Parenting Through a Year of COVID

 It's been a year. 

I feel like this whole post could be just that one sentence, for all of us. 

A year ago, everything felt so uncertain. It felt like each of our next steps were like walking on a lake of thin ice, unsure where we would fall through. The world felt like it was falling apart faster than we could keep up, as we struggled to cling on to our sense of normalcy. A year ago, a business trip I was supposed to go on to Orlando, FL was cancelled at the last minute and I found myself unexpectedly staying at home instead. My job was uncertain in terms of if we would all start working from home or not. All of the stores, restaurants, everything began closing. We became worried as a family with big words like Quarantine being tossed around whenever, when was this supposed to start? We went to the warehouse clubs and bought a lot of food in bulk in these fears that we might be home to cook for a long, long time. What if society literally collapsed and this was the end of the world? Would we have to survive on what we have in this house right now? How will we survive? These crazy thoughts raced through our minds as I'm sure they did among millions of others around the world. But, what we thought was certain at the time was what everyone was saying would be a mandatory 2 week quarantine. Thats it. Lets just all stay at home for 2 weeks and then the world will be fixed. And here we are, one year later. Still quarantining...mostly. 

But thats not what this blog is about. You all already know that part, we've all lived it. What's unique about COVID is that we all have it in common. All countries, all continents, all races, all ethnicities, celebrities, citizens, non-citizens, doesn't matter. We are all affected in some way, no one is immune. COVID has leveled the playing field. In some areas more so than others. 

This post however is about how COVID has shaped our past year in my household with regards to parenting. Let's take another flashback to about Fall 2019- My husband and I were ready to start trying for a second child. We weren't actively tracking or anything, just casually trying. I went on a women's conference in January and that inspired me to start taking better care of my body after. I joined BeachBody in February 2020 and began losing weight. March 2020 rolls around, and now we're home more than we were before, I had more time to exercise and well, more time to try for a baby. We get a lot of jokes that this baby was a "Quarantinee baby" and maybe he is, but we also were actually trying to get pregnant prior. In fact, we decided together that if this cycle weren't successful that we would take a break because of how uncertain the world was, our financials, etc. But, come May 8th exactly, we found out that we had conceived around March 24th. Baby #2! 

However COVID had some serious plans on how this pregnancy was going to go, which was A LOT different from my first pregnancy. When I found out I was pregnant in May, there was not a single cell in my body that thought the pandemic would still be going on when I was due with the baby in January 2021. I didn't even think it was going to last into the SUMMER. But we took it one day at a time, with the rest of the world. And days became weeks, weeks became months. I began to realize as I entered into my second and third trimesters spent in quarantine, that literally none of my coworkers-not one- had even seen me pregnant. Only 3 friends had seen me pregnant, and very very few family members. Compared to my first pregnancy where coworkers would oodle over how big I was getting, family would want to feel baby kick, etc- this felt so much different. It barely even felt real. As I approached the end of my pregnancy in December 2020, I couldn't believe that I had basically had an entire pregnancy in quarantine. What did this mean for my delivery? I had previously felt sympathy for my friends who had delivered Spring- Summer 2020 delivering in COVID, and now here we were too. I couldn't believe it. 

The delivery was a lot different- I was only allowed to have my husband in the room the entire time, and he wasn't allowed to leave, even for food or to go to the car. We had to call security even to make an exception because our basement had a flood on Christmas Eve night and husband had to leave and come back to take us home Christmas Day. Crazy!! I also never thought I would be able to deliver a baby while wearing a mask- in fact I was dreading it- but when it came time to push, I barely even remember having the mask on. That was literally the least of my concerns! 

I'd say post partum has been one of the biggest differences in the 2 pregnancies thanks to COVID. With my first, friends and family were allowed to visit the hospital, and lots of friends and family came to visit us at home too once Abby was home. This time, only his grandparents and uncle had met him for pretty much his entire first two months of life. We don't know how much longer this will last, not being able to see family-- and part of me fears that no one will get to know my son until he's able to walk into the next family party. Everyone will miss these baby days and that is so sad. I try and compensate by taking lots of pictures and videos for my family to watch. 

 It also is so crazy that the last family gatherings we really had were for Christmas 2019. That means that my daughter Abby was *barely* even walking, and only saying a FEW words. Now she's practically a little adult and having full conversations! It is sad to me that our closest family and friends haven't been able to see her go through those exciting stages. It is sad that at the next family party one day, she will likely be shy in front of everyone because she won't remember them. I worry too how much COVID has changed who my daughter will become one day, and what she must think of the world, and how this has changed her permanently. In a world without COVID, she would have at least met other children at mommy & me classes, storytime sessions at the mall & library, music classes, etc., but for the past year, like so many other children, she's pretty much been raised with just my husband and I and her grandparents...and TV. In the time where it is so important to start socializing is when we were forced to completely stop. Now we are just starting to kind of come out of quarantine and she is very shy. We are doing a toddler gymnastics class and take her to the park on nice days, and when other children try and talk to her she kind of just stares at them or walks away. The only saving grace here is that most other kids her age will have been in the exact same boat. But what does that mean for her narrow generation of these kids from age 0-5 right now that are missing out on that core social development? How will that shape who they become in their personalities? Will they grow up thinking virtual school is normal? That talking to family on screens is normal? That its normal to stay in our house all the time? That its completely normal to wear masks? I often wonder when it is time to take our masks off, will our young children that have grown accustomed to it suddenly feel naked? Vulnerable? 

If you had told me last year in March that this was going to last until March 2021, I would never have believed you. And yet now who knows how much longer we have ahead of us even. Another year? Two? Three? I never thought our world could be so crippled by a virus, and I even come from healthcare. If you had described all this to me prior to last March, I woulda said you have a good idea for a plot to a movie. It's crazy how a lot of us mourn "the last fun thing" we did before we unexpectedly had to quarantine. Brian and I had a fun date night for Valentines 2020 before the shutdown. We also got to go to Florida in January 2020 and are so incredibly lucky and happy we did- despite not really having the finances for it- it was well worth it because that was our last vacation for a long, long time. It also feels so weird to me now to have a memory of being in an arena with thousands of other women. Anyone else think its weird seeing groups of people together in old TV shows or movies, commercials? 

