I would love her but I didn’t even know what she looked like, sounded like, smelled like yet. Everyone asked if we were excited to have a kid and as much as that should be a rhetorical question, it isn’t. So we both said “yea, of course, we’re looking forward to meeting her”. But it still felt rehearsed, like a line you’re supposed to say. Even though it wasn’t a line – I was very much looking forward to it – it still seemed vapid.

Those last few weeks before she was born, people asked if I wanted them to visit us in the hospital. I happily said ‘sure! Bring us some food!’ or ‘of course! Hospitals are boring and I’m sure we could use some company’ or ‘yea! I’d love to see you’.

All of those statements are about me. Bring me food, bring me entertainment, bring me friends. I’m ashamed to say my daughter never once crossed my mind regarding those comments. I guess because before she was still only this concept.

Now she was here, and nothing and no one else mattered. Now she was here, the reality that she was born preterm, in January, in peak flu season sank in. A high school girl died of the flu that same week one town over. The pediatrician said to limit visitors, it’s not worth exposing her. It’s not worth her getting a fever from a cold or bug and ending back up in the hospital.

Babies less than two months old who get fevers equal automatic hospital admission. That was one of those nursing board questions. Because we all know kids get fevers and sick all the time – but there is a hard line for newborns and fevers. And after spending 5 days in the hospital...I wasn’t going to risk any chance for her to have to come back.

I felt shame in my previous selfishness. My unawareness of what would happen to me at 0251 on a January Wednesday morning. My life and my preferences became second for the first time in my life. And I gave up first place with wild abandon.

The Shift of Mind and Action

I’ve heard mothers say they lost themselves in motherhood. The self-care movement is probably marketed the most aggressively at moms because to put the priority on yourself, even for an hour yoga class, now becomes an active decision. And I was heading down that road, even at day two of motherhood.

You need to hold her for fun – everything you’re doing now is work he said to me. My husband was referring to me desperately trying to get my baby to latch and for us to figure out this breastfeeding thing. After trying that, it was trying to get her to suck on my finger as I slowly dripped milk into her mouth from a syringe. Then I had to pump, so I had to put her down.

I was so focused on trying to help her eat I was forgetting to enjoy her just to be enjoying her – like everyone else was enjoying her. Grandparents would come and they could simply hold her and stare at her. Meanwhile in my sleep deprivation, magnesium haze mind, I was so focused on trying to be a good provider and feed my baby I was losing sight of the joy.

I didn’t care about what I needed or how I felt in those first few days. Yes, I still felt the effects of preeclampsia, but I didn’t care as long as she kept passing the little tests they would do: bilirubin, oxygen, hearing, etc. So much so – going back to breastfeeding – when my milk finally came in and I was pumping, I was met with massive cramping. Like push the call bell, something isn’t right cramping.

Oh those are the hormones working now that you’re breastfeeding! The nurse explained. Apparently, when you start producing milk and your body is figuring out its new job, even more hormones are released and these can cause uterine cramps. Lovely, right? Here I am, just trying to create this life-sustaining product for my baby and I’m rewarded with severe menstrual type cramping.

But again – here I am focused on her and doing what she needs. I became excited when I started to have those pains. Ohhh it’s working! I’m making milk! I need the heating pad ASAP...where is the damn heating pad...

I’m so thankful Ben saw what was happening to me and spoke up. Because that behavior is a little atypical of me. Yes, I’m a good and nurturing nurse and person, mostly, but I’m also pretty self-serving. So to shift drastically and only focus on someone else is a new move for me. But he reminded me she will figure breastfeeding out and we will both be just fine. He reminded me to enjoy her for the sake of me. To be a little selfish and self-serving. To look at this little human we made together and be in awe. So I did and so I have each day since. I actively remind myself to simply enjoy her existence and not focus on the many tasks at hand to keep her alive.

Not only was she now outside of my body from where she lived for over nine months, a large part of my heart and soul now lived outside of me too.

This former ‘concept’ of her was now the singular most important thing to me. Which is also a terrifying realization. Not only was she now outside of my body from where she lived for over nine months, a large part of my heart and soul now lived outside of me too.

