Happy 1st Birthday Evelyn! Motherhood & Breastfeeding Journey: One Year Later

Today marks one year since I gave birth to my daughter Evelyn! Happy birthday Evelyn!! We celebrated early on the weekend with some close friends and I went with a spring/Peter rabbit theme. The cake turned out so cute and it was a successful party! She even smiled at the end when we sang her Happy Birthday! 

It felt like just yesterday we were bringing her back from the hospital. I remember it like it was yesterday. There was a snow squall and it was so cold, the wind was gusting and blew down my luggage in the hospital parking lot as I was wobbling along and someone who was there saw me and asked if I was okay. It was the total opposite of today - a sunny, warm and perfect spring day.

I've been kinda planning this post for a while - sort of like a retrospective look back at the whole thing we call motherhood. Gonna get into the nitty gritty details here though cause no one really talks about this but I really wanted to lay it all out there.

As a first time mom, I had no idea what to expect. It was really difficult hearing all the different advice from friend mom's and then experiencing everything first hand. It didn't help that I was the last one to become a first time mom in our friend group so what everyone was talking about didn't relate to what I was experiencing at the time and it made me even more anxious (most of it didn't even happen to me!). We really had to fight our way through everything, learn along the way and consult Google and multiple Reddit threads, because of course, our parents knowledge is also super outdated which added to the stress.

Leading up to the birth I was in a pretty bad headspace and was super anxious about everything - if future me could only tell me to relax, take it easy and stop giving my attention to people who don't matter. I'm pretty bad with ignoring people and I have to respond, if only I could have just taken a step back and not let myself become a dumping ground for somebody else's trauma... I also had COVID, GD, baby was measuring small, and although the birth was fine, I had struggles with breastfeeding... 

I first went to see the lactation consultants at the hospital shortly after the birth and even a home visit from a nurse said my latch was fine. I went to the breastfeeding clinic which was free, basically it's just a bunch of random mom's breastfeeding in a circle and the lactation consultant gives you pointers. I was still recovering from the birth so I didn't want to be out and about but the lady kept signing me up and I didn't want to keep paying for parking, plus I wanted to rest at home. Most of all I felt the clinic to be a waste of time. After the third session, Evelyn wasn't gaining weight fast enough and the lactation consultant told me to pump. She was a little overbearing and at first told me I didn't need to pump, so I didn't get a pump. Then she said I did. So I started scrambling for one and started pumping and never went back to breastfeeding because the latch was too painful. I was crying, the baby was crying... it was all in all, a bad time. At the clinic it was fine but at home it was so hard to replicate the positioning. The lactation consultant didn't do weighted feeds for my baby as a standard practice (one session she did, another she didn't) so I didn't even know how much she ate during the session. There was another mom at the clinic who had her second baby and she ended up exclusively pumping with her first, and she went to the same lactation consultant. Except this time she was so adamant about breastfeeding, she let her kid have jaundice because she was so adamant on exclusively breastfeeding this time. I mean I guess good for her since her kid weighed three whole pounds heavier than Evelyn so I couldn't do that. Not that I ever would. I have nothing against formula yet some women just love to brag and think that breastfeeding is their biggest flex in life. It was frustrating because I felt like a failure and no one else I knew seemed to be struggling like me so I felt ashamed to admit it. Instead I scoffed at those who could breastfeed and said that the act put me off. In reality I never knew that I could've kept trying breastfeeding again while pumping at the same time. I guess I was so put off by how long breastfeeding took and was so impatient I just threw in the towel and pumped exclusively because I wanted her to gain weight fast. It pained me to see her still so small when everyone else's babies were thriving. I'll never forget that lady with the jaundice baby though...

Which leads me to my next biggest stressor - the comparisons. Is she crawling yet? What percentile is she? How many teeth does she have? I get it, you wanna know how your own kid is doing but why compare yourself to me? To make yourself feel better knowing that my kid is always behind yours?? The comments from my MIL didn't help either, my baby being constantly compared to my husband when he was a baby. I was tired of it. Evelyn was healthy, strong and meeting all her developmental milestones on time as per our family doctor. All babies grow up at different paces so I didn't get why some people seem to get off on bragging about how their kid is ahead. Especially since all my friends kids were boys and I had a girl... There were only a few handful of close friends who really supported me along the way. Eventually Evelyn caught up, just as I knew she would, so those comments slowly dissipated.

We went through so many stages with Evelyn - baby acne, eczema and skin issues, sleep regressions... and then she grew out of it. What was causing me stress and anxiety didn't seem like a big deal anymore. It seems like those days were so long ago - but at the same time, I still remember each moment as if it happened recently. I find myself looking back at how little she was back then and my, what a way she has come. My little girl isn't so little anymore! I find myself missing those days when I could hold her comfortably in my arms and she would nap on me, when she was regrowing all her hair, when she ate her food like it was nothing, and her gummy smiles... And I've come to realize something: Motherhood is one big paradox. 

Of course now that I'm in a better place mentally (and getting a normal amount of sleep again) I find myself looking back and wishing I had cherished those moments more with her when she was so little because she grew so fast. But there was no way in hell I could have because back then, I was still sleep deprived, still pumping in the middle of the night, and then had to take care of her when she was fussy because I was alone (MIL left for China for three months) there was no way I was happy enough to appreciate those moments because I didn't know it would pass so quickly. That things would get better, and that everyone was right, it kinda did get better. And now I find new things to love about her - her toothy grins, her wild unruly hair, her contortionist sleeping positions - and then months from now I'll be looking back and reminiscing about this current stage in time. 

So I'm gonna try and enjoy every single moment of this. Because I didn't enjoy it at first - I really felt like it wouldn't ever get better. But somehow life finds a way. I feel extremely blessed and lucky to be a mom in this day and age - despite all the bullshit going on with the world - she gives me hope, and I hope she will continue to grow up to be a bright, happy child. For once, I'm looking forward to the future, despite my pessimistic ways, and if anything I'm thankful of motherhood for teaching me that. Perseverance. And also the bum brush...is the best invention ever in the history of baby products, I swear. 

That's all for this post. Until next time!