if given the opportunity,

if given the opportunity, there are some thoughts i'd likely share with a new mom-to-be about what to expect within the first few months of having a baby. there is so much joy!  it has been my personal experience that the first 24 hours of having both girls have been a major bonding experience. my own intuition has been something of which to stand in awe! after morgan was born, the nurse was having a hard time keeping her temperature regulated. she kept placing morgan under an artificial heater and checking her temp. after several minutes of looking at morgan lying under that light, i instinctively told bryan to hand her to me. i unswaddled her and put her naked little newborn bod against my skin and tucked us both under the covers. morgan's temperature quickly found 'normal'. that is just one example of how the maternal instinct is STRONG and RIGHT ON. a momma naturally knows what her baby needs. i have learned to go with my God-given intuition (and, of course, there are plenty of times when that intuition will tell me modern medical practices are required).

there are also very real challenges for me.  the first two weeks after having morgan were a bit of a roller coaster. 9 months of pregnancy hormones were leaving my body like water through a fire hose. shortly after morgan was born we were at the grocery store. bryan asked me what i wanted to buy  for dinner and i almost sat down and began to cry. there were too many choices! it is probably as overwhelming for me to get used to life with a newborn as it is for my newborn. as my friend betsy aptly put it, 'i feel like my whole world has turned upside down (when i have a baby)'. that is exactly right. from the hormones to the sleep dep. to the massive responsibility, to figuring it all out, it has felt like utter chaos for a little while. from what i can tell, that is so normal and it does pass (2-6 weeks are the hardest for us).

 breastfeeding. i feel like i could write a book about this. my friend kat once said about breastfeeding, 'imagine you're hiking in brand new hiking boots and you get a blister the size of a quarter on your heel. you pop the blister and take a metal bristled scrub brush and scrape it across your open wound over and over and over again until it bleeds. that is what breastfeeding feels like'. that was exactly my experience with mya, AT FIRST. but when i learned how to acquire the appropriate 'latch' from baby, it felt much better. still, its something to get used to, for sure. i should have accessed the lactation consultants nearby.  mya was a textbook eater and did very well keeping to a textbook schedule.  as an aside, i once tried to put mya's newborn mouth on bryan's bare 'chest' and he FREAKED out. (silly lisa).

with morgan, i had learned how to acquire the appropriate latch from the beginning. and she ate flawlessly in the hospital. but when we got home, i gave her a non-breastfeeding friendly pacifier (i didn't even know those existed), and from what we can tell, it confused her 'suck'. she traded in her perfect latch from the first 48 hours of her life, to what the lactation consultants called a 'disorganized, chewy, chompy latch'. it was awesome. not really. bigger babies tend to be more hungry and at 9 pounds, my baby was HUNGRY. she couldn't get milk fast enough. she swallowed a lot of air. she was in pain. she was MAD. she wouldn't eat. we had to squirt milk down her throat with a medicine dropper. we did this every 3 hours around the clock for almost 2 weeks. my body went from making too much milk to not making enough because she wasn't demanding it properly. she began losing weight. we had to supplement with formual (i felt so guilty about not being able to provide enough food for my baby on my own), and we worried about her lack of ability to latch and eat. she struggled with the bottle, too. so we squirted milk from the bottle down her throat while she choked and gagged. we pursued an occupational therapist.  we had to go to the pediatrician's office 6 times in 3 weeks for weight checks. the discouragement was high. it. was. awful. 

finally, by God's grace through the advice of my doula, i entered into a lot of long stretches of quiet time with my baby. we spent hours in my bedroom, relaxing, cuddling, one-on-one.  i stopped looking at the clock to see when i needed to feed her and instead watched her for cues as to when she was hungry.  i relaxed.  she relaxed.  we were able to find a rhythm. by week 4, morgan was up to her birth weight. by week 6, her latch was normal and feeding has normalized almost completely.praise.the.Lord.  morgan is not mya and for her, a textbook eating schedule was not the thing she needed.  i had to learn to listen to and be very patient with my baby.

 i love you sweet morgan and i am thankful for our journey together. xo