What I've learned...

This past month and a half has been incredibly challenging, with its own set of rewards and (more often than not) insanity. While I'm sure there will one day come a time when I actually miss this -- and seriously, catch me in about 20 years when I'm not guffawing over the idea -- I'm not at all ashamed to admit that, at least for now, I'm trying hard just to get through each day. Some of the more noteworthy things I've learned, and things I'd happily share with other soon-to-be first-time moms:

Childbirth may have gone perfectly, but everything since that has not. Be flexible. Between all the changes we made against my own ideas of moral superiority and the number of days I have showered since Tycho has been born (hint: I'm pretty sure I can count them on my two hands), I can safely say that I'm learning not to let these experiences define who I am, as a mother or a wife or a person. Each has come with its own trials and tribulations, and each decision was made with both my son and myself in mind. And my husband, too. When it applied. ;)

Don't define yourself by what you do. Crunchy, natural, formula-feeder, babywearer, vegetarian, cosleeper, minimalist, whatever. Though these all technically apply to me and how Matt and I parent, they don't define who we are as parents. We're not reading (too many) parenting books or sites or anything else. We're just... doing shit, changing shit, and hoping shit works. We're also trying not to be dicks in the process, either to our son or to each other. Or to ourselves.

Maintain autonomy... but know that it's not easy. While I've always thought it endearing when a parent's life revolves around his/her child(ren), going through it myself has made me realize that, at least for me, I need to maintain some separation between myself and my son. But when Matt and I were on a date night while my in-laws watched Tycho and we found ourselves talking about him and pulling out our cell phones so we could coo over our photos of him, we realized it's much more difficult than we thought. And that's okay. After all, our kid is a huge part of our lives now, and likely will be forever and ever amen. (Next date night, though, we have a no-talking-about-Tycho rule!)

Use your partner. And don't hang over his/her shoulder. This was the HARDEST one to learn. Matt would take Tycho for a morning and I'd find myself waking up only 30 minutes later because I was panicking about... something. Or nothing. Usually nothing. They'd be downstairs chilling, typically with Matt and his XBox controller and Tycho napping in his rock 'n' play. And I'd still be tired because I couldn't just let him do his thing, something that I know by watching him that he is very capable of doing. I've since stopped correcting him, too, as there really is nothing to correct. (Seriously.)

You won't win all the time. But you won't really lose, either. I mean, sleep, yeah, you might lose that. Your mind? You'll definitely lose that. But not winning is a part of this whole game, as sucky as that is; what worked today probably won't work tomorrow, and you'll find that your winning streak ends shortly after it started. You will get participation ribbons, though, at certain points: When your baby smiles at you for the first time, when your tickles elicit a happy gurgle, when the sound of silence follows a three-hour screaming spree. And trust me, you'll find so much worth in those ribbons that you will, at least temporarily, forget all about "winning".

In fact:

Failure is good. Failure is normal. And failure will make for better kids. If you're going to fail at being a perfect parent -- and you will, and I have! And I'm going to keep failing! -- at the very least, you'll teach your kids how to pick up after you've fallen. Your kids don't learn when you're without a single flaw, they learn when they see how you handle when shit really goes down. I like to credit the hard times my parents fell on, both when parenting me and otherwise, to how I handle stress and failure in my own life. It's a hard lesson to learn, but better to learn through emulation than first experience with any disappointment.

And to imagine, I only learned this in six weeks. Imagine what all I'll know when Tycho is two. And, you know, all of this flies out the fucking window. ;)

Sunshine, unicorns, and other happy-parent bullshit.

I absolutely love my son. I've enjoyed the past six weeks (can you believe it, he's six weeks already! ... also, it's been forever since I've updated!), from the way he passes out on my shoulder to the way he gazes at me while he eats, and his recent smiles that are seriously more than just gas. ;) There are things I'm anxiously awaiting, too, like when he plays with toys and when he rolls over for the first time. Each week has brought its own joy that definitely makes me thankful that we had him.

But let's be real here. Parenting, and motherhood especially, is hard work. Not a single parenting book (not like I read any before he was born... I didn't, lol) could have prepared me for what we were in for when we strapped Tycho into his car seat and drove him home. I don't think I've ever been so exhausted, so run-down, so anxious to get out of the house and return to work as I have been since Tycho has been born.