COVID has also changed our resilience as parents, in good and bad ways... In good ways, its made us stronger in terms of staying home with our kids more, learning more about our kids, overcoming new challenges and learning from them, but also in bad ways. By that I mean that when the world returns to normal, frankly, we're going to be exhausted. Right now, after laying low and quarantining for a year, the thought of having jam packed weekends of birthdays, family parties, friends, and a week full of going to the office, restaurants, activities....sounds exhausting. Especially this time around with two children. When we had Abby we didn't know any different. Of course we were going to do all those things and bring her with us, thats what you do as people in this society. But frankly, with a newborn, its been kind of nice just staying home with him. Not having that pressure to go out and join the world is really been nice, as much as it is lonely. It's definitely a two-edged sword. 

Who knows what is in store for us as a family and for the world in the near future. After the year we all had in 2020, I think we've all become resistant to crazy and we are all just rolling with the punches. What life brings it will bring. If this last another year then so be it. 

I hope all of you are staying safe and healthy. I can't wait to start seeing you all again soon. 

Love, 

The New Motherboard. 

The Piece You Made With Me

Almost exactly a year ago to this day, I began a new hobby. Prior to that, when making a Christmas list for Christmas 2017, I thought, hey cross stitching looks fun, (and much to my wrong thinking, looks easy). So I picked out a completely random set on Amazon and put it on my list. My husband got me the kit for that Christmas. Right around this time exactly, last January, I was nauseous a lot in the early stages of the pregnancy and I was looking for something to keep my mind off it, especially at nights after work. So I got out the kit and started one night. I had no idea what I was doing and quickly learned this was not going to be easy. I read the directions, and I shook my head and thought to myself, no way. I can’t figure this out. I put the directions back in the kit and resumed watching tv, giving up without even starting. I watched tv for about 5 more minutes, while I stared at the kit next to me on the couch. I picked up the kit again and thought, what the hell? I can at least try. So I got the kit back out, the thread, directions, etc. I still didn’t really know what I was doing. There were color codes for the thread and little numbers next to it like (1), (2), (3), etc., all the way up to 6. What did these mean?? I, of course, ignored it. I figured out the color code and pattern and I began to try and put the thread in the needle. Well, THAT took about 30 minutes my first time, and a lot of frustration (ALMOST leading to the whole thing going back in the kit). I started following the pattern and got about 20 or so stitches done....when the needle literally broke in half. That was it. No more. I was done. This was stupid and stupid to ask for, stupid to try, and it was all stupid. I was giving up. I put it all away again and tossed it aside.

The next night, I looked at the kit again and thought, what did I do wrong? I took it back out and looked at the directions again and saw it...(you professional cross stitchers out there will laugh at this, but remember, I had never done this), but I saw it! Those NUMBERS (1), (2), etc, were telling me how many individual threads were supposed to be used to indicate the thickness of the thread color! Dope me the first time put all six strands in which was way too thick! No wonder it was hard to thread my first time and the needle broke. So now, determined to succeed, I flipped the piece over and started again all over at the other corner and was on my way.

Over the next few nights, I began doing anywhere between 30-60 minutes every single night on this piece. And I made A LOT of mistakes, and still almost thought about giving up many times. It was humbling to work so hard and for so long to feel like I was making so little progress in comparison to the whole picture. But it also occurred to me that the struggles I was facing in the piece, had a strange metaphor to what was going on in my life at the time. I had just recently been asked to cover someone else’s job while they were on maternity leave, a job not only I had never done before, knew very little about, did not have the correct resources/clearances to do said job, had no training to do job, no preparation, and we had just gone live with a software that this job was right in the middle of it all. Oh, and I was in my own first trimester with Abby and nauseous, VERY nauseous, every single day. Needless to say, life was kind of a stressful mess! But as I sat there at night working on my piece, I felt that even though it felt I was making little progress in comparison to the entire huge piece that seemed like it would never get done, I could get one stitch done at a time. If I could make one stitch, that was one more stitch that I had the day prior and I would slowly make progress. And it hit me, that’s all I could do at my job to stay sane. If I could at least show up and get a little done each day, without stressing myself out about the "entire piece" then I could manage that. If I could figure out how to correct my mistakes and set backs in my cross stitch, then I could figure out how to move past challenges and set backs in my job, too. The stitch also provided a way for me to spend time at night not thinking about work and just relaxing throughout the pregnancy.

I continued on, every night, and my job began to let up. The person came back from leave and I finished that "duty", but then got asked to cover someone else’s maternity leave that had a similar job. Luckily I at least knew more about that persons job role and had prior experience in it, so I was a lot less stressed. I began to feel that as Abby was growing bigger in the womb, she was connected to the cross stitch as they began to grow together. We sat for hours on weeknights and weekends together, feeling her kick and getting through the nausea, migraines, etc, together, as we worked on the piece. It felt so good to see progress as I was starting to make out actual shapes, i.e. I made a tree! A fence! A shed! It’s actually looks like something! Each stitch I had worked so hard for, it was beginning to look like something!

But of course there were set backs. Not only hundreds of mistakes (I am still SO confused as to how I could possibly so diligently follow the pattern and yet was constantly running into errors!) but then there was the BIG set back. I was about to go on a work trip. I was packing for the trip and wanted to bring my cross stitch as something to do when I was alone in the hotel room at night, probably nauseous. I put it INSIDE my suitcase on top of all my stuff, I closed the lid but I hadn’t zippered the suitcase yet as I intended to still put a few last minute things in. I had a late day flight and that morning decided to take a nap before having to go to the airport. Well, right as I went in to go collect my suitcase before final preparations to leave for the airport, there my piece was, on the floor, shredded!!! My DOG, my sweet angel but PSYCHO dog who thinks she is a GOAT with how attracted to paper she is, had completely torn up my pattern. I sat down in tears after yelling at the dog and picked up my piece, which I thought was a complete goner. LUCKILY she SOMEHOW must not have been able to eat the piece itself and was just interested in the paper pattern sheet, which was now officially in shreds! So I still had my piece. I ordered a whole new kit on Amazon so that I could get a new pattern sheet. I had to sit there and cross out all the stitches I had already done and probably lost a good 2 weeks on the process. But, like other challenges, we persevered.

Then a complete new development happened. I was regularly posting updates on my piece on facebook, and my aunt had noticed something very peculiar. She picked up that the piece actually was a picture of a place. It was the Mabry mill along the Blue Ridge parkway in Virginia. All this time I thought it was just a pretty picture. Then for my aunt to recognize it and it was a real place!? What became even more goosebumpy, was that turns out, according to my Aunt and seconded by other family members, turns out the Mabry Mill on the Blue Ridge Parkway was one of my grandmothers FAVORITE places to visit when traveling. This really struck on a heartstring for me, as my grandmother had passed away 7 years ago. So to have completely randomly picked a cross stitch piece on Amazon, persevere through all the challenges and continue on, and then to realize it was a picture of my grandmothers favorite place? It felt like more than a coincidence. As I continued stitching every night, it felt like not only was I doing it with Abby in the womb, but also with my grandmother watching over my shoulder, too.

