OMG...I'm a mama!

Coming home from the hospital was one of the most exciting and nerve racking experiences of my life!! I hardly learned anything in the 48 hours we spent there and if I didn’t have a baby nurse waiting for us at the apartment I would have been FREAKING out! After hours of tests and filling out forms we were free to leave and I couldn’t believe what was happening, we were actually taking our baby home! When we walked up to our apartment the tears immediately started flowing…my sister and Tyler put a huge Welcome Home Jagger sign on our door and when I saw it, it hit me… I was home with my son and my life was about to change forever. As I made my way into the baby’s room I started crying even harder. My family did a great job decorating his room last minute, as none of us knew if we were having a boy or a girl. The room is all white and grey with a little splash of zebra, which I love. Once we got settled I took a long hot shower and tried to take in this huge moment. I stood under the water with a huge smile as the tears flowed.

Over the next 2 days, the crying didn’t stop. The combination of exhaustion, excitement, fear and hormones is seriously deadly and I was losing it. I kept thinking horrible thoughts like what if someone hurt him, what if I messed up or worst of all, what if I am just a terrible mother. My nurse (Gen Gen) had to keep calming me down and reminding me that this is all very new and while she soothed and consoled me, she also told me I need to snap out of it because my tears would go into my breast milk and make my son depressed. Well the thought of that made me even more upset!! I’m telling you, I was a mess! The fact that I couldn’t sit down without excruciating vag pain didn’t help at all either!! Why wasn’t I aware that the after birth is 1000X worse than the actual birth?!?! Ladies- why are you keeping this info from us!!

Ok so onto my feeding problem, which was even scarier than me being a horrible mama was that Jagger wasn’t having wet diapers which meant he was dehydrated because I wasn’t producing enough milk. To make matters worse, he was having a really time latching on so between both of those problems, feeding time was really stressful. I finally gave in and accepted that we needed to supplement with formula for the next day or two so he wouldn’t get sick. This was such a hard thing for me because I always envisioned only breast-feeding, and assumed if it was easy for my sister it would surely be easy for me to. WRONG! Once he started peeing more I went back to breast-feeding and my boy was miserable! He would cry and scream every time I put him on my boob and literally push me away. It was so heart breaking and feeding became an excruciating event. Every time he would fight it, I would cry and get so upset. I felt like a failure that I couldn’t breast-feed and really enjoyed having that bonding time with him. But it was too stressful for him and me and I had to accept that it wasn’t worth it. I am now pumping breast milk into a bottle (which is incredibly sexy) and alternating feeds with bottled breast milk and formula. While my rational mind realizes that it is what it is, my irrational self feels like a total failure.

The stresses that Im feeling are actually going beyond my feeding problem. Everything that comes up in discussion with Gen Gen makes me nervous. Bathing him, getting him on a sleep schedule, swaddling him and so on. Without even realizing it, I’m apparently creating problems that aren’t there. On Tuesday night Shai and I were in bed and he seemed upset with me. After asking over and over what was wrong he finally said- “You just seem so negative about everything and while I realize you’re only doing it because you want the best for our son, its going to affect him in so many ways and he will be an unhappy child”. Well, this hit me like a brick and you guessed it…I started bawling. At first I was so offended by what he said because I felt like he thought I wasn’t enjoying being a mommy but once I sat back and thought about it I realized how true it is. Instead of enjoying each little moment with Jags, I'm projecting about what im going to have to do in an hour, a day, even a week and its really not healthy. I think being a new mother is an extremely overwhelming role and I think as women we put too much pressure on ourselves to be perfect at it. I have finally come to accept that Im going to make mistakes and he's going to cry but that is all part of this amazing journey. I want to be present for it all and just enjoy the ride. I’m already feeling mother’s guilt and my son isn’t even 2 weeks yet! I’m so F*cked!