Archives for August 2023

Month Two. In month two, I think it finally hit me that I wasn’t going to get the help I was promised from Austin’s dad. My relationship with him has changed so much over the past year. We didn’t start out in a very good groove in my opinion; he might have a different perspective but this ain’t his blog so there’s that 🙃.

No – but seriously, I struggled a lot with my expectations of him as a father. I don’t think we were ever really on the same page regarding what being a father to Aus would look like. I’m blessed enough to have grown up in a two parent household with a very active father. My dad was always there. I do not know a life without my dad, and I’ve learned over the years to never EVER take that for granted. With that being said – I REALLY REALLY struggled with Austin’s dad not being in the picture as often as he had said he would be. In a way, I felt like it was my fault. I think during month two is where all of those feelings of failure started to creep their way back into my mind. In a world where you always want your kids to have it better than you did, I felt like I had already failed mine by not giving him that two parent household at the very least. To me, that was basic and I couldn’t even give him that. It still stings sometimes. I remember a friend of mine telling me that as a single mom you overcompensate a lot of the time because you feel like you have to make up for the fact that your child doesn’t have their father, especially when they’re old enough to realize it. I get that. I’d like to say that I won’t be that mom, but I honestly don’t know. We’re not together, and to be honest I never thought we would be. I had said from the very beginning that I never wanted to be a couple just because we were having a baby together. Even that – us not being together – has been the biggest blessing.

Regardless of us not being together, Aus was and still is happy and healthy and thriving. I’m sure he loves his dad and he seems to enjoy the time that he does get to spend with him even if it isn’t as much as I would like. But here’s the thing that I’ve had to remember this past year – it’s not about me & my expectations. It’s about Austin and his needs. I made a promise to myself that I would always try to foster Austin’s relationship with his dad regardless of how I feel about him. I made a silent vow that I would never say anything bad about his dad to him or around him because I just don’t think that’s right to do. I think it undermines the authority of the other parent when you trash talk them in front of the kid(s). I won’t lie to Aus about my struggles and having to do things on my own, but I won’t denigrate his father in the process. We’re both learning how to be parents, and all we have to go on is the way we were raised by our own parents. Like I said, my experience growing up was very different and it shows.

I was still very much sleep deprived, but happy nonetheless. Austin was always a good baby from the moment I brought him home. Month two brought us our first diaper blow out, some seriously funny faces when waking up, a 1 year old cousin & the announcement that he would be a big brother, and some very comical moments with Storm. Month two also came with the realization that I hadn’t taken my Lexapro since 2 weeks postpartum and for the first time in a really long time my anxiety felt like normal first-time mom anxiety & not the insanely over the top dramatic thoughts that I had experienced during pregnancy. Month two was also the month I returned to work.

I didn’t have any mom guilt about returning to work. At least, I don’t think I did. I was so happy to go back to work after having been unemployed for so long before even giving birth. It felt good to be back on the floor on my OG unit PRN, and I had a landed a full-time WFH job as well. I missed my kid a lot while I was working, especially on the days I had to do babies but I don’t think I felt the guilt. He’s usually with my parents while I’m working, so he’s safe and well taken care of. I wasn’t nervous. I wasn’t anxious. I was just happy to feel like a normal person again. I was happy to talk to someone and have them respond with real words and not cries, whines, or barking. Aus was 10 weeks when I went back to work, and I think that was one of the best decisions I ever made.

On to the next…

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…