Baby Will is One: What I Learned this Year

I have a one year old!

Oh. Em. Gee.

This time last year I had a one-week-old little squishy raisin who looked like ET in need of a good exfoliator. As the cliché goes, time really does fly. I have learned so much this past year and grown in so many ways. I think motherhood suits me well.

Here is a look back and some of what I experienced this year and what it taught me.

Baby Weight, Post-partum and the Fourth Trimester

I focused a lot on losing the 25-30 pounds I put on with Will. I wanted it to melt off of me with breastfeeding. I didn’t end up breastfeeding past a few weeks and the weight didn’t melt off nearly as fast as I hoped it would. In the past, losing a few pounds was something I could do relatively easy.

This time was a lot harder. I had to keep reminding myself and being reminded that my body had just undergone a major life event that was beautiful but also fairly traumatic. I also had surgery immediately after he was born which created some complications. I was more tired than I thought I would be, and it wasn’t that easy to just bounce right back into the gym. I set arbitrary fitness goals for myself and held myself to a rigid, unfair standard.

Whoever said 9 months of weight gain equals 9 months of weight loss was actually right. That’s how long it took me to get back to feeling like myself. For everyone that felt good as new by the end of maternity leave, congratulations. I took a more scenic route.

Post-partum depression is real, and it can and does happen to millions of women every day.

It doesn’t mean you’re crazy. It means you are human. I had these horrible intrusive thoughts about him dying that I couldn’t get out of my mind and I had trouble sleeping. It was a fear that I could not silence. I saw an amazing practitioner who specialized in helping new moms manage these thoughts. It required me to get out of my comfort zone and admit that I was experiencing something that I knew was not okay and also not my fault. There are instances of PPD far more serious than mine and many women do not seek help for plenty of reasons including fear, shame, finances, etc. I am grateful for my husband for helping me through this.

Medication and therapy are not dirty words and I share them here in this public space so that I can help normalize this public health issue.

Babies Are All Different and They are All Perfect.

My child was born healthy. He seems to reach his milestones with ease, and I am grateful for that.

Obviously since I had never birthed a human before and he didn’t come with a manual, I had a lot of questions. I googled a lot of stuff. The internet can be awesome but also dangerous for new moms. There’s a lot of people out there who want to compare babies which is fine, but also totally unnecessary. I don’t even like that the doctor’s office gives us those charts about which percentile he is in for weight and height. Who cares? He’s on the higher end for weight and length, and I could not care less. If he were a girl, I think this could set him up for a lifetime of body comparison to other people and we all know how detrimental that is. But since he is a boy, the reaction from most people is that he is big and strong, which we value in boys. If he had the same stats as a girl, would the reaction be the same? He has a little buddy at school who is much smaller (just as cute) and he started walking before Will has, even though Will is a few weeks older. My husband is a little worried that we are somehow behind. Call me carefree, but I am not worried at all. I look at it like this: he is going to walk when he is ready. I am grateful that the concern is only when he will walk and not if he will walk as that would be something to really worry about.

We all want our kids to do things “early.” I am guilty of it myself. I imagine him being an amazing reader and learning things before other kids. Then I remind myself, he is still pooping in his pants so we can just slow down and relax a bit. He will do what he is meant do when he is meant to do it. Social media is a great place to show cute pics of your baby, but it is so easy to go down the rabbit hole of comparison.

Don’t go there. You have the exact baby you were meant to have, and everything is as it should be.

First Birthdays Don’t Have to Be Major Events, But They Totally Can Be If You Want

I had no idea what I was going to do for Will’s first birthday.

Originally, I was anti-smash cake. I felt like it was a waste of a very expensive cake, and it was a silly tradition. Then I remembered, this is the one thing that is actually about HIM and not just for me to enjoy. We did a cupcake and he was what I would call indifferent towards it.

If he wasn’t my twin, I would almost want a DNA test because how could my child not like sugar?

My mom really wanted to do the whole fancy cake made of fondant which is so realistic you almost wonder if it’s edible. That gave her joy and so that was her thing. We just did our own cake for the adults and it was from Costco. Easy Peasy.

I went into a Pinterest vortex recently and I was going to do this whole birthday extravaganza of “Our Little Nugget is Turning One” party and have it be Chick-Fil-A themed. I was thinking of a baby cow costume, cute waffle fries in little cones, the whole thing. Then I remembered I work full time, I am not crafty, and I would hate all of it.

My son is literally obsessed with Coco Melon so when I saw that Party City had a party package of CocoMelon birthday décor including balloons, it was a no brainer. Why make myself crazy planning a party that he won’t really be able to appreciate? And so we didn’t go crazy, but it was cute and we had some themed cookies and cute decorations and a few little friends to join us. It was far more enjoyable than running back and forth to Michael’s 10 times to make my own decorations. This taught me that not everything for my kid has to be over the top in order to be special. We aren’t going to be the parents who hire the Wiggles to perform in our yard and I am okay with just being a regular parent who does regular parties. The magic is in the laughter and the big smile on his face anyway. No one gives a hoot about table settings.

It’s been a really beautiful year for all of us with so many firsts.

I wrote my son a birthday card and saved in to his memory box and I hope one day he reads it. In it, I talk about the adventures I hope to have with him and how much fun we are going to have as he gets older.

But right now, he’s just a little baby, at least for a little while longer, and I am enjoying exactly where he is in this moment.