Here is the Mabry Mill in real life:

As we counted down the days to our due date, I tried desperately to finish before she came. I had this fear that once a new mom when she was born, I would never have time to do stitching ever again. I feared I had come so far, so close to finishing, only to let it sit unfinished for the next 20 years til I could pick it up again. I didn’t want to let myself down, Abby down, my grandmother down.
But, It was unrealistic. I couldn’t finish before she came. So she came! And yes, the first month or so of Abby being here, I didn’t touch it. For multiple reasons. I was too tired. I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to focus on it, I couldn’t focus on it. I didn’t want to get the whole thing out and start stitching only to have her cry and I would have to put the whole thing away again. I wouldn’t label it as post partum depression, but the first month or so post partum, the whole artistic side of me kind of felt shut down. Like mom-mode was so dominant during that time, the tiredness, it all took over and I couldn’t possibly think about doing anything related to art, or my stitch.

After a month or so, I still didn’t want to stitch. Like, I really didn’t want to. I resented it. I felt pressure now to do it, like getting a masters dissertation done after years of procrastination. Now it just felt like something I felt pressured to do, because it had meant so much to me before the birth. But deep inside me, way deep deep down, I knew the answer to it all was to try. I had to try to finish.
So, very similar to how I started back in January 2018, one stitch at a time, I resumed again just so, one stitch at a time. And it did something miraculous. One stitch at a time, each stitch started rebuilding that part of my brain, the artistic side, the me side. It started pulling me out of the post partum funk, reminding me of who I am and what I like to do, and that it was OKAY to work on fun things even with a baby. So on maternity leave, while she napped, I got about an hour or so each day to continue working on it. In December 2018 I FINALLY got it done!

And you know what? There are SOOOOO many mistakes. Like, so, so, so many. Probably over a hundred. And of course one mistake leads to others, naturally, as the pattern has to rework itself. It’s a miracle it turned out even looking like something at all. But, you know what else? To me, its another metaphor about it all. It felt like a metaphor for MY OWN SELF. The mistakes is what made it perfect, to me. It made it unique, technically it was like no other piece, even if they had the same pattern. It was it's own snow flake. And the fact that there were so many mistakes but still came out to be beautiful, gave me hope that in my life there are so many mistakes that have happened over the years but that is what makes me who I am today. And its all still so beautiful. Deep.


So I look at the finished piece today, framed and in my living room as a daily reminder that:
1. Life is all about getting one stitch done at a time.
2. Mistakes are what make life beautiful.
3. Each challenge might seem insurmountable but is indeed eventually possible to overcome in some way.
4. My grandmother is still always watching over me.
5. Art, any kind of art, can help pull a new mom back to herself. Art can do wonderful things for the brain!

I hope to get to visit the Mabry mill in person one day! Life is short. Life is fascinating. It is a small, weird strange world. And I love it.

This piece is for my grandmother. This piece is for Abby. This piece is for me. 

Thank you for reading.

Here is the final piece:

First Month of Baby Life

Welp! Its already been one month! Now first thing I'd like to mention is the fact that time, is confusing. I literally called BS on time this week as my husband and I argued over who was right. The argument was, does Abby turn one month old at 4 weeks (yesterday), or on September 22nd? (She was born August 22nd). Everyone except me votes August 22nd. Which is cool. All good. Except in my mind she technically IS a month old as of yesterday as she has lived four weeks. But we can all agree to disagree lol.

But anyway, one month down, and it's been great! SOOOO full of lessons learned which I can't wait to share with you all, and already so many wonderful memories.

Abby is very healthy and already interacts with us! We don't see the pediatrician again til the first week of October, but we weigh her on our scale at home and she is almost 10 pounds! And she's definitely longer but I'm not attempting to measure her. Changing her diaper and keeping her legs straight for longer than 2 seconds is already enough of a challenge! But I can tell as she is already outgrown some of her newborn sleep sacks as she is too tall now! Developmental wise she is trying really hard to turn on her side but isn't quite there yet. She gets her thighs going to turn but can't quite find the power to turn herself over yet. I give it to month 2 and she will get it. I want to say I think she's smiling at us and there has been one or two times so far that I really think she did smile socially. The rest are probably poop smiles but I will take them anyway! Abby also LOVES music. If she is crying, almost 9 times out of 10 we can get her to stop if we play some music. She especially loves 3 particular songs from the Broadway musical "Newsies". No joke. "Carrying the banner" almost makes her stop crying every single time. It started out as a joke because we saw the musical while I was pregnant and she was kicking SO MUCH during the songs that we joked that she must love it. And when she came out and was crying we tried playing it as a joke and....silence. So our kid loves music. And Newsies. I'll take it!

So first I will start out with the lessons we have so graciously learned since our first week. Again, some are in humor but some are totally serious and I hope they help other parents!

1. When going out, pack more than one pacifier! Ignorant me was all like, yeah this one pacifier should be fine. I even had a nice case for it like a rock star first time parent. That pacifier was on the floor in about 2 minutes. No more pacifier. Pack more pacifiers. Like, five.

2. Don't rely on pacifiers. I am exclusively breastfeeding, so they told us to wait 4 weeks to offer it to her. Well, 2.5 weeks in and I was pretty desperate. Especially at night when she was going through a phase where she just wanted the boob for comfort. I researched options for pacifiers that are okay for exclusively breast fed babies and found the Soothie Pacifier and one also made by our bottle company, Nanobebe. YES! So I got it and I kept it as my secret weapon. It gave me comfort for awhile thinking that oh yes, you wanna cry? Yeah keep crying because I have a secret weapon in my pocket, this almighty pacifier! I was so confident that when I had to use it, it would be this magical thing.  Nope. One night It got down to having to offer it (about 3 weeks), and low and behold....she kept it in for maybe 30 seconds. So I'm like oh here let me put it back in. Back out. Repeat 100 times. So turns out we don't have a pacifier kid. No secret weapon. When I put it in she literally looks at me like, Mom this is BS theres nothing coming out of here, who do you think you're kidding? Do I look dumb??  So lesson learned here? I don't know. I don't even know. I guess just don't rely on that as your back up secret weapon. She is up to maybe keeping it in for 5 minutes tops but often will spit it out and cry again, or fall asleep (yay!).