Don't get me wrong, it's incredibly rewarding, too. But I think people tend to focus more on the sunny side of parenting, especially in infancy, than anything else. While it's always encouraging to hear that your child is beautiful or bright-eyed or smart or just so damn cute -- and let's face it, they're all right ;) -- I strongly believe that those compliments and praises should come with a huge disclaimer. Especially since I always stiffen when someone tells me that I'm going to miss these little things when Tycho gets older. While I'm sure that's true, there's a much bigger part of me that is so ready for this part to be over.

I mean, this stuff SUCKS.

Tycho recently hit his first "wonder week", where his mental and physical development crank into super high gear and he grows in both areas. This one is his first leap, where he becomes more aware of his surroundings and more alert overall. I've definitely noticed a difference these past few days: While he's still sleeping a lot during the day, he's much more bushy-tailed when he is awake, notably in the morning after getting a few good hours of sleep. He's given us a few social smiles, he enjoys playing with us, and he watches our faces. I also like to think that he recognizes each of us.

With this leap, though, has come some very significant challenges. He's mostly fine during the day, if a bit clingy, one of the signs of taking a leap. But come 6pm, and he has a complete meltdown. I mean, awful! Between the witching hour and the side effects of these mental leaps, Tycho is absolutely inconsolable between 6 and 9 or so in the evening. It means a lot of rocking, bouncing, shh-ing, feeding, humming, and crying... sometimes in both his case and mine. (Then Matt takes over and I spend a few minutes trying to collect myself while Tycho screams in his ear.) This has been going on for almost a week now, and let me tell you, it's enough to make me want to book a hotel, drop the baby off with a neighbor, and ignore the fact that I have a child for an entire evening.

I had a brief conversation with one of my in-laws today about the newborn and infant phase, and thankfully, she not only agreed, she sympathized and shared her own joy in seeing her now teenaged sons be so independent. There is a lot about this time when babyhood is not fun, when you want nothing more but for it to be over and I'll be damned if I end up actually missing this phase in his (and my) life. It made me feel grateful that someone else was honest about this, as the ever-optimistic view I got from most people always waxed poetic about when their children were that tiny and aren't they just amaaaaazing when they're that small.

It's not at all sunshine, unicorns, and other happy-parent bullshit, though, and while you may get a few comments from time to time that alludes to that, you never really know until you're in the throes of a newborn meltdown and his cries have gone from "please soothe me" to all-out screaming "motherFUCKER, get off your ASS and SAVE ME."

So if I've been absent lately, physically or mentally, it's because I'm learning just how hard this is and just how much I miss my sleep, my shower, and my job (because seriously, I have such jealousy for Matt's ability to leave the house and interact with adults for at least five hours a day). This, too, shall pass.

And I will be ever so thankful when it does.

Also, to show that it's not all whiny BS in here:

[caption id="attachment_1808" align="aligncenter" width="400"] My mom, me, and Tycho visiting Lincoln![/caption]

[caption id="attachment_1809" align="aligncenter" width="400"] White House family. ;)[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_1810" align="aligncenter" width="400"] You'd smile if you were here, too. LOL[/caption]

This crunchy hippie mama is doing what?!

I'm not sure when I'll be brave enough to post this. As of the start of this entry, Tycho is 10 days old, so we'll see how long it takes me to actually... you know, buck up the courage. :)

I was so lucky to have the most perfect birth I could have ever asked for. It was at a birth center, no interventions, with supportive people, in water... it seriously could not have gotten better. I was taken aback by how quickly and ideally it worked out, and have come to savor in it.

Everything since then, however, has been completely different.

I had all these pragmatic ideas on how we would raise Tycho: We would cloth diaper (after his umbilical stump came off, as even the BG newborn AIOs were too big for him!), I would exclusively breastfeed (EBF), we'd introduce a bottle only when preparing for daycare, we would cosleep. Literally none of those have worked out.

And you know what? I'm okay with that.

Probably the most poignant "loss" I experienced was the breastfeeding relationship... if you could even call it that. As a side note, I ended up getting some mild PPD after his birth, and for at least the first week of his life, I was in a desperate fog where I actually found Tycho to be so much a burden that I wanted nothing more to do with him. Nursing was the main issue, as it took at least an hour each time, and though his latch and suck were strong, it didn't seem effective if he was on the boob for that length of time. He was eating every two hours, and considering one of those hours was spent actually feeding him, I only had a break for an hour before he'd be crying with hunger again. This went on day and night, leaving me exhausted and cringing at the thought of the next feeding.

