Motherhood Check In

Post Birth Wishes

My baby is only a month old, and I am already feeling nostalgic for my birth experience. I hope I never forget that day. Motherhood has been a swirl of happiness, newness, and days blurring together. I hardly remember what it was like being pregnant, as it feels like Nora has always been a part of me. She is the product of myself and my eternal love, Dallin, and I feel so grateful to have been trusted with the privilege of bringing her earth side. 

Recently I have been feeling sad that I didn’t have my birth photographed and documented more. Photos are my favorite thing in the world: it’s why I have over 60,000 on my phone! I’m worried that I don’t have enough pictures and videos of one of my favorite days I’ve experienced. I’ve been feeling moments of longing to go back and remember what that day was like. What emotions were drawn on my face, the looks Dallin and I shared, and the joy we expressed when baby Nora entered into our lives. 

The odd thing is, I have an iPhone video of the last ten minutes of my birth experience. The moments with the most intense contractions, the powerful pushes, and her first cry. But for some reason, when I try to watch it, I freeze and can’t get through the whole thing with the volume on. The pain that is emanating from the noises I’m making seem to take the serene memory from my mind. When I think back to the birth, it was the hardest, most rewarding thing I’ve ever done; but then watching the video and hearing myself push out a human taints my memory somehow. Almost like it wasn’t supposed to be rewatched. So I put it in black and white, add some Lauren Daigle over the original audio, and it feels better. 

I suppose it’s good that the primary emotions I recall from the birth are positive, peaceful and spiritual. This way I’ll be more inclined to go through the pain again for another baby. 

Motherhood 

I don’t know how more women don’t talk about pregnancy and birth more often. I can’t stop thinking about it. Whenever I look at my daughter, I am reminded of where she was and how she got here. When I watch movies now, I am fixated that every actor was brought to this earth by a brave and powerful woman. When I’m roaming the isles of Walmart, I can’t stop myself from wondering what the births were like for everyone who passes me. I now have a better understanding of the deep level of protection and love my parents feel for me and siblings. How could I ever let anything bad happen to my baby? I want to keep her from all harm. I want to hold her in my arms through every bout of pain or discomfort. 

There is something so beautiful and natural about being her mother. Being the one people hand her back to when she cries, being the one to provide nourishment to her body, and being the one to instinctively know what she needs. It’s like it’s finally my turn. I’ve held so many babies in my life and wondered what it would be like to look into the eyes of my own. Two eyes that my body created. Two eyes that will be with me the rest of my life. And it’s more than I could have hoped for. 

My baby Eleanor smiled intentionally for the first time last week. I
don’t know if I can remember the exact first time, but now I crave every time she reciprocates my smile with one of her own. Seeing Dallin make up songs and distort his face into whatever gets a smile out of her is very endearing. He is meant to be a father. Tonight we sat on the couch skipping through The Greatest Showman—just to listen to our favorite songs—while holding baby Nora and watching smile after smile light up her face. I was holding back tears as I felt a core memory being etched into my mind. She is the sweetest girl, and I can’t wait to watch her personality unfold. I want to hear her voice. I want to see her first steps. I want to memorize every detail of her tiny infant figure and never forget it. 

Postpartum Healing

Postpartum has honestly been nothing what I expected. It was also the aspect I felt most unprepared for. I am 6 weeks postpartum, and feeling amazing! What was most unexpected was how short of a period I was in discomfort for after birth, but how intense the pain was for those few days. I thought I was going to be out for the count, bed ridden, for at least two weeks after having her. And while I could barely walk more than a couple dozen feet before getting lightheaded, I definitely didn’t feel like I needed to be laying in bed all day. Except for the fist four days. Those were rough. 

I was extremely lightheaded after giving birth, so much so that I fainted the first time I tried to stand up. It wasn’t until like 36 hours after birth that I was able to tolerate a shower, and a solid 72 hours before I was confident walking around on my own. I’m not sure how anyone walks out of the hospital after giving birth— I was practically lifted into the car!

Another shocking thing was the insane puffiness and swelling that occurred down below. Unrecognizable— that’s all I’ll say. Thankfully, with the ice packs and a few days, things began looking a little more normal. 

The hardest part of postpartum healing for me has been the pressure and stitch pain that lingered for many weeks in my pelvic area. I took pain meds religiously for the first week, then began weaning off of them, and definitely felt that pain more often. Pretty much in any position besides laying down, I was feeling a strong weight between my legs, and stinging where my stitches were. This is what made walking so hard, and sometimes even 6 weeks pp, if I walk too much, the pressure returns.