3. Baby WILL poop within 5-10 minutes after changing the diaper. It will happen. Multiple, multiple times. I just laugh at that point. One time I literally picked her up off the changing table and there was a very loud audible shart.  Please tell me other parents have had times where they go through 3 diapers in 10 minutes???

4. You will get every body fluid on you. Accept it. So many code browns, code yellows, code spit ups I have lost count. Each code brown we have I try and learn what went wrong and what I can do to avoid it next time (see #5). The worst code brown yet, I was changing her diaper and it was only pee! So I'm just humming along there like no big deal, and all the sudden the ground shook and this ginormous fart came out of her little bum, accompanied by liquid gold that literally just shot out. In just a second it was on my hand(s), the wipe container, the diaper bag, the wall, the FLOOR (I'm not joking!), and probably other things I haven't found yet. I literally stood there frozen like WTF just happened for about 5 seconds before I jumped into action. Its times like those you don't even know what to clean first! Do you clean the baby but then risk baby getting poop on again from the dirty changing table?? Or do you clean the walls and the FLOOR (still enamored by this) first? I haven't figured that answer out yet.

5. Preventing code browns/ Code brown clean up:
a. DID YOU KNOW that Onesies pull DOWN? Yes. It's true. Turns out those weird shoulder flaps aren't just meaningless decoration, they are meant to roll down the arm! Yes! So no more trying to roll a very poopy onesie all the way up the back and over the head! It rolls down right off the bum!
b. DID YOU KNOW that diapers are supposed to be turned inside out first to "exercise" the flaps that come in it to prevent leakage? The first 3 weeks of her life we just opened the diapers and put it on. Oh no. Thanks to youtube, I found that if you turn the diaper inside out and arch out all those flaps, then turn the diaper right side in again, place it under bum, you have a much higher success chance of it holding in all that liquid gold. It's amazing. The things they don't tell you in the $30 newborn care class we took.......geez.

6. We will never be on time again anywhere ever. Or at least it feels that way. Need to be somewhere at 6? Okay we should leave our house at 5:30 (time we used to leave). HAHA NOPE. More like Abby has a code yellow/code brown at 5:35 and needs to be fed and we end up leaving at 6. This has happened many, many times. So we are trying to adjust our "need to leave by" times to accommodate, but we still end up being late, a lot.

7. Gone are the days where you could just get out of the car and go into a store. It is now like expedition Everest. It is a journey. Now its park the car. Get out of car. Go to trunk and get stroller base, unfold stroller, go get baby in car seat, place car seat in stroller. Get diaper bag on shoulder. Walk into store with more equipment on you than if you were hiking up Mount Everest. Or skip the stroller and hold the car seat which is almost unrealistic. Turns out there is no way to easily hold a baby in a car seat. It's heavy as all h*ll and I feel like a walking zombie with trying to walk and not letting it hit any other objects, my legs or just holding it in my arms. I have a bruise on my arm from the first time I held it in my arm because I am a wimp.  Its just awkward no matter what. We now go to wegmans and have one cart for the car seat and one cart for the groceries. Like I said, its an expedition.

8. You suddenly reach a new level of tired where telepathy becomes a real thing with you and your spouse. Well, sort of. There has been so many times where we are both up in the middle of the night or in the early morning, and I am sitting in my chair breastfeeding and I'm staring at my husband thinking of all the things I want to say, I'm literally imagining myself saying them but I am too tired to open my mouth. So then later I think I said them and turns out I never did. I think also at times we are both so tired that we just stare at each other and have a conversation without saying anything... You will also reach a new level of tired and find yourself with severe mommy brain and messing simple things up and making mistakes (like trying to breast pump the air, I did that this morning), leaving random things in random places that they don't belong, forgetting to lock doors, close car doors, etc.

9. There will be days where you feel like a total rock star mom/parent and there will be days where every second you are like WTF IS GOING ON. The other day Abby and I had a great day, she took her naps like a champ, ate like a champ, we had a great day, I made dinner like a rock star while Abby slept in her swing and hubby came home and it was like a perfect family all happy and I was like YEAH THIS IS GREAT, PARENTING IS FUN!  And then, there are days like the other day where every move you attempt goes against you, baby is crying for no reason at all, you have every body fluid on you, its one of those days where they poop right after you change them, you are dropping everything (literally why do we drop everything when we are already having a bad day??), and it feels like Ashton Kutcher is going to pop out of your pantry and be like PUNK'd!, and you'd all have a great laugh. That same night we decided to go to the mall in a moment of weakness because we were determined to have cookie dough (craving).  Oh the road is closed we take to get to the mall? No worries, because, well, cookie dough. Lets find another way that takes us 20 extra minutes. Get to the mall and Abby is crying bloody murder because she's hungry. Feed baby in backseat of our car because, cookie dough. Get the stroller out and expedition ready in the rain because, cookie dough. Get inside the mall and bend down to put diaper bag under stroller and literally ALL THE MILK that I collected from my leaky breast and forgot about was now all over my shirt, my jeans and my FLIP FLOP. WHO KNEW you could get breast milk in your FLIP FLOP. Guys, it was literally SQUISHY. It was that moment I no longer felt like a rock star parent and I wanted to sit on the floor, in the mall and cry. But, I walked around the mall with a wet shirt, wet jeans and wet flip flops because well, cookie dough. Cravings, they don't stop when you are no longer pregnant!

10. Stranger negativity (remember how annoyed I got about it in my first post about how strangers feel the need to tell you how hard newborn hood will be when you are pregnant?) Oh yeah, it doesn't stop! I'm telling you, random people we see are like "Aw, cute baby! Just wait til they start walking". Or "ohh wait til the 6 week mark, they no longer sleep", or "wait til they start talking", or "these are the easy days", etc. Why do people feel the need to resort to negativity as a conversation starter? Compliment how cute the baby is and keep walking. Do you think new parents really need to hear that? I'm literally just taking it one day at a time I don't need to hear about what negative experiences may be in store for us.


