Hard

No one tells you how hard being a mom is. Well, they do, but you don't believe them. You don't believe any of it, because all you can picture during your last few precious weeks of pregnancy is holding your angelic baby whilst they sleep peacefully in your arms.

And then you go home from the hospital. At least, that's how it was for me. I ended up with an emergency C-section and spent 3 days in the hospital. In addition to that, Ryan was in the NICU, so there was no possibility of rooming-in. For me, the hospital stay was like staying at a hotel with halfway decent room service. The sweet nurses brought me percocet every few hours and brought yummy treats from the fridge down the hall, like strawberry ice cream and vanilla cookies. They had plain and hazelnut coffee each morning as well as milk, juice, jello, and all the crushed ice you could ever want. I'd let myself be wheeled (or later, I walked) down to the NICU to see my baby. I never saw him cry. He slept like an angel. All was well. I loved being in the hospital. Even with all the struggling to sit up in bed and help peeing, I enjoyed my time there.

....And then they handed me my baby 3 days later and kicked me out. Our first night home was awful. We spent the night working in shifts because he would not sleep unless being held. I can recall waking up at some point to feed Ryan and finding him sleeping in my husband's arms while he drifted in and out of sleep as Southpark bleated away on the tv. My mom came the next day and didn't leave for two weeks.

My point is that its hard. And you don't know, you can't know, until it happens to you. If you're lucky, you have a whole village of people to help you. We were lucky to have people bring us food, help around the house, and more than anything, we were lucky to have my mom who stayed by our side constantly.

Looking back at those first few weeks, I think they were especially hard because I suffered through a case of the baby blues for 3 solid weeks. Add to that sore nipples, sleep deprivation, confusion about EVERYTHING and its bound to make one feel like a failure. I felt like I had failed at birthing, failed at breastfeeding, failed at being happy and excited to be a new mom, failed at everything. Its not just taking care of the baby that's hard, its taking care of yourself...and getting through that postpartum haze.

I really want to chronicle my birth story. Maybe next time.

What does it all mean?

I created this blog as a place to log all my mommy-related thoughts. Ryan is my first and only child, born May 10th of this year. He's almost four months old now. My, how time flies!

I chose to name this blog its ridiculous name because of all the shorthand on these baby websites. Of course, as a FTM (first time mom) I ran out and joined one of the most popular baby websites, babycenter. Its dizzying to try and figure out what all the acronyms mean. I'm still baffled by people whose signatures proudly read "APEBFCDBWSAHM". I mean....wtf? Now, since I've visited that website everyday since the day I found out I was expecting, I happen to know what that means. Attachment Parenting, Exlusively Breastfeeding, Cloth Diapering, Baby Wearing, Stay at home mom. Whew. That's a lot. People have these long strings of texts like its some badge of honor. One of my favorites is a lady's whose says "Formula Feeding, Disposable diaper wearing, cartoon watching, daycare attending...". I hate these shorthand brag signatures.

I've learned so much in the last 12 months than I ever thought I would or could. It starts when you get pregnant, or in my case, when you start TTC (see, there's another one...trying to conceive). We decided to try to get pregnant last July. I went off the pill in June and found out I was pregnant September 1st. I actually knew before then, but didn't get my positive result until that day. Then the worrying starts. You worry about everything. You worry about the beer you had two weeks before you got your positive test result. You worry about the lunch meat you didn't heat up because you didn't read that far in "What to Expect" yet to know deli meat is "dangerous". You worry about miscarrying because you read on your birth board about all the women who are miscarrying. That's another thing...only the ones who are having miscarriages are posting, so even though your birth board has like 13,000 members, you're terrified. And you THINK the worrying will wane at the end of the first trimester, because its "safer", but it doesn't. Then you think it'll stop when you're close to the end, but it doesn't. And you think, "Finally! I won't be pregnant anymore and the worrying will stop!" but its just beginning.

Then you have this precious little life. And a whole new kind of worry sets in. And suddenly, you're a mom. Whether you were ready or not, you're a mom. And nothing is ever the same again. I can hardly remember what my life was like without Ryan. I can definitely remember the weeks following his birth, but that's another story for another day. I'd like to type out his birth story as well as talk about the awful AWFUL "baby blues" I suffered through, but again, another day.

So this marks the beginning of my very own little blog about motherhood.