Going Home

She was three days old when we went home. Many folks said they had this freakout moment of “OMG they’re letting me take this baby home?! How are we supposed to do this?!” when it came time to discharge home. I was bracing for this stress response walking out of the door but it honestly never came. I think we were both so excited to finally go home after having to stay an extra day because of my health – we were more excited than nervous.

Getting her in the car seat and strapped into the car was thrilling and surreal. The 20-minute drive home – where I’m mostly turned around staring at her in the mirror making sure she’s still breathing because her ability to work her lungs suddenly became more fragile in my eyes walking out of the safety of the hospital – felt like a rush of endorphins. Ben and I lightheartedly reflected on the last several days and how we were both still in disbelief.

We got home and were greeted by my Ben’s parents – they’d driven up from South Carolina and were watching our dogs for us while we were in the hospital. We brought her in the house and ‘introduced’ her to the dogs. Two were interested, sniffing and smelling, the eldest was completely ambivalent about her. All three were excited to see Ben and I after being gone almost five days.

It was great having support at home, my mother-in-law and sister-in-law cooked a great meal for us to have our first night home. But it was also stressful like anyone can imagine. So many emotions, thoughts, hormones – and questions.

So. Many. Questions. While I was pregnant I gave researching and preparing for baby the ol’ college try. I know I didn’t read as many books or blogs or Pinterest lists as some moms. I know I read more than some moms. I would ask myself questions and the internet would oblige.

10 Things You Have to Have in Your Hospital Bag
Don’t Forget These 7 Tips to Sleeping Through the Night
250 Baby Registry Must Haves
Never Do These 5 Things as You Prepare for Baby
The Secret Your Doctor Doesn’t Want You to Know About Your Baby...ok that one is a little dramatic.

I would make mental notes, created a Pinterest board, texted with mom friends about these questions. Up until now it was a one way path – me having a question and seeking the answer. Now it was different. This influx of questions now came from Ben, our family, and continued to come from me, all about basic baby survival.

I think I blubbered something along the lines of “I tried to be prepared, but I don’t know everything” which will probably be a running theme for 2020…

I had a meltdown on the couch because I didn’t know the answer to if we needed to boil the bottles after every use or just when we initially buy them. I think I blubbered something along the lines of “I tried to be prepared, but I don’t know everything” which will probably be a running theme for 2020…

Again, Ben coming in with the save and reassuring me I’m doing awesome and great and he’s going to Google the answer. I also texted a friend to see her answer. The answer is no, soap and water work fine. And we all moved on.

I also needed to keep breastfeeding/supplementing/pumping on this narrow 2-3 hour window. Which rapidly approached as we walked in the door having spent the last two hours going over paperwork with the nurse, packing our stuff, driving home, and unloading everything at home.

This meant I needed my chest exposed, because duh, right? Can’t breastfeed or pump through clothes. There’s probably a device that lets you do this, but I haven’t come across it yet. But there were people in my house and I didn’t know how just pull my boob out.

It’s an odd thing to be faced with a problem you’ve never had before, one you need to solve smoothly, all while your brain doesn’t really work right because sleep deprivation is a true crime and hashtag hormones. An act this whole time leading up to you’d told yourself “of course I’ll breastfeed in public or in front of whomever, women’s rights n shit, it’s my prerogative to do it!”. Sounded a lot braver in my mind before actually being faced with it.

It’s an odd thing to be faced with a problem you’ve never had before, one you need to solve smoothly, all while your brain doesn’t really work right because sleep deprivation is a true crime and hashtag hormones.

So my solution was to go into the nursery with the pump I was renting from the hospital and pump in there. Sitting in a room furnished for a concept and otherwise didn’t have a purpose before we walked through the door with her an hour ago. There I was, behind a closed door. With my brand new baby in the living room, further away than she’s been since she’s existed outside of my belly.