Anyway, those are the 10 lessons of the month. Overall I can honestly say we have a good baby. There has been lots of learning experiences and challenging moments but overall little Abby is good to us. She is in a pattern now where she is sleeping approximately 12 am -6 am and we are very thankful. She is eating well and breastfeeding is going excellent. I am trying so hard to savor each and every moment with her this small and soak it all in. I love spending all day with her and the thought of going back to work kills me (in 6 weeks). My favorite moments with her are usually right after breastfeeding we snuggle. Or she likes to play what I call froggie time and we hold her and sit her up and bounce her and she loves that, usually we get a few smiles. The other night she made me laugh out loud, I was breastfeeding and in the quiet of the night she farted very loudly and we just made eye contact and both raised our eyebrows. I know it was likely just a reflex on her part but it was hilarious to me at 3 am.

As for my health, I mostly feel back to normal! We try and get out and walk with Abby in the carrier or the stroller and I am up to almost a 3 mile tolerance. So physically doing great. Mentally doing pretty good, too. Anxiety is still high at times as I fear that I am still going to miss something wrong with her or I will do something wrong, but I am trying to manage that. The hospital I delivered with offers a great support group for new moms that I went to and that helped a lot. It was myself and two other moms and we all had 3 week olds and could all relate and were having the same experiences. It helped validate a lot of my feelings and anxiety and showed me its okay to feel this way. For the first 3 weeks or so I was also concerned with myself that I no longer had any interest in doing any of my art. I am very artistic and love to paint, draw, cross stitch, whatever but since her birth I either was too tired, felt like I should be with Abby instead of doing art stuff, or I simply didn't want to do it, which was making me sad. Then one day I picked up my cross stitch piece which is almost done and even though I didn't want to, I forced myself to keep going and that sparked my light again thank goodness. Now I do it almost every day again during Abby's naps, and even got back to painting. Abby sits right next to me as I paint and we listen to music together. It's the best and for me, its a mental health lifesaver. Without my art now I would literally go crazy alone in this house just watching TV all day. No way!

Here are some of my favorite moments in pictures:

Post feeding smile/snuggles:

 Tummy time! Our dog LOVES her sister human and always wants to be a part of everything Abby does. I had Abby alone and then Daisy insisted on doing the same thing. They love each other and it was such a cute moment!

Painting with Abby! 

Thank you every one for reading!!! 

Love, the NewMotherboard <3 

The Adventures of Week One

Wow! Holy cow. Baby Abby is 9 days old and today marks one week since she has been home with us! That is insane. It's crazy to think she's only 9 days old but already it feels like I have known her forever. It's surreal at this point knowing less than two weeks ago she was still inside of me. Happy to report that we saw the pediatrician on Wednesday and she is growing right on par and she has surpassed her birth weight!That means we can let her sleep longer and go longer in between feedings! Good for us...not good for boobs lol.

Surviving week one has been interesting to say the least! I have a lot to share! Please know that these are just my findings with my own baby and that anything I say is not scientifically proven or researched, just my experiences! Also, I am not getting paid by any company to say I like their product.

The first thing I have come to realize is that parenting is a lot like starting a new job. I've had approximately 10 different roles/jobs throughout my years on earth and each one of them seemed like an impossible feat at the time. Even back to my days working at Shoprite(grocery), I remember being promoted to a cashier and learning the register and thinking that was going to be impossible. Soon enough it became something I loved to do! Looking back now, it's one of the easiest jobs I've ever had! But my point is, when you start a new job, everything is scary. Literally nothing makes sense and every little thing you need to learn or gain access to or figure out, and you have no idea who you can even ask for help. But slowly, little by little, at the end of each day at that job, you learned something new. You made lots of mistakes but now you know how you can avoid those mistakes again. Slowly things start making sense and you know more than you knew yesterday. Sure new challenges will come up but that's growth!! So to me, that's how parenting feels. Day one neither of us knew anything, it was like walking on thin ice around here- afraid to do anything wrong. And then little by little, trial and error, we figure things out. We know what not to do the next day. Sure there are set backs but we learn from them!

Here are some of the quick lessons we figured out that I'd like to share with any other new parents!

1) The Boppy? What. The. Heck. Is the point! We are exclusively breastfeeding and I have given the boppy MANY chances and have yet to find it helpful. I'm talking about the half-circle donut that is supposed to wrap around your stomach to aid in positioning the baby. It doesn't. Maybe I just have a weird shape but it doesn't work. Perhaps it may aid in bottle feeding, but for breast feeding, not for me! I always end up having to lift her up more from the boppy thus making it pointless for it to be there, and my arms are just as tired all the same! Literally the first few nights I would rest her head on a stack of diapers I could reach at arms length! In retrospect, lately I have also learned (see these small lessons?) that Boppy also makes a wedge product that works a lot better if I just rest the wedge on top of a blanket. Its a wedge I used throughout the pregnancy to rest my belly on as I slept so I wouldn't feel the weight of my belly dragging downward.

2) Have a burp cloth in as many reachable spots in your household possible. I mean it. I have used many other things (including my shirt) as stand in burp cloths because I forgot to bring one with me and there I am topless and she's on me and spitting up and no other options! My poor husband has fetched me so many cloths when we had moments in need!  Even though I have learned this lesson many times, I am still working on making this a reality, because burp cloths travel!!! I have about 3-4 favorite spots that I like to breastfeed and theres always something missing when I sit down to feed. It's a learning curve getting the hang of making sure I have everything before I breastfeed.

3) Speaking of breastfeeding, I have learned that you need at LEAST four hands to breastfeed correctly, especially in the beginning as you learn! One hand needs to be holding her. One hand needs to be available for grabbing things. One hand needs to be batting away her hands away from her mouth. And one hand needs to be making the "cheeseburger" effect with the boob so she can latch on correctly! It's quite the feat! Oh and maybe another hand in there to wipe excess milk off her face.

4) Sadly, so so so so sadly, we have learned that most baby products are positively useless. They market all of this crazy technology and we fell for a lot of it, buying the high tech swing that plays music, the bouncer that can play music and vibrate, the pack and play that can play music and other things I haven't even investigated, the bassinet that can do music and move the mobile, and it's honestly all just not needed. We literally haven't even put batteries in any of it yet. We still may, you never know, but babies really just need a place to sleep, a place to nap, a changing table, diapers, changing supplies, and food! Okay maybe a little more than that, but it's really all just basics. Plus a lot of the stuff they market to parents ends up not even being SAFE for children which is really terrifying (any product meant for the car or car seat, sleep products, etc). I must say though that the one piece of "high tech baby" equipment we all love so far is her swing. We haven't used it to its full extent yet, but it does plug in and it swings her for as long as we want, and she seems to love it. It's been a god send for some day time naps!