The final unexpected part of postpartum was the pattern of bleeding I experienced. Of course this is different for every woman, but I was prepared for heavy bleeding the entire six weeks. The amount of diapers and pads I bought for myself are a testament to this! But after the initial couple days in the hospital and the heavy bleeding that accompanied the extremely painful belly massages, my bleeding was fairly light the rest of the week. By week three, I was just spotting and wearing a pantiliner, and even that fizzled off by week four. I feel very grateful for the manageable blood loss I experienced!

Okay one last thing that I was not prepared for. The sweatiness and stinky-ness. I have never been a very sweaty or B.O.-ridden gal. But become a mother? My scent is off the charts. Those first couple weeks I was waking up drenched in my own sweat, and had to check my temperature to make sure I didn’t have a fever. Thankfully, the sweatiness has died down, but I still feel like Eleanor can smell my pheromones from a mile away.

Breastfeeding

I’m embarrassed to say how many times throughout my pregnancy I asked my OB how sure he was that my breasts would produce milk, that even my prepubescent breasts that hadn’t gro
wn anymore since the ninth grade, would be able to breastfeed my future babies. I was skeptical. But come four days postpartum, I am awoken to two rock-hard lumps on my chest! My body came through for my baby. Thank you body. Since then, I have had a pretty consistent milk supply that makes just enough for Nora, with a few extra ounces that I pump for future bottle uses.  

Whoever says that breastfeeding comes naturally for mom and baby is lying. It was a major learning curve for both of us. Positioning, timing, latching, the whole nine yards. Confusing, frustrating and very unknown. Pretty much until just last week, breastfeeding was like this major production: all my clothes are off, all my baby’s clothes are off, pillows are propping everything up, and my attention is 100% on the task at hand. How ladies breastfeed discreetly in public was beyond me. But we’re getting the hang of it, and building confidence. 

Random Moments

One moment that I shall always remember occurred on our weekend trip to Salt Lake City for our two year wedding anniversary. I had bought us tickets to go see an IMAX movie about paleontology and dinosaurs, and we arrived to the planetarium for the showing a solid 45 minutes early. We planned to leisurely eat our pastries from Eva’s Bakery, I would feed Nora, we’d change her, then head into the theatre to get good seats. With ten minutes left on the clock, I prepared for a quick diaper change. I’ve mastered the on-the-lap changes, so this was nothing new for me. I did a quick belly massage and few bicycle kicks to get any gas out, then prepared the new diaper and a couple wipes. I’m not really sure how to describe the next sequence of events to accurately portray the chaos that ensued, but basically she just starting pooping and peeing and throwing up multiple times all over. While her diaper was open. Her poop is still very liquidly, so it dripped down her legs onto her cute outfit, onto my pants, and the fresh diaper stationed underneath the old one. Her pee rode up her belly and down her back, and her spit up seeped into her hair and pooled behind her ear. We sat there for a solid two minutes in awe-struck silence as we watched this tiny being squirt out every bodily fluid possible. Both diapers, over thirty wipes (I’m not exaggerating), and her cute outfit went straight into our pastry box and directly to the garbage. We enjoyed a very peaceful baby and intriguing IMAX movie afterward!

Every girl on my mom’s side of the family sports a thin sterling silver cuff bracelet that we got as babies. They’ve all been bought from this same guy who makes them, and my mom even pre-bought bracelets for my younger brother’s future wives so they can join the club. That’s how serious we are about this. I knew I wanted to get one for Eleanor, so we reached out to the man to see if he still made them, unfortunately he is out of commission. So I went on a rampage Etsy hunt until I found one matching mine, in the infant size. Putting that little silver bracelet on my daughter’s teeny tiny wrists was such a special moment for me. Every photo of me my entire life includes this silver cuff, and now my own baby has one too. The first great grand daughter! I don’t know, it was just a cute moment. 

Having my own baby is pretty much nothing like babysitting, I’m not sure there is anything that could have prepared me for this experience. Besides the given sleep schedules, breastfeeding, and general health questions, there is this constant looming sense of worry about her. If I let myself fall into it too deep, it’s hard to get out. I have chosen to (for the most part) be a CHILL mom. What this look like right now? I try to not stress too much about certain nap schedules, how long she sleeps at night, or which boob I fed on last. I’m trying to limit my panic Google searches, and lean into the mother’s intuition I know I have. There is always something more to worry about, but life is much more pleasant if you choose to just take it day by day.