Confessions of a First Time Mom: Month 7

Happy Mother’s Day! On my first Mother’s Day as a mother, I have reflected a lot on how amazing moms are. I have learned that motherhood is really one of the most sacrificial things you can do. You give up so much for your baby in order to be a good mom. You give up your “me” time, you give up sleep, you give up the need to be thanked & appreciated for all you do, you give up your selfish desires for independence & freedom, & you give up a lot of the old life you had. You will never know the depths of what it is to be a mom until you experience it yourself. For that, I want to say “thank you” to my mom, who I never appreciated enough, never thanked enough, never realized all she did to love & care for me & my sister. Thank you mom, and Happy Mother’s Day to all moms out there!

And happy 7 months + 1 day to Isaac! This month: We have new teeth! Two in one week! Yikes. He’s almost crawling! He’ll get up on all fours & rock, & sometimes hop around. He’s sitting up on his own. I swear he gives me kisses (the open mouthed kind) but it may just be that he’s trying to tell me he’s hungry… He’s growing out of his clothes so quickly, we’re up to 9 month size already! We’ve entered the world of solid foods: Bananas, applesauce, squash (not a favorite), sweet potatoes, carrots, peas, & green beans so far. He’s still a pretty poor sleeper, but we decided we’re gonna keep him anyways. :-)

His “almost crawling” stance & his first two teeth! 

Mmmm peas! 

How to Know You’re Ready

I remember our pre-Isaac days, thinking about how wonderful it was going to be to have a precious baby in my arms, to care for and love him, to tend to his needs, to hear him say Mama and gently touch & kiss my face. The beauty of having a baby. Right? Well, yes. Kind of. There’s just another side to it all! Everybody’s baby experiences are different, but I put together a little test based on my experience to see if you might be ready to be a parent…

• You think being spit up on, pinched, poked, pulled, slobbered on, head-butted, kicked, grabbed, scratched, and screamed at is cute.
• You can get up before 7am every day without complaining. A baby doesn’t understand time, nor do they understand the concept of weekends. Sleeping in is now completely redefined. You’re happy to sleep until 7am.
• You can live off 4 hours of consecutive sleep. No more, only possibly less. In addition, you’re ready to get up out of bed multiple times in the middle of the night while your darling spouse continues to sleep next to you. You may even hear him snore softly as you leave the room. You want to pout like a little girl and say, “It’s not fair!” But you can’t. That’s a bad example. You will feel frustrated & lonely, even with your spouse around. But you must still love him. You need him.
• You don’t mind working or being on-call all the time. Imagine never going home from work. Ever. That’s a glimpse of the commitment of parenting. You may get a snack break. A lunch break. Maybe eventually even a weekend off. But essentially you work every minute of every day, you don’t get sick days, weekends, bonuses, & you never get to change careers. Talk about a commitment!
• You can get runny poop on yourself without freaking out. It will touch you, I promise.
• You can maintain a good attitude while being consistently hungry, thirsty and tired. All at the same time.
• You can let go of your attachment to your dog. They are no longer your baby. They may even become the enemy.  
• You can listen to other parents say, “Enjoy, it goes by so fast” a trillion times per day without slapping them.
• You can hold a 15 pound wiggly wet bar of soap in the shower and not drop it. Sometimes that’s what my child seems like.
• You don’t mind having songs like, The ABC’s, Hush Little Baby, and Old McDonald Had a Farm stuck in your head. You will sing them to yourself while your child is sleeping. It’s so annoying.

So, we have this cute book, B is for Bear, that Isaac likes (at least I think he does). Well, I was desperate for a new lullaby after singing the same one at each naptime, so I memorized the book & turned it into a lullaby. Seriously!

Y is for you; go on, take a look!

• You know how to wear your hair without styling it. Now, for some of you (‘Oh I just get out of the shower & it just happens to be beautiful’) this won’t apply. But, for those of you with a more high maintenance mane, get ready to give it up. My hair is a bit wild, & I used to tame it by straightening it. Now, I sometimes wear a high ponytail, sometimes a low ponytail, if it’s date night I’ll pull it off to the side, but it’s pretty much always in a ponytail.

One of my very fashionable hairstyles…

• You don’t care about primetime TV. Bedtime is probably going to be anywhere from 6-8pm (for the baby, but you’ll follow shortly after), & lest you think it’s simple to put a baby down to sleep for the night, let me warn you the process may take up to an hour. You learn to love Netflix.
• You can have more fun at home than out. Now, not that you can’t go out. You should go out! Getting everyone out of the house helps maintain your sanity. But, you’re home more often than you’re out. And when you do get out, it takes at least twice as long as pre-baby to plan & implement the strategy necessary for leaving the house.