5) Buttons. Buttons on baby clothes should be outlawed. AGAINST THE LAW. WHAT is even the POINT. Like WHO DOES THAT. And they disguise these dreaded devil buttons on the CUTEST clothes and laugh at the profit they're making while parents are crying at 3 am doing 18 buttons for the 10th time in a row!! It's truly unreal. They make the BEST sleeper sacks that have ZIPPERS. I want to buy whoever had that brilliant idea a nice drink, as I'm sure most parents would. You still can't avoid all buttons usually, as onesies have buttons as do many day time clothes, but not having to button and rebutton overnight is truly the best. Team zipper alllllllll the way.

6) Socks. Oh, Socks. I had such high hopes. They are so cute, but we learned pretty quickly that there is no point in trying to make sure they stay together as matches. It seems like they haven't invented a sock that stays on a baby yet, so we find socks down all over the place. We call a "sock down" alert! And also, they make all these insane sock/slippers that are truly adorable but utterly pointless. You really just need solid color (small) snug socks that you won't be upset if you lose one. Or many. As I write this, she's sitting next to me, literally just sitting in a bouncer and has somehow lost a sock.

7) Don't spend too much energy picking the cutest outfit out for your little one because within a minute after putting them in, (buttons and all!), there could be a code spit up, code brown, code milk spill, or code yellow.... And other times we last a whole day with no codes! Its just a gamble and theres no use in getting attached to the cutest outfits! Take pictures of them in the outfit while you can if you love it that much!

8) Keep the old diaper under her til the very last minute and have your next one ready to go!!! We have already had quite a few oopsies with poop and pee on the changing mat! Still learning!

9) Pants. For some reason no one thinks to get pants for parents as gifts! Probably because they aren't cute, but man are they needed. A lot of times they come as outfits, but we have all these onesies and literally one pair  of pants to put over them. So first trip out to target already to buy baby pants lol. It's these random things no one tells you!

So those are the quick lessons we learned in week one.

As for bigger lessons, well we are still learning those as will we be for the rest of our lives. Like breastfeeding, sleeping schedules, etc.

As for breastfeeding, I truly love it. I never thought I would say those words however prior to birth or even the first three days of breast feeding. Prior to birth I had a lot of anxiety about it if I could do it or not. Then the first three days was literally torture. She wasn't latching on the best she could and my one side especially felt like daggers for 5 straight minutes as she fed. I am not lying when I said I had to do some lamaze breathing during feedings to get through the pain. But, magically, like literally in the blink of an eye, it became bearable about day 4. Of course within the first three days I panicked and bought like 5 breastfeeding products on amazon to help with the pain and by the time they arrived I haven't opened a single one. It transitioned from being torture, to being bearable, to being something I truly love to do! But if you are considering it or are unsure, here are my personal pros and cons of breastfeeding:

Con:
- As a mom you are literally tied to her 24/7.  They strongly advise not pumping and offering a bottle for at least a month so she gets used to nipple first. This means no escape trips out. This means daddy can't bond with her and feed her (yet). This means that I have to assist in every single time she is awake during the night and can't sleep through any. I literally can't leave her presence this first month in fear that she would need food and I can't be there for her. So that can be exhausting, indeed.
- Like I said, at first, it HURTS. But I took the pain as one for the team and knew that each pain was hopefully one step closer to success.
- There are rules that are hard to predict, the one that plagues me is coffee! I really don't drink a lot. During the pregnancy I had 12 oz a day, which is what the doctor allowed. Now that I am breastfeeding I have heard lots of different recommendations, but most say to wait at least an hour after consuming the caffeine to breastfeed. Its been really, really hard predicting when I will see a 60-90 minute break in feeding. Sometimes she goes 3.5 hours without eating and sometimes its 30-45 minutes. And two days in a row now I got it wrong and I had to watch her cry as we waited the last 15-30 minutes til I felt okay feeding her again. I know I think I am overthinking it, but still I just want to do right by her.
- The farts. Oh man....The farts. They come out of her like liquid gold. Truly. Its quiet and then all of the sudden we hear the loudest "shart" you have ever heard. We take turns on who has to get those diapers....lol.

And those are the only cons I have!

Pros:
- Although I said being the only one that can feed her is a con, its ALSO a Pro. With all of our visitors and everyone that loves her and wants to spend time with her, I would be lying if I said that my heart didn't do a little happy dance when she gets hungry and I can go to a separate room and just have mommy/daughter time as I feed her. For now, until we introduce the bottle, it's something only her and I share. Although it's exhausting, I wouldn't trade it for the entire world.
- I know exactly what my daughter is ingesting and don't have to worry which formula is best.
-Cheaper, obviously.
- A never ending supply on hand! No late night trips to target to get more!
- Don't have to figure out/deal with warming bottles at 3 am, just pop out the boob and ready to go!
- They say the longer you breastfeed, the higher IQ the child has and the less chance I have of getting breast cancer and ovarian cancer.
- Higher immunity for baby for life! Can't beat that!
- Mommy weight loss!! Yay! In 9 days I am 17 pounds down, nearly half of my baby weight gain. I haven't exercised one bit, not even my usual walks (at first was too sore then the northeast got a killer heat wave), and have eaten pretty much whatever I want. This rocks!


Honestly I love it. And I have been blessed by the boob gods that I happen to have an over-supply of milk! I haven't even opened my breast pump yet, and yet I have approximately 60 oz of milk sitting in my freezer already. At first in the first few days when I fed her I noticed the other boob leaking a lot. Soon it became unbearable as I would have to change my shirt each time and couldn't go out in public or see visitors because it was just nonstop leaking. Then I found a product (thanks to my friend Corey!) Called Milkies Milk savers. It is truly the best. There is no hand expressing or pumping involved, its a little plastic thing you wear in your bra and its only job is to collect leaked milk. And I have 60 oz just from that. Every feeding I do (approx 8-10 a day), I get 2-2.5 oz from the other breast. I am looking into donating at this time but am looking at all options as we tread soon into waters where we will see what supply she will need when I will have to go to work. At this point though we need to go get another freezer lol...

