For that reason, I'm going to come clean about a few things. It's the end of the year. Lukie is almost 6 months old. I'm reflecting, I guess.
First, though, a not-so-clean picture to get us started.
BABIES. IS GROSS.
7 Things I Learned In My First Six Months As a Parent
(in no particular order)
1. Nothing, and I mean NOTHING, prepared me for Mommyhood. It's okay now, but it took a long time for me to settle into it. And why wouldn't it? Everyone tells you your life is going to change. You don't realize, though, that they mean it's going to be hard to find a moment to go to the bathroom. Nobody is prepared for this, regardless of how many books they read or do not read. And the things you thought would work probably won't. Your schedule changes. Your home changes. Your relationship changes (more on that in a moment).
I had a friend ask me about 2 months into this journey whether I liked being a Mommy...and I had a hard time answering. THEN. The answer now is that, yes, I like being a Mommy. There are days it's super tough and I just want a moment to myself. But I wouldn't trade that messy little stinker for the world.
2. Your relationship changes SO much. I'm not going to say too much here because neither Pete nor I really talk much about our relationship...but the feeling of missing my husband CRUSHED me for months. Even when he was home, we weren't us anymore and I couldn't just hang out with him. I'm okay with it now. I've accepted the changes and learned that some of them are for the better. Others are just the natural order of things. And I wouldn't want to raise this kid with any other human on this planet.
3. Sometimes, you just have to let it go.
I am a type-A personality. I plan things. We have a meal calendar. We used to have a house-cleaning calendar. I get upset when the dishwasher is not loaded my way. (I probably don't even know the best way to do it. But I want it my way, anyway.) My date book is color-coded.
Yeah. I had to give up on a lot of type-A personality things before I went crazy. It's more important to take the 10 minutes the baby is asleep to eat dinner with my husband than it is to fold laundry.
4. Things that work for a little while won't work for long.
The best example of this is Lukas' sleep. Lukas is and always has been a crap-tacular sleeper. He was better when he first came home than he is now. A list of all the sleep arrangements we've used:
0-1 month: Lukie slept in a Pack'n'Play in our bedroom. I barely slept because I would wake up every time he grunted or groaned. We got one 8-hour stretch out of him, but it was usually 4 hours.
1-3 months: Lukie would fall asleep in the living room after being bounced for a little while. He would sleep in his buzzy seat, Daddy would sleep down in the living room, and I would go upstairs for 2-4 hours of uninterrupted sleep before Lukie would wake up and Pete would bring him upstairs to me. (Side note: the only quality time Pete and I got during this period was about half an hour after Lukie fell asleep when I would bake a few frozen cookies and we would have "cookie time.")
3-4 months: Lukie caught a cold and coughed. And coughed. And coughed. He slept in his buzzy seat, upright, next to the bed. We finally took him to the doctor and he got better, but continued to sleep upright for a little while longer. Things got ugly at 4 months old and he started waking up every two hours. He continued doing that until about a week ago.
5 months-present: We've finally settled on co-sleeping. I bought a water-proof mattress cover (you know, just in case), Pete attached a rail on my side of the bed, and Lukie sleeps between me and the edge of the mattress (Pete is a heavy sleeper and we were afraid he'd roll on Lukie if he slept between us). This works for us. I don't know how long Lukie will sleep there...it may be until he's two. I don't care. We have gotten the best sleep of his whole 5.5-month-life since we started co-sleeping.
Bonus: the advantages to co-sleeping, too, are that I can side-nurse him in the middle of the night, often not even waking up really, and I get to spend time with him. I was only getting about an hour in the morning and 45 minutes in the evening after work. What's the point of having a kid if you let daycare raise him? Now, Lukie and I are together all night long. And his first smile in the morning, accompanied by babbling and foot-chewing, is the sweetest thing I've ever seen.
Now, I don't know that I would have been comfortable co-sleeping with Lukie in the beginning. He was too tiny and I was too tired to really react at night if something was wrong. But now, he's more than 20 pounds, and I dress him warmly enough that there are no blankets near him on the bed. I wake up to every move, but he moves less because Mommy is right there. We're doing really well.
Okay. Sometimes he sleeps in the chair with Daddy.
The co-sleeping thing brings me to the next thing:
5. You will feel judged. You might not even be judged. You're probably making a lot of the judgement up. But you will feel judged all the same.
I haven't talked about the sleeping arrangement with many people because I didn't want to hear comments about whether we were right or wrong. People have their theories on how to get a baby to eat, sleep, poop, walk, and talk. But a friend said something to Pete that really helped me come to terms. Well two things. First, it's not a graded exercise. There aren't any A's or B's. It doesn't matter what solution you use, as long as it works.
Second, there is no right or wrong. There's surviving and not surviving. And this is our solution. We're finally surviving. I'm tired. But I'm not a zombie. Well, I'm not a zombie all the time.
(Sidenote: when I was looking into safe co-sleeping practices, a lot of stuff about attachment parenting came up. I had someone gasp and say, "You're not going to attachment parent, are you?" The answer is...uh...I don't know. I don't subscribe to a parenting plan. We're doing what makes sense to us; some of attachment parenting makes sense to me, but to be honest, I don't think we're 100% attachment parenting. We're surviving. And you should do what makes sense to you. I doubt we're messing up too badly. Like I said, no grades here. Attachment parents are just doing what makes sense to them. Cheers to that!)
6. My kid is still a total fuss-pot. Don't get me wrong, the days of 8 straight hours of crying are behind us. But Lukie is not and never has been an easy baby. He is in a constant state of mild protest. He wants to be held, up and looking around, all day long. So until my back breaks from it (which will be soon, probably, given how big he is), I'll hold him. He learns much more moving around with me than he would alone on the floor.
There are times when I'm doing something that he has to stay on the floor. He fusses the entire time, but I talk to him while I'm working and tell him that he's a "big boy and can handle it." But eventually, I pick him up and we play. I tell myself that Lukie will be determined, persistent, and social. Those are all good qualities. They may drive me nuts someday, but I think they'll serve him well.
And hopefully, when he can walk and talk, he'll be super independent and curious, knowing that I'm there to hold him when he wants to be held.
7. You have to be you, even when "you" now has a tiny hanger-on. I was not a happy Mom at home with Lukas all day every day. I'm not saying I love taking him to daycare. But I didn't come out of what I now think was actually post-partum depression until I came to work and found out that it was okay to be myself and a mom. I felt a million times better my first week back at work. That doesn't mean I didn't cry and wish I could stay at home every day when Lukie got a cold his first week at daycare. But I learned that Lukie could fit into my life without consuming it. And all of a sudden, I had so much more fun at home when I was with him because it was okay to be myself when I was around him. I didn't have to sacrifice my personality to Mommyhood.
And I learned that I could be silly and goofy and have fun for the short time I have with him each day, and that makes that time a million times more precious. And the weekends are SO fun now.
So that's it. Those are 7 things I have learned in my first six months as a Mommy. There are lots more things, but those are the ones I'm reflecting on this afternoon. It's been crazy and transformative and mind-boggling and fun and inspiring.
And oh, man, do I love this kid. How could you not?
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