Confession: I’m not ready to be a parent! :-)

I’m the Model of Inconsistency

You often hear that babies need consistency! If you’re just consistent enough, they’ll follow your rules. Well, that’s easier said than done because if you start something & after a few weeks you decide it’s not working, you’ll probably (oh no!) change something. Ahh! Chaos ensues! Baby is messed up for life! You’ve ruined it! No, false: I am the model that you can be inconsistent & still have a relatively normal baby. Ok, now I know what you’re all thinking: “She’s complained for months about her child not sleeping, now I know why.” And to that I would respond: “Touché.” Maybe, if I were more consistent from the beginning, Isaac would be a different baby? Who’s to know? I happen to think that my baby is awesome! If you’ve met him, you know he’s awesome! All sleeping issues aside… One of the coolest babies around!

Parenting is the ultimate learning process. So I change things up. A lot. I’m a first time mom. I’m figuring it out. You may think you got the right strategy from the beginning, but I would argue you may have just been lucky. What all have we tried? Well… everything!

• Schedule feeding vs. Feeding on demand? Tried both!
• Co-sleeping vs. Baby sleeping in a crib in his own room? Done both!
• Use a pacifier vs. Not? Tried both!

 We think he’s pretty happy with his paci!

• Let cry vs. Respond to every cry? Done both!
• Hold for naps vs. Put down for naps? Yup, Done both!
• Babywise vs. Attachment Parenting? (Ok, you know how there used to be this saying that babies don’t come with an instruction manual? Well there are plenty of books out there that try to pass as one! Boo! Don’t fall for it!) But yes, we’ve tried variations of both…
• Wake up at same time every day vs. Let sleep until he wakes up? Done both!
• Put down ‘drowsy but awake’ vs. Nurse to sleep? Done both!
• Keep in crib to soothe vs. Pick up & rock to soothe? You guessed it- we’ve done both!

The infamous Zippadee Zip we spent $75 on (we got 2). I’m not ready to review it yet… It’s still in the testing phase.

I’ve obviously tried everything. This article popped up on the internet recently that accurately describes my frustrations with all the sleep strategies out there. How is anyone to know what really works for their baby until they try it? And how are they supposed to find the right strategy without trying a few??

Confession: Scheduled feeding has worked wonders for us. Isaac sleeps in his own room. Jury’s still out on the pacifier, but it seems to be a pretty good tool for him to calm down, so I have been using it recently. I let him cry for a bit if he wakes up early, but I always respond to his cries. Isaac naps in his crib. I let him sleep as loooooooooooong as he will. I stick with my advice from an earlier post that it’s never a good idea to wake a sleeping baby! I’m still trying to decide what’s better in terms of how to put him down (drowsy but awake or nurse to sleep?). I haven’t decided yet. I do nurse him before every sleep time. That is the most precious time for me & I wouldn’t change it if 100 people told me to..  I pick him up to rock him if he wakes up early from his nap. I nurse him twice during the night. I wait until he is really sleepy before putting him down for a nap. None of this, “nap at the first sign of drowsiness” business. I might change something tomorrow, because I’m still not 100% sure everything I’m currently doing is working.

According to at least one “expert” out there, each of these are no nos. I might change something tomorrow, or next month, but for now, these are working. Sort of.

And then sometimes they make you change all the rules…

I Don’t Know What I’m Doing!

This tails right behind the last post… I’m going to write a book called, “I Don’t Know What I’m Doing!” & chronicle all the missteps you can take as a parent & still survive (child included). There’s all this pressure to get your baby sleeping through the night. The advice we got most often before Isaac was born was to “get him on a schedule.” Why? So you can sleep through the night. Now I swear the questions we get asked every time we introduce Isaac to someone new are, #1, “How old is he?” and #2, “Is he sleeping through the night yet?” No, ok. He’s not. And I don’t like your hair. Gosh. Kidding. But seriously, it’s like sleeping through the night has become the Ultimate Goal of Parenting. Aren’t there more important things we should be worried about?!?

Obviously I’ve been a little inconsistent with my strategies thus far (that’s a nice way of saying, I have no idea what I’m doing here), but I really do believe we have a wonderful, calm, mild tempered, happy baby who is growing & developing as he should, so something is going right… right? When Isaac was a newborn, I didn’t know anything about sleep or feeding schedules, naptime or bedtime rituals, soothing techniques, do’s and don’ts of sleep training, or any of the other “rules” out there. Honestly now I know a lot more than I wish I did, but I still don’t really know what works for Isaac.

I do often feel like here I am, making all these mistakes & ending up with a child who can’t nap or sleep well at night. I’m trying to tell myself that the things I’m doing aren’t mistakes. I might be trying different methods & not strictly following one way, but I love my child immensely. So, I’m not making mistakes. I’m just doing it my own way with my own child in my own home with my own, very unique, outcomes….