Annnndd cue sobbing. At the time I didn’t know why I was sobbing – like legit ugly crying. Crying with these two pumps on my boobs making a rhythmic mechanical noise doing their best to milk me like the prized cow Miss Bessie. It’s only now where I can say oh yeah, that was a lot to deal with in that moment, totally makes sense why I was upset.

Ben comes in – he’s not sure if what he was hearing was me laughing or crying – and does his best to comfort me. He also goes and gets our daughter, it was like he read my subconscious mind since I didn’t know why I was crying at the time. He put her in her crib, a crib hilariously gigantic against her now barely 5-pound body. But now I could see her, now she was in front of me, sleeping away while I continued to pump. It wasn’t anyone’s fault this happened, it just did. I was thankful to have family there and not every transition with this new life is going to be smooth. Probably not any of them will be.

First Night Home

Our first night home went as well as a night with a three day old can go as far as I’m concerned. I set my alarm to go off every 3 hours to make sure she was fed, sometimes she woke before the alarm which was oddly encouraging. This meant she was now able to wake to her own hunger cues. After spending the first 24-36 hours of her life sleeping and being very lethargic – her being able to wake on her own and say feed me! meant things were going in the right direction.

Obviously our bed is a lot more comfortable than a hospital bed. We also didn’t have random people coming in during the night to check our vital signs, ask me my name and date of birth, draw labs, or ask me how much she fed last time or had a wet diaper to document. So the waking part was slightly more annoying for me and Ben, but we managed.

Our house is also a bit bigger than a standard for-profit hospital room. So now having to walk down the hall to the kitchen, get milk out of the fridge, heat it up, walk back...feed her...walk back to the kitchen and return bottle and milk and rinse out implements – oh and grab pumping supplies – was more laborious. I also had the strength of an overcooked rotini noodle at this point after being in the hospital and having a baby. And I was soaking wet.

I wasn’t wet from breast milk – although that happens frequently enough. I was drenching in night sweats. Thank God the discharge nurse told me these were normal or I would’ve had another meltdown thinking I had the flu, or lymphoma, or something else ridiculous. My back was soaked, my hair was drenched, my clothes were damp and cold.

I’m convinced hormones are the most powerful thing existing in our bodies right now. They cause so damn much to happen! Pregnancy, labor, milk production, hot flashes and now these night sweats. Not only am I wet from sweating, I’m also freezing. I’d spent the last 4 months being really hot. It’s the only time in my life my patients didn’t curse me for having cold hands. I was essentially a furnace. And I was so thankful to have my third trimester in the fall/winter. And now I’m turning the thermostat up from 66 to 73...

Anyways, now the martyrdom picture has been sufficiently painted, the night went fairly well in my eyes. She fed every 2-3 hours and we all got a little sleep. We registered for these neat velcro swaddle wraps which took the art out of swaddling – and they are amazing! They’re all way too big for her, but we make it work. She’s snuggled up like a little peanut or burrito, or some other adorable snack, nice and cozy. I think swaddling is the way to go to help keep her secure and rested at night, in my limited 14 days of experience.

But I figure if that’s all they do in the hospital – just a diaper and swaddled in a blanket – it’s probably helpful to do. We put some clothes on her under the swaddle, put her on the bassinet next to my side of the bed and she slept. Only 90 minutes to two hours at a time, but she slept.

F&*king Hormones

You’re probably tired of me talking about hormones. I’m tired of talking about hormones. But the gravity of their effects can’t be understated. When we were getting our discharge paperwork the nurse told me (and more so Ben) to keep an eye on me and my mood. If my tearfulness, depression, despair didn’t start to improve after two weeks, I needed to talk to my doctor about medication.

A few things to digest from that statement. For one, there is an expectation I’ll feel like hell for two weeks and that’s normal. Secondly, I may need medication to get over the hump if it’s still severe after two weeks, and that is also normal. And finally, the partner usually sees signs of an issue before the patient.

Pregnancy hormones are like the warm-up for postpartum hormones. Pregnancy hormones are the JV squad, postpartum hormones are the varsity team. I cried because “she’s so pretty”. I cried because the bear on a blanket she was given was “so cute”. I cried because I was scared of scenarios that didn’t actually exist. I cried because I wasn’t pregnant anymore. I cried at the OB office at my one week visit because they didn’t need me to pee in a cup anymore and I felt “unspecial”.

