I started writing these posts around the time he was about 2.5 months old. My goal has always been to be honest about life and love and all the things. Reminiscing on this past year has me in all of my feelings. Aus and I have been through so much…and this is only the beginning.
Like I said, when I started writing this post he was a little over two months old and I was on the verge of losing my house. That in and of itself is a testimony. I can’t even begin to detail all the ways God kept us covered through help from our extended family in the beginning months of Austin’s life. My parents, sister & brother-in-law, grandmother, aunts & uncles, and cousins all helped us in ways that I will never forget. Some of them I’ve been able to pay back; some of them refuse to accept my money. Either way, they saved us. They helped keep a roof over our heads and some of them didn’t even know it.
Month One. This month was all about survival. I was so excited to be a new mom, but I was also really scared. I had spent the last 40 weeks (and 1 day) caring for this life growing inside of my body, and now I was responsible for his life outside of my body. I only spent one full night in the hospital and I went home. I wanted to sleep in my own bed and I was coming down with a cold, so I wanted to be home. That first month was filled with no sleep and a dehydrated baby. I cried a lot in month one. Mainly because I felt so defeated. I had no help, except for the three glorious days that my mom spent with me. Those three days were like heaven on earth. I got to take real showers – the ones where you actually get to stand there and contemplate life for a little while you symbolically wash your worries away. I got to take naps. She cleaned my entire house and cleaned up my yard. She even got Austin’s dad to come over and help her do a lot of the outside work. She cooked dinner. She helped me not lose my mind over how immensely painful breastfeeding was in the beginning. But – I couldn’t keep my mama away from my dad forever, so after those three days she went home.
I got very little sleep which was to be expected. I tried the whole “sleep when the baby sleeps” thing but the reality is that that is not possible, especially as a single mom. When the baby was sleeping was when I had to get stuff done around my house. And even then, I wasn’t always able to do what I needed to do. Austin lost a little too much weight after coming home and so I was on the a mission to feed every 2-3 hours, no exceptions. I remember the night I broke down and gave him formula for the first time – I was devastated. It’s amazing how societal pressures warp our minds into believing certain things. I thought I was a failure by giving my kid this formula. I thought I was a failure for not being able to figure out why he was still crying after all my efforts. But lo and behold – I gave him the enfamil and he was out like a light…and then I bawled crying. That whole time my kid was hungry and I was so concerned with my expectations of breastfeeding and what all it entailed that I didn’t even think that maybe I just wasn’t making enough milk. He had lost too much weight and was starting to make less wet diapers, so I got a plan in place with our pediatric NP. I pumped and measured what he was taking in to see if I was making what he seemed to need and it turned out that I wasn’t. So I still put him to the breast when I was supposed to, but we also started supplementing because my kid was hungry.
Month one was just a lot. We did a lot of weight checks in that first month. It was a totally new world for me. My experience with children as a nurse was and still is completely nonexistent. I am not a pediatric nurse, nor do I ever aspire to be. Shout out to the ones who do it and shout out to our office for helping me to not lose my mind in that first month. Needless to say, we conquered month one and moved on to the next…