One Year: Reflection

 

 

 

With Conner’s first birthday approaching, I can’t help but think about how much my life has changed. I wanted to reflect back on our first year with Conner!  **Here is different pieces of other mom blog questionaires that I put together **

Here is what my Google search engine looked like this last year:

· What is Pyloric Stenosis?

· When to file bankruptcy if you owe thousands in medical bills

· What does this color poop mean? 

· Is my baby drinking too much formula? it's two 8 oz bottles ea. night

· Is it normal for a baby to slam their head into things & than laugh

· Do babies walk at 9 months?

· How to make your child stop laughing when you're trying to tell them" no" 

To elaborate a bit: If you didn’t know, Conner had Pyloric Stenosis when he was born and had to have surgery to fix it. He actually was supposed to be in the hospital for way longer than he was because they weren’t sure what else was wrong, but a nurse forgot to tape his feeding tube so he pulled it out all by himself. They were so confused because he immediately got better and was able to come home only a few days later. I don’t want to go too much into details because it’s super personal, but yes we do owe tens of thousands of dollars in medical bills. As you can imagine, a baby in the NICU for 26 days and surgery was not cheap without having insurance. I’ll be paying it off for the rest of my life, but my baby is worth way more than they could ever charge me so I’ll never stress too much about that. IT IS what IT IS, am I right mamas?

 Top 5 things that our family adopted within the first year:

1. BABY-DUTY: In our house, Baby duty is when one parent is off for the night, and the other is in charge of any of the babes needs when he is asleep. Jeff might kill me for admitting this, (love you babe!), but his baby duty shifts were slackin’ hard core in the beginning. He got like four days off in a row only because I wouldn’t want to deal with the sassy-ness (if that’s a word…) that he'd unconsciously do if he had to wake up. Looking back, it was really funny because we’d even “sleep-argue “instead of “sleep talk” and barely remember a thing come morning. All of this insanity came from the lack of sleep we both had! I’d say by about 5 months in, Conner was officially a daddy’s boy and was sleeping like one too. 

2. Daddy Day-Care: Despite all the critics, I loved having Jeff be a stay at home daddy. He ended up staying at home with Conner for about four months, and I absolutely loved it. It was awesome to have our son with us, at home, during important times in his life instead of taking him to the baby sitter. If it wasn’t for the financial aspect, we would have stuck this out. Jeff got into some really cute routines with Conner like making gourmet breakfasts with him and teaching him the coolest things.

 

3. Chicken Noodle Soup: Homemade chicken noodle soup is my go-to meal. Jeff makes it for me every time I’m sick, but this was also the first meal Conner ate besides baby food and this is the meal he started his famous “MMMMM’s” with. If you haven’t met him in person, this little boy somehow makes the loudest MMMM to signal something is yummy or he’s hungry. Jeff and I have always been coming up with the perfect combination of meals he had growing up vs meals I had growing up and we were excited to start the tradition of meals we make as a family with chicken noodle soup being the first!

 

4. Family First, everything else second: People lectured me non-stop when I told them the philosophy I started implementing in my life, but it was something that I really wanted to do. I didn’t want to party at all the first year Conner was born for a few reasons 1) I don’t like the idea of him having an emergency and needing me, and me not being able to form a proper sentence and reason 2) Having a hangover and waking up to play with a baby is NOT A COMBINATION YOU EVER WANT TO HAVE! My family comes first and I cut out a lot of things I would’ve loved to do, but shouldn’t do for my baby-boo

 

5. Long, Long, Long Walks! We don't just take little strolls, but we walk miles at a time. I'm not sure why and I'm not sure how it started, but we do and I think all three of us love it equally as much. Sometimes Jeff will suggest a walk after a bad day at work and that's where I am learning how to long board. Seriously don't laugh, but by learning to longboard I mean, I hold onto his shoulder as he pushes the stroller and my board just moves as I stand on it. It's pretty awesome. 

 

Top 5 things nobody warned me about:

1.      Nobody warned me about how hard it is to maintain friendships after motherhood. I have come to the conclusion that you know you are a pretty bad ass mom when you can count the number of friends you’ve been able to keep on one hand.

2.      Having your house clean and having your house clutter-free is two totally different things. I always want my house clean! Clean from dirt, bugs, trash, dust etc…, but expecting my house to be clutter-free is a laugh-out-loud joke. In fact, I like it better a little bit unorganized. I somehow know where everything is. For example: My hairbrush! I know every morning that I can count on it being on the kitchen floor.
(Thank you Conner!)

3.      Sleep will never be on your side and the whole idea of “sleeping when your baby sleeps” was never beneficial for me. I just learned to function on less amount of sleep than everyone else and chose the times that Conner was sleeping to have some “me” time and paint my nails or take a shower. PLUS! Sleep is not a bank account. You don’t get to stock up on it one day and expect it to roll-over onto tomorrow. The more sleep you get, the more your SOL. Sorry Future Moms out there, but this is the truth I’m speaking.

4  .      My Body is not skinny, it’s not toned, but it’s not ugly and it’s not the end of the world. All I ever heard was “You will have your body back after the baby”, and although It is a work in progress… I’ve learned that it’s not a priority. Your inner beauty is nowhere near as important as outside beauty and you learn that the first day that baby pops out of you.

    5.      This is still a learning lesson for Jeff and I, but learning to put us first and do what is right for OUR FAMILY over what our moms/dads/grandmas/aunts/uncles/sisters etc. want us to do or advise us to do has been hard. If I had a dollar for every time I’d heard “He is hungry; he isn’t feeling good; he doesn’t like that; he shouldn’t have that (and the list goes on and on and on…and on…and on… and……. You get it right?) I’d be rich.

 

My baby grew up before our eyes.  I hear alot of people say "where has the time gone?" and although I know it's just a expression, I tried really hard to make sure I wasn't sitting here at his first birthday and feeling like I missed everything; like somehow the time just flew right before me. I changed my whole life around for this little guy and so did his daddy. Everyday we soaked in all the love we could and I feel like we did a pretty good living in the moment. I can sit here and say I don't think time has flown by or gone too fast, it's exactly where we should be.