Yep. Hormones will rock your world. I cried in a doctor’s office bathroom because the nurse didn’t need me to pee in a cup anymore. I’d had to do it every time I walked through the door since our first OB visit in July. To check for protein, glucose, blood, infection, etc. Now they didn’t care about my pee. And it was worth crying about in the bathroom. Fucking hormones.

Another phenomenon that happened (and still does to an extent) are these vivid nightmares or visions of horrible things happening. Roxy, our doula, stopped by and I was telling her how I kept dreaming I’d accidentally fallen asleep on Aspen and suffocated her to death. Or I was having visions of one of the dogs killing her.

Apparently, this is also “normal”. These intrusive or ‘scary thoughts’ of harm happening to your baby are very common postpartum. Stress, sleep deprivation, hormones can all contribute to this. Roxy said another theory is more primal. Your instincts to protect your offspring can make your brain create all the bad scenarios as a way to anticipate and prepare for anything bad happening. The whole momma bear and her cub thing.

Now that I knew this was a normal thing and not a sign (yet anyways) of a more severe psychosis, I acknowledge these thoughts but do my best to not let them consume me. I don’t let them interfere with things I need to do like sleep, shower, rest in addition to caring for my little cub.

Here we are at week two. And I think the hormonal shit storm is finally settling for now. My brain is less foggy and my thoughts are less manic. Still a long way to go in this 4th trimester, but for now, I will continue to honor my feelings and create space for them – but also keep moving forward for the both of us.

Shame, But Make It Oblivious

I wouldn’t have categorized any of my stress or anxiety postpartum as shameful, but in hindsight, I think it may be just that. Something else which made me cry uncontrollably was how I ‘didn’t deserve’ things. I didn’t deserve Aspen. I didn’t deserve Ben. I didn’t deserve to rest until she was fed, supplemented, and I’d pumped.

But why not? Why all of a sudden am I unworthy of anything good? The pressure I’d placed on myself to perform well at this whole motherhood thing had devolved into me not doing it good enough, not right enough. I was keeping this baby alive for someone who deserved her and it certainly isn’t me, right?

Very wrong. This is something I know I will continue to work through as she grows and thrives. To allow myself grace to not be perfect but more importantly to be proud of all that I’ve done. Women aren’t supposed to be too prideful. It’s not attractive and pride is a male trait. But a great Avett Brothers song, The Perfect Space has a line in it I need to hold on to:

I wanna have pride like my mother has,

And not like the kind in the bible that turns you bad.

And I wanna have friends that I can trust,

That love me for the man I've become and not the man that I was.

Something So Severe and Yet So Normal

Moms reading this may be shaking their heads laughing at my dramatics. They may be agreeing with me and recalling their own story. Moms-to-be reading this may be in complete shock and terror at my stories. Potentially more at ease or more nervous at what is to come. Everyone else reading may be wondering what the hell is wrong with me. I don’t blame any of those reactions.

Transitioning between pregnancy, birth, and postpartum is a mess. A fluid-filled mess. Blood, sweat, tears, pee, poo, milk, laundry detergent, some wine. It’s all in there. It’s all so monumental. It’s all so normal. Women have been doing this for centuries – with far fewer resources than I’ve been afforded. And women do this now with fewer resources than me. Women amaze me.

As someone who was never sure if I wanted to be a mother, I never took the time to marvel at what a woman’s body can do and endure. During my pregnancy, my appreciation and respect for women grew as Aspen grew in my belly. And now on the other side, my love for what is endured grows stronger still. I think it’s time I start including myself in that love and appreciation. Because as much as I still feel all of this is an out of body experience, I have to give myself credit for how far I’ve come.

I can’t wait to see how the next days and weeks go. As our relationship as two separate beings develop and our relationship as a family of three grows – it’s the most exciting thing I’ve ever looked forward to.