Not to mention what all this did to my nipples. After only a couple days, Tycho had made some deep gouges in both of them, my right nipple especially, and I came to dread each time I would have to feed him. So it wasn't only taking forever and leaving me drained and exhausted, but I would come close to crying at the thought of that one hour of rest flying by because I knew I would be in so much pain.

But I went through it for another few days. By day seven, I had given up, telling Matt that I didn't want to do it anymore. I ended up supplementing by pumping for a day or two after that. Pumping showed that I was making enough milk (if barely), and I'd have 3 ounces from both breasts combined. Pumping came with its own struggle, though -- when I wasn't feeding him bottled breastmilk, I was pumping, tied down to a machine that left me feeling like a dairy cow. It would take a half-hour at least to get that milk out, and when you add that to feeding him (another half-hour) and that he was still feeding every two hours, I wasn't saving myself any time or energy.

The final straw came when, in a fit of desperation, I supplemented with formula -- Similac Sensitive, to be precise. He took to it really well, so well that I debated throwing in the towel altogether. I still had some pumped breastmilk in the fridge, though, that we wanted to use up before deciding if it would be the end or not, so in between formula bottles, we gave him a bottle with breastmilk.

It ended up being the last time he would touch the stuff. Not even twenty minutes after the breastmilk bottle, Tycho started to look really ill. He was lethargic, his face was contorted, and his stomach was making all these terrible noises. Finally, he released a torrent of breastmilk (and some partially-digested formula!) all over me, himself, the couch, a prefold we've been using as a burp rag, everything. And while he did look better, he still slept for four straight hours after that, obviously recuperating from the ordeal. Gave me a bit of time to hop in the shower. :P

So we decided, that's it, we're done. At that point, he became an exclusively formula-fed (EFF) baby, and he's been doing so much better.

I asked Matt several times while feeding him if we were terrible parents for deciding to EFF. While switching did wonders for the onset of that PPD, it still screwed with my mind -- it's not what I wanted for Tycho! I was planning on EBFing him for at least a year, if not much longer. Choosing formula destroyed any chance of that, especially since I decided we would never go back and would let my milk supply dry up. I was a failure, a crunchy hippie mama who could have an all-natural birth but who couldn't -- and eventually wouldn't -- feed her baby breastmilk. An utter (udder?) failure!

Gods bless my husband, my doula, and the woman who did my placenta encapsulation, who all kept reassuring me that it was for the best, both for my mental health (as it started to steadily improve after this decision) and for Tycho, as he clearly didn't do well after that expressed milk. Matt kept saying, we were formula-fed, we turned out fine, he would do great as well. And he needed a healthy mom.

Tycho is now almost three weeks old (as of tomorrow!), and we're very happy with how everything is going. We did end up switching his formula under the supervision of his pediatrician, from Similac Sensitive to Gerber Good Start Gentle, and he's doing great on it. I also love that Matt can help with the feedings, and like me, he enjoys gazing into our son's eyes as he looks up at us with his "Thank you, oh giver of life!" look. :)

In the end, I found that I was my own worst enemy when it came to switching to EFFing. I had always been a "breast is best!" pragmatic... asshole (I'll admit it!) when defending breastfeeding, so you can imagine how much an asshole I was to myself when we ended up making the switch. I beat myself up terribly, blaming myself for his latch and my production and the way he reacted to the expressed milk when he had already gotten used to formula. I didn't feel like a terrible mother, I was a terrible mother.

Now that he's been on formula for almost two weeks and I see just how much he's thriving, I've loosened up a bit. I no longer feel like I'm poisoning my son when I go to feed him, I don't feel like I have failed him in some way, and I take joy in the way he gazes in my direction as he eats. At this point, you could even call me a fearless formula feeder... many thanks to Melissa for that site!

Formula feeding does not mean you've failed your child in any way. Whether it be due to lifestyle, inability, or PPD as in my case, or whatever other reason you decide to EFF, you're not screwing over your baby. After all, my mother didn't fail me when I went on formula at 6 weeks, and Matt's mother didn't fail him when she started formula-feeding at 2 weeks. If anything, they've still raised two perfectly capable, intelligent, healthy, striking individuals... who have now created an individual of their own and are feeding him in a similar fashion.

And I know Tycho will grow up to be just the same: Capable, intelligent, healthy, and striking. All qualities we plan on feeding him not through formula, but through our parenting. :)

(Now a photo dump... as I just can't get enough of this kid!! <3)