I also think watching her breastfeed is the cutest/funniest thing on the planet. Here are the stages of breastfeeding I notice:

- Tears in the degree of she thinks she may starve to death if she doesn't eat right now (Mommy gets the same way lol)
- She latches on as if she's attacking a gigantic cheeseburger and she is ravenous. You can literally see it in her eyes she is so happy she has food now. She grips on to the boob as if someone may take it.
- two minutes later she forgets what she came there for, mommy has to remind her.
- She remembers and is vigorously back at the boob.
- Falls asleep at the boob. I keep reminding her that classy ladies don't fall asleep at the bar but she doesn't listen lol.
- back and forth between remembering she's at the boob and sleep until finally she finishes off the tap and goes into milk drunk coma. Success.



Sleeping! Ahhhhhhh sleep. So my husband and I are lucky enough that he was able to get off for two weeks to be with me as we transition as new parents. We truly have no idea what we are doing but we came up with the idea of "shift parenting" (its probably in a book out there somewhere but whatev). So we do this shift parenting at night time, usually between the hours of 9pm- 9 am. One person goes to bed around 9 pm and the other parent stays up with her til approx 12-1 am. If I am sleeping first, then hubby brings me baby to eat and I go back to sleep til my "shift" starts. If hubby sleeps first then I just hang with her and feed on demand of course. Then the first duty parent comes to bed and Abby does too. The next parent is "on" and will handle any fussiness, diaper changes and coordinate the feedings until approximately 4-5 am. So if that person is me, hubby gets a nice block of sleep, and if that person is hubby, he handles all the others and brings her to me to eat in bed and supervises me so I don't fall asleep and then tucks her back in. This system has worked out really nicely for us as it allows at least one of us if not both to get at least a solid 3-4 hour chunk of sleep at a time. Things will change when hubby goes back to work soon, and we haven't quite solidified a plan for that yet but are working out some ideas. But I highly recommend this pattern to new parents! Especially if breastfeeding. Otherwise, sometimes we sleep when baby sleeps. But usually one parent is awake at all times during the day if the other needs a nap.

How are mommy and daddy doing otherwise? Pretty good. Considering. The hardest part that I can speak to as a mom, is the raging hormones flip flopping all over the place and the baby blues that come and go as a result. I love her more than words could ever say, but the mix of being sleep deprived and the monotonous routine of diaper change, feed, sleep, repeat, gets boring and exhausting. Being tied up in the house but also afraid to take trips out in fear of what could happen outside the house too. Yesterday, Day 8 I had my first random (totally totally random) bout of tears for literally no reason. Everything was fine but I was overtired and couldn't find a lunch option I liked lol. But I know it gets better. I still soak in all of these moments and cuddles and every moment I have with her because she is already growing so fast and I love every single second.


All in all, like I said these are just my experiences. Everything I say could be completely different for another family or another mom. Hopefully some of my tips however can help another family though!

With that I will leave you, thank you to those that took the time to read a super long post! Unless a unique topic pops into my head, I plan to write next on how Month #1 has gone! Looking forward to lots of lessons coming soon!

Love, the new Motherboard.

Your Entrance into the World

Hello!!!

So our little princess is finally HERE! She is absolutely precious. It's already been a very interesting journey!!

So I'd like to share my birth story, not only for documentation purposes to remember it but also to help anyone else heading into a same situation! LONG POST, sorry!

So we found out on Tuesday AM that our induction was scheduled for the following day at 7 am. Apparently there was a lapse in communication and we weren't notified sooner, so we had about 24 hours to prepare. This was fine anyway, as 24 hours notice was better than labor starting and rushing to the hospital anyway! We spent our last hours doing last minute housework, running errands, went out to dinner and dessert, etc. Unfortunately my anxiety about the impending day was getting the best of me and was manifesting itself as severe nausea and a bad headache so we didn't get to do much. I tried relaxing as much as possible and was almost successful til the hospital called around 9 pm and asked where we were! Apparently there was another lapse in communication between the office and the hospital in scheduling. So that ramped up my anxiety again. Luckily we were able to still wait until the next morning to go in, but I was a nervous wreck still. I think we both got maybe 4 hours of sleep, if that. We ate in the morning and off we went to the hospital to have a baby!!

So we check in to the hospital at 7 am. Our first 2-3 hours was spent doing paperwork, answering admission questions, being hooked up to monitors, etc. I think that maybe our princess waited so long to come because she wanted mommy to try out some new technology at the hospital! We were about 1 of 7 moms that got to help the hospital trial new fetal monitoring technology, called Novii. It is a bluetooth enabled wireless fetal monitoring system. There were little patches that stayed on me and a little battery pack ( so my stomach kept lighting up hehe), and I was allowed to freely go to the bathroom, walk around our room, go in hallway (up to 100 feet) and all still be monitored on the system. It was surreal being able to see my contractions happening in real time in the hallway as we watched on the hallway monitors! My doctor was excited about it as she was able to monitor me from the physician office as I labored and never had to be unhooked! The freedom during labor was definitely excellent and I am glad I got to trial it!

In the AM I was still 3 cm, what I had been for over a week at that point. I was having lots of contractions on the monitors but I wasn't feeling them. I joked (shouldn't have) that if contractions were this easy, we could have 10 kids. That was not a good idea to test the labor waters lol!

At 0945 we got started on what is called Pitocin, the synthetic version of the bodies natural hormone called Oxytocin which helps the uterus contract. I was nervous about starting the Pitocin as I had heard that it makes contractions so much worse. But, that's kind of the whole point of an induction so I had to do it! Well, come around 11 am or so the pitocin had been increased a few times already. I was having more and more contractions on the monitor but still wasn't feeling them. Again I thought, hah this is great. Maybe I have a rare condition where I don't feel labor contractions, lol. Hah. Hah.

Around 1 pm, they came in to check my cervix and I was still at 3cm. So it was time to artificially break my water. I was like okay cool, lets get this show on the road. Breaking the water didn't hurt at all, was just slightly uncomfortable in a weird way. But let me tell you, approximately not even 2 minutes after I was finished with that, first "real" contraction came. BOOM.

I was like, ooh okay that hurt, quite a bit, but I can do this. Lets get that deep breathing started and all that jazz. Second, third, fourth one came, all pretty close together. It was getting pretty apparent that I didn't have that rare condition where I didn't feel contractions!! They were now super painful. The nurse suggested I walk around, so we got up and walked around room. I was soon doubled over either looking out our window on the window sill, or doubled over a chair, or we also tried the "slow dance" move (not as effective). I know they have all these other tools like the birthing ball, jacuzzi, etc, but at the moment all I could even think about was surviving and staying close to that chair! They were coming so fast and so close together that I had about 60-90 seconds in between each one. So not much rest time to recoup from the last contraction before the next one started. My husband asked what it felt like and the best thing I can come up with is a Tasmanian devil being in my abdomen doing cartwheels, with knives. And squeezing everything I have in me, with those knives.

