The Baby Diaries: A Journey from Tequila Shots to Breastmilk

“Turn and face the strange”. I’m gonna go out on a limb and say a pregnant woman’s developing body was not how Mr. Bowie intended these lyrics to be used, but honestly, it’s the most accurate comparison.  There I was, just staring in the mirror at a