New Baby, New Mom, New Life

Becoming a New Mom

I didn’t realize that my baby would start keeping me up through the night the last couple months of my pregnancy. I didn’t think the long nights started until she was born. This is one of the many new things I would learn becoming a new mom.

Rushing to get things ready for the new baby. Organizing little things she would need like a coat for the cold winter, a hamper with a simple pillow cas e and loom for all the blow outs, and a place to store the bottles on a bathroom caddy. All the sudden you are going to have a baby and after all the preparations you still feel so unprepared.

I came home from the hospital knowing I didn’t get the house as clean as I wanted. I didn’t have the laundry or the dishes done. I didn’t have food prepped in the freezer for easy meals. Now with a new baby, I didn’t have time because I was nursing every couple hours. I didn’t have energy because caring for my sweet newborn baby didn’t provide much sleep.

Helping When Mom is Down

While focusing on this new life, that I had no idea what to do with, my family swooped in to care for our little family.

My family lived about 9 hours away when I had my first baby. However, my parents came to help before my due date and my mom actually ended up taking me to the hospital when I couldn’t feel my baby and my husband was at work. My sister and sister-in-law while visiting cleaned my bathroom and ran to get my baby sleepers because out of all those newborn clothes I had only two sleepers. My grandparents also traveled the distance and brought by many meals to be sure my husband and I ate. Before making the long trek back to TN, my mom and grandmother came and cleaned my apartment, did my laundry, and allowed me a few good hours of sleep, because that’s what new parents and their newborn need more than hosting baby visitors.

Sometimes Babies Cry…

In the midst of learning how to even be a mom, the people around me always seem to interject with their two cents. People are always telling me what I should and shouldn’t do. They question every decision and say “Well I did this when mine were little…”. For some reason “this” always happens to be the opposite of what my husband and I have chosen to do with our children. So what to do with all the “suggestions” …absolutely nothing.

Some parents say “I never let my baby cry!” How?

Because you know what …

while my baby cried I made her bottle …

while my baby cried I changed her diaper…

while my baby cried I threw her laundry in so her things would be clean…