Confession: I don’t always believe that. The things I’m doing aren’t mistakes. Sounds nice on paper, right? But I constantly second guess myself. When Isaac wakes up from his nap after 45 minutes (used to be typical), 30 minutes (the norm this month), or 18 minutes (the record), I have a mild panic attack. Or when he wakes 4 times in the middle of the night, sometimes 30 minutes after going down to bed, sometimes right as I’m falling asleep. Again, I have a mild panic attack. Then the doubts creep in. What am I doing wrong? Why won’t he sleep? He’s 7 months old! Why is he napping for 30 minutes & still getting up 2-4 times in the night? Why am I reacting with frustration? Why am I crying? Why can’t I just take this in stride & not get worked up?

What it boils down to is fear. There’s this fear that I’m not doing it right. That I’m doing something wrong. That I’m messing up and ruining him for life. That I’m not the perfect mother. (Ok, a bit dramatic? Yes, yes I am.) These lies creep up & plant themselves in my brain, and honestly I believe a lot of them. They cause me to worry, doubt, & become anxious. These are subtle yet powerful lies that can rob me of the joy of being a mother:

“If you were doing it right, he would be sleeping through the night.”

“You’re obviously doing something wrong because he’s not sleeping like he should.”

“All your friends have babies who sleep well because they know what they’re doing.”

“You’re teaching him bad habits by doing what you’re doing.”

But when I recognize these as lies, and replace them with the truth, it is amazing how quickly these lies lose their power over my emotions. The truth is quite the opposite:

“I’m doing what I believe to be best for me & my son.”

“I care & love him so much that I would never want to create bad habits or harm him in any way.”

“I am doing things the best way I know how.”

“There’s no such thing as a perfect baby. None of the moms I know have a perfect baby.”

“I love my son, I love my life, I love staying home with him & caring for him, and I absolutely love being a mom.”

I don’t think any of us are meant to live under the weight of anxiety, fear, comparison, or self-doubt. If we’re feeling any of those things, it may be an indication that we’re believing lies about our circumstances. It’s time to bash those lies & instead live with the joy & contentment that comes from believing the truth! Hu-rah! The TRUTH is that Isaac is happy, healthy, & growing normally! That should be enough!

Not to mention, he can plank longer than I can! :-)

Motherhood is Demanding.

I know what all of you are thinking. Duh, Sara. Are you really just realizing that? Ok, but hear me out. I’m a stay at home mom. So, I not only care for Isaac, but I have time to do other things around the house. Right?? Truth is, I am amazed at how much of my day goes towards caring for Isaac. Even though I often feel like I should be able to accomplish more… I mean, c’mon… You have single moms, moms who work full time outside the home, moms with five kids, moms with their own small businesses, moms who write books & blog daily, and then you have me. A stay at home mom who can’t seem to get the laundry done! Who knew actually doing stuff other than baby care would be so difficult? It doesn’t seem like it should be, but somehow when your husband gets home & asks, “What did you do today?” you stop & think really, really hard… and come up with something like, “Well, your son is alive, isn’t he?!?!” (I do have to say that in reality, Michael & I don’t argue about this. He is wonderfully supportive of me staying home, even when he has no clean socks…)

I’m tempted here to justify to you why accomplishing a single task on my To Do list is difficult. To explain to you all the reasons why my days can be stressful. To prove that being a stay at home mom is a full time job. To show you a glimpse of the ways Isaac can be a challenge. However, I really don’t think I need to justify myself. Many people think, Oh, stay at home moms just hang out, go shopping, and sleep all day. Well, in a sense, that’s right. I am with my child all day, playing silly games, reading books, and teaching him about the world. And yes, I do all the shopping for the house. Grocery shopping. And you’re most definitely right about the last one: I spend the majority of my day putting to sleep, monitoring sleep, putting back to sleep, and getting up from sleep this little child of mine. Being a stay at home mom is a full time job. No justification needed! If you don’t believe it, you’ve obviously never been a stay at home mom.

Confession: I’ve paid the mortgage & credit card bills late (apparently they don’t waive your payments after you have a baby like I think they should…), it takes me days to do a load of laundry, I don’t always cook dinner, I haven’t cleaned my shower since Isaac has been born, I consider picking up and wiping down to be cleaning, we buy Ramen noodles from bulk at Sams & I have a stockpile of frozen pizzas for those nights when I forgot to plan something, I’ve had “mop kitchen floor” on my To-Do list for a good 6 weeks now, we have a large box of disposable diapers for when the laundry hamper is full of cloth ones, I haven’t really exercised (walks don’t actually count) in months, & right now there’s a pile of junk on the floor right in front of me.

Sometimes when I haven’t vacuumed in… well, awhile… I just plop him in the exersaucer to keep him off the floor…

Phew! Another amazing, challenging, awe-inspiring month as a First Time Mom! Hope you’ll join us next month as we continue this journey! From all of us in the Hollar Household, may you find true joy & peace in whatever stage of life you are in. Much love from here!