Mom Life 10 Months Postpartum – Part 1

Hello everyone!

It has been a while since I last wrote a post on Mom life! Life has been really busy and I can see why most Moms go MIA after giving birth! Mom life is CRRAAZZYY. I kid you not. (Get it…kid?? haha) Ok bad joke. Forgive me, I am tired.

No one told me that once you have a baby, you get NO time to yourself. Right now I am speed typing because the little guy is taking a nap. It is 3:40 pm and my Mom-nap-sense is telling me that this one is going to be a short nap….Wait, I see him on the camera and he’s moving. Ok nevermind, *phew* false alarm.

Baby will be 10 months in another 5 days! How did the time fly by!? Ok, I am going to describe the last 9 months in words with descriptions. Many ups and many downs.

Baby woke up. I continue the rest of the post at 9 pm (March 20).—–

Breastfeeding: very challenging. After lots of practice, effort, trying and visits to the lactation consultants my baby never latched, so I exclusively pumped. It was and still is hard work. Pumping 6-8 x a day (including 3 am), cleaning bottles & pump parts over and over again led to extremely dry hands. Missing pumping sessions for various reasons and getting painful blocked ducts. Milk stains on shirts, on every shirt. Nipple blisters. Loud Medela pump noises where my husband and parents thought they heard a different word each day. I, on the other hand, thought it was perfect for singing/dancing to…watch below:

Need some humor in life right? 😉 I pumped in the bedroom, kitchen, living room, car and even dirty bathrooms at the medical school I attended for interview prep! Tired of pumping, wanting to stop, why not give him formula you ask?…well because I felt Mom guilt. I am now down to 3 pumps a day and TIRED. I am not sure I can make it to 12 months. I keep it going because I know I am providing passive immunity to baby. So very important to me. Moo moo.

Postpartum “baby blues” & depression: it lasted for the first three….almost four months. I would cry at the drop of a hat, hold my baby and cry. Anytime my husband/parents/in laws offered to help I would take it personally and misinterpret it as “I was incapable of caring for my baby.” I would feel something bad was going to happen to my baby, I kept watching him on the camera. I couldn’t sleep at night with the fear that he would stop breathing or suffocate in his crib from the swaddle. I would wake up every 30 mins to go check on him. EVERY. 30. MINUTES.

I felt like a failure multiple times: anytime I couldn’t understand why my baby was crying, I couldn’t put him down to sleep, he would cry hysterically when I held him (but would calm down when my husband held him), I wasn’t able to directly breastfeed and wasn’t making enough milk so resorted to giving him formula to top up. I also felt very pudgy and unattractive. Sleep deprivation, living in my PJs, not doing my hair or even remembering to have a shower…yeah, it was bad. I didn’t tell my doctor though. It resolved on its own.

Looking back there was so much support around me and being given to me, yet my state of mind did not allow me to see this. I went for massages, they helped tremendously. Also going on date night, just me and Hubby was helpful too. Had to remind myself that we were not just Mom & Dad, we were first Wife & Husband.

….House duties done, baby in bed, Hubby taking care of baby for night feeds at the moment, I am back to writing at 12:40 am (March 21).

Sleep/lack there of: At 9.5 months, I can finally say that our baby sleeps resonably well. When I say well, I don’t mean throughout the night. He still wakes up two times for milk (not out of hunger) but comfort feeding, sips 10 ml and back to bed. I think now our sleep cycle is so used to just waking up as soon as he cries, robotically reach for the bottle and put it in his mouth and go back to sleep. He hold the bottle himself and drops it when he’s done. I can say these days I actually feel rested.

Love & cuddles: As a newborn I absolutely loved holding him to my chest and snuggling with him. He’d fall asleep on my chest and that would be “our” special moment as I breathed in his sweet newborn scent from the top of his head. Now, he wraps his arms around my neck tightly, or holds both sides of my face with his sweet little hands and tries to bite my chin or cheek. I would like to think that’s his way of kissing his Mom ❤ He also loves to bump foreheads…..*sigh* I look st him and think, how did such a cutie come from MY womb? It feels like he was supposed to be our baby. Strange, like I already knew him.

I miss him now when he’s sleeping. (I won’t wake him though because this is my quiet time! HAHA)

I will end Part 1 here. I finally finished this post March 27 at 11:35 pm. We are currently in my parents house so I get some free time to blog and redesign my site! Exciting times!

Please visit again for partie deux!

Peace, Love & Happiness always!