Let me just say my husband also tried to make me laugh, and he almost got punched lol. Maybe I would have if I could gather the strength in between contractions!!

The lamaze breathing we learned was maybe 30% helpful. It honestly hurt so much, most of my breathing was half tear crying coming out instead. But it did help to try. I think the best coping mechanism was scratching the chair I was white knuckled holding on to...poor chair. But it survived. For some reason causing the chair pain during my pain helped transfer some of that pain....maybe?

Anyway, around 2 pm or so I decided I can't do this, NOPE. Not cut out for this whole natural birth thing. No can do. Nope. So I requested the epidural. Unfortunately, like I knew was a risk, the anesthesiologist was tied up at the moment but would get there as soon as possible. Waiting that time period was likely the worst of it all, as my body had already given in knowing in relief was coming but it wasn't here yet.

He got in the room about 2:45 and I had to sit still on the side of the bed which may have been the hardest part of it all. I was practically hugging the nurse sitting in front of me as I had to lean forward to get the epidural. From what I had heard mixed opinions of epidurals, I was only expecting a pinch when the numbing needle went in. Nope. Not true for me! At one point he warned me that I would feel a "twinge" in my leg and not to worry. He should have warned me it may instead feel like my leg was being electrocuted, that was more accurate. I yelped in reaction and he had to pause for me to stay still, and that was super hard.

Eventually the epidural was done. I of course have never had one so I am testing all the waters, I am moving my toes and I'm like MY TOES, I STILL FEEL THOSE TOES IS IT WORKING?!

It was. Apparently my other inaccurate vision of epidurals was that it was like a lightswitch and the contractions just "turned off". Not true. I had about 5-6 more very painful contractions after the epidural and I then thought, maybe I have a rare condition where epidurals don't work for me. MY TOES AFTER ALL ARE STILL MOVING. But alas, each contraction started getting more manageable. My toes never lost feeling, but slowly I found I couldn't move my legs anymore.

After all that pain from the previous 2 hours, all I could literally do at that point was stare at the ceiling, not moving a single muscle as I was so thankful for the pain to be gone and I didn't want to move anything that could make it come back. I fell into a little bit of sleep for about 45 minutes. I woke up and it felt like I woke up in a whole new world. My husband was in the bathroom at the time so I was alone and it felt like Rick waking up in The Walking Dead from his coma. It was surreal. All I could do was look around the room, since my legs wouldn't enable me to even reposition or do anything else.

Around 4:00 pm or so the resident and nurse came in to see how far my cervix had progressed. I was expecting to be around 5-6 cm. I still anticipated having a baby overnight or the following morning after all. Well, she's all up in me and she's like, "So, we are at 9 cm. We're gonna have a baby soon!" and although I couldn't move my legs, at that point I felt like I couldn't move my voice box either. I was like NINE?!! NINE!?! NO WONDER I felt like I was about to keel over on the floor. I went 6 cm in 3 hours!!!

So we texted my mom who got there pretty soon after and also texted my husbands parents that baby could be here soon.

My husband, mom and I chilled in the room together as we observed the nurse calmly but also in a rush get together the delivery cart. All I could think was, supposedly I'm NINE cm and could have a baby very very soon, and it just felt surreal. Despite the 2 hours of severe pain, it all felt too easy and quick!

About 5:30 or so, my doctor arrived and checked my cervix. I was 9.5cm. She nonchalantly, which was weird, was like, "so do you want to try some pushing?"  and I am like, uh, yes? I don't know? You tell me!  But apparently it was my choice so I was like, okay let's do it.

I did a "practice push", but apparently I'm a very effective pusher because all the sudden everyone in the room was like baby is crowning!!! I'm like, what! I guess they weren't expecting that because all the sudden like 8 more people are in the room and my nurse is calling NICU that we are about to deliver. It was unreal.

I did two more pushing sessions and the babies head kept moving down. Then the room stress started changing as the doctors were watching the monitors and I wasn't allowed to push. They had me wear oxygen and I had to take deep breaths, but weren't telling me what was going on. The doctor said they are going to have to use the vacuum to get her out, and I'm like seriously? We've pushed like 3 times! She went over the risks of using a vacuum but I'm like, what choice do I have, just do it! (In retrospect, the doctor explained that the baby had a very short umbilical cord and when she started descending she was pulling on her cord and her heart rate was dropping, so she had to be rushed out). Scary!

So we were allowed to push then and I had a whole team cheerleading me on which was very helpful, as with the epidural it was really hard to tell if I was doing anything. All I could do which felt helpful was I tried to visualize the baby moving outward as I pushed.

And then, all of the sudden it felt like a slippery fish had left my body and I heard crying! They put her right on me and I was crying to! Thank the gods she was completely healthy right off the bat and we immediately started skin to skin, after my husband got to cut the cord. It was truly surreal seeing her for the first time, as my husband and mom and I are all crying and here I was, staring at the baby that was just inside of me!!


So that my friends was my labor! She passed all of her immediate tests with flying colors! We did skin to skin for 2 hours and let me just say, I LOVE doing skin to skin with her. She weighs 7 lbs 15oz and is 19 inches. The doctors worked on my "downstairs", delivering the placenta and repairing my tear.

Knowing my story, and how my body was going to react and how it would all go down, the only thing I would have changed was request the epidural right before they broke water or shortly after. Going from 3-9 cm in 3 hours was an impossible task for anyone and I was not expecting that. I think maybe, MAYBE, MAYBE, I could have attempted a natural birth if I had broken water naturally and slowly progressed into labor, but I can't say that for sure. This was just 0 to 100 in 2 seconds and I couldn't deal. But there is no shame in getting the epidural! Only side effect I had from it was as it wore off closer to 8-9pm, it felt like ants were crawling all over my back and abdomen and I was uncontrollably itchy. And also very nauseous. They had to move me to my recovery room but decided to wait as my blood pressure dropped a little, I lost all my color and had the extreme nausea. So I got extra fluids and rest and was able to move around 11.


So far baby, husband and I are doing well and we are home. Soon I will next write about how our first couple of days have been together, there have been LOTS of lessons already learned that I can't wait to share.

Life is such a blessing and it is surreal having one in my arms. She is already our entire world and she is worth every pain, every headache, every cramp, every day of waiting.


With Love,

The New Motherboard.