On Mommyhood

This little man is ten weeks old, and feels like high time to write down some of my thoughts on life with him thus far!  I hope to do a better job of writing about our little family in the coming weeks and months.  Somehow my day's end so quickly and not much is accomplished but I know I want to remember everything I can about these early years!

(Smile shots always end up blurry!!)

(he loves sticking his tongue out these days!!)

It's difficult figuring out the words to accurately describe motherhood.  Its so much more incredible than I ever possibly imagined (at the same time, harder!).  When I was pregnant I was pretty confident in how I would handle a baby of my own, after all, I was a nanny to infants with years of experience.  I spent most of my pregnancy in a blissful daze, having a baby was something I had dreamt of my entire life.  The one thing I have always known is that being a mom was the job I have wanted most.  Everything else was just something to occupy me until it was time for this stage of my life.  Most days I still cant believe it, I am in utter awe of these sweet little boy that Michael and I created, who grew inside of my body for nine months.  How incredible and empowering giving birth is, how in awe I am of my body and what God created me to do.

Each week with our perfect, beautiful son has been more and more wonderful.  I go to sleep looking forward to the next time I get to see him (sometimes six hours later and sometimes less...).  During the day when he naps I often miss him and prefer to let him snooze in the room with me rather than upstairs in his crib.  I knew he would sleep in the room with us at first, and until he is sleeping through the night I have no plans to move him to his crib.  Falling asleep hearing his sweet little sleepy sighs is the greatest thing, its wonderful.  He has begun to really wake up and interact with us, recognizing me, his daddy, and his grandparents and giving smiles and coos to greet his favorite people!  Seeing Michael with him, mesmerized and in such love melts my heart.  It's getting harder and harder for him to be away during the day, he wants a million photos and videos and I am forever grateful for the opportunity to be home with my sweet little one.  It's incredible that I can love him even more today than I did the moment he was laid on my chest, giving birth literally felt like part of my soul was suddenly outside of my body.

I've certainly surprised myself in some ways by how I feel about things and how I am choosing to parent.  I had planned on sleep training and had read some books during pregnancy and had experience with that with the little ones I had nannied.  However, I fed on demand as instructed and it felt natural and made the most sense to us to do our very best to keep him happy and satiated.  Re-reading the books post birth made me upset... I couldn't imagine letting William cry alone in his room.  I knew I couldn't do that.  A friend of ours had us over for dinner and revealed her two week old was already on a schedule of eating every three hours, I couldn't believe it and felt like a bad mom for a while after hearing that.  But, after doing lots of research as I am often inclined to do I realized none of that is necessary.  Some people absolutely need a schedule to function and be a good parent and thats okay!  (crying it out however is absolutely not, and using that to get your baby to sleep doesn't "train" but rather shuts down their nervous system to prevent death) but for me, our days are flexible but shaping into consistency all on William's own terms.  He wakes between 7-8 and can go 2.5 to three hours between bottles from then on.  It's amazing how self-conscious I felt about this!  My advice to anyone with a baby would be to always remember that YOU are the expert on your child.  

In the end I am not surprised at all that attachment parenting is 100% for me.  After all, Michael and I both have degrees in psychology and fully believe in gentle parenting as opposed to older styles that we experienced.  Attachment theory isn't knew and is very fascinating to me, developed in the 1960's by John Bowbly and Mary Ainsworth and defined as "a lasting psychological connectedness between human beings... a deep and enduring emotional bond that connects one person to another across time and space".  Attachment is characterized by behaviors in a child such as seeking proximity with the attachment figure when upset or threatened.  I think this definition is pretty incredible and makes motherhood a pretty amazing and incredible responsibility!  Securely attached children go on to be very confident and actually very independent!  So after refreshing myself on this I realized that my instincts as a mother outweigh the opinions of anyone else.   So for me, I want this little man to be with me every second he can be.  I want to wear him until he's 18, and I'm very okay with that.  I just wanted to write down my thoughts on this, and please know I also do my best not to judge anyone because I know we are all doing the best we can.