Thoughts from a new momma

I’m officially a momma and before I say anything else, I just want to say WAHOO‼ This little bundle of joy has become the greatest treasure to enter Tom’s and my lives. On top of all the tender mercies we’ve received with this baby, one of the sweetest to me is how much of his daddy I see in him. That resemblance is such a reminder to me that this baby is here because of Tom and my love for each other. It just warms my heart to always look down at my sweet child and see a “tiny Tom”.

Since Tom was deemed recorder of the labor/delivery events, I wanted to add this post to just share my two cents about the whole experience. I’ll start from the beginning.

To start, I wasn’t exactly thrilled about getting induced. I didn’t like that my baby was going to be forced out of his home earlier than nature intended just because there was an issue with our clinic and the hospital. This frustration was slightly abated by the joy of knowing that I’d get to see my baby by a set point rather than the lingering unknown of post-due-date pregnancy.

Because we were inducing, most of my already very basic birth plan was thrown out the window. My birth plan was essentially this: avoid pitocin and c-section if at all possible. hold out on epidural until I’m dilated to at least a 5. Thankfully, I got my most desired wish and that was to avoid the c-section. The other two wishes didn’t quite come true. The nature of an induction is possible BECAUSE OF pitoI cin (unless they just break your water…but that’s slightly more risky) so there went that wish. The reason I wanted to avoid this drug was because of all the horror stories I’ve heard about how painful they make your contractions. Well, the horror stories are true, and thereby that lead to getting an epidural much earlier than planned. This was probably my greatest mental battle for the whole pregnancy. We’ve all heard the arguments for and against epidurals, so I won’t sound like a broken record to explain all the thoughts going through my head at that time. All I know is that at just 3 centimeters dilation, my contractions were constantly hurting me more than I could have ever possibly imagined and the nurses were frequently coming in and offering me the epidural as soon as I wanted it. I think I would have battled out the contractions longer if it had not been for the almost pushing of the nurses to get it right away. Thank heaven for those nurses. Looking back, I think there were two great options available: 1) tough it out for who knows how long and hope for that amazing spiritual experience that the all-natural mothers describe or 2) get the epidural as soon as possible and save all that energy for when it was finally time for the baby to enter the world. Needless to say, I chose option 2 and I really believe that it was the best option for me. I’m such a baby when it comes to pain and I knew that if I tried to hold out for the long run, I would have just beaten myself silly and wouldn’t have been able to enjoy those first few moments/hours with Joseph after his birth nearly as much as I did. So yes, my birth was easy to the point of it almost being ridiculous. No, I didn’t get to feel my baby being born. Yes, I realize that I should not expect all of my future deliveries to go as smoothly/easily. But yes, I am SO grateful for the energy/coherence/attention I was able to give to my son in those moments after his birth. I’m thrilled that I was awake and energized enough to spend his first night with him rather than having to send him off to the nursery so that I could get recuperation sleep. Even though things didn’t go as initially intended, I know that Heavenly Father had our needs in mind and His will was accomplished. His child was delivered into our arms safely and securely and now is the time to ensure that Tom and I take the best possible care of him.

Which leads me to my next topic…motherhood. What a new world! I always knew that I wanted to be a mommy but I never fully knew why until now. Every single second of my life is now such a treasure. Looking at him, feeding him, changing his diaper, holding him, sleeping by him… all of these new routine parts of my day make me happier than I ever thought possible.

Unfortunately, even with all of this joy, the baby blues have made their appearance. Thankfully, I was prepared for and fully aware of the threat that this posed and I’ve been working very hard to fight off any depressing feelings/tendencies that seem to come so naturally to me. I am truly grateful for the love and understanding support of Tom and my mom in helping me through this – especially considering how hard it must be to fall victim to my weepy and disgruntled moods.

As for the long, sleepless nights: I think I’ve had one, maybe one and a half. Otherwise, Joey has been GREAT. I never planned on being the mother who sleeps with her baby, but I’m quickly learning that with little babies, nothing quite goes as planned. Joey LOVES to sleep beside me. At night, we just curl up on the couch/bed after a good feeding and sleep until the next feeding. I always worried that this wouldn’t work because I’d roll over him or he’d fall off the bed/couch but those concerns are gone. I don’t know how to explain it other than I just KNOW he’s not going to fall/get squished. The way I get us positioned, I have my arm around him to keep him from falling, and I’m on my side in an awkward enough way as to make it impossible to roll over onto him. I’m not sure if we’ll continue this pattern forever (well not forever, but you know what I mean) but for now, we’re both happy campers because we get sleep and we get to be near one another. All is well.

Also, here is the health update on Joey: If you haven’t noticed in the pictures, Joey has mild jaundice. Nothing drastic and his biliruben levels are already going back down. His weight had dropped to 6 lbs 8 oz on day 4 but after some GREAT counsel and assistance from a lactation consultant, we’ve been able to fatten him up a bit more. One of the handy tools that she gave us was a syringe and feeding tube for finger feeding. The idea is this: Because Joey is jaundice he is more sleepy which makes him fall asleep during feedings and thereby misses out on getting not just more milk, but the important, fat-filled hind milk that comes out last. So now I pump for 5 minutes before I feed him, he then feeds on that fatty hind milk, and the milk that was pumped is available for the aforementioned finger feeding for when he gets fussy or if he’s still awake after his feeding. Tom LOVES this. We just put this tiny tube attached to the syringe on our finger and put our finger in his mouth (like a binky) and he sucks his little heart out. Sounds weird, but it works and we can rest assured that he’s always getting the best milk and then whatever else he is finger fed just adds to the volume.


So those are a very small few of my thoughts on motherhood. There will definitely be more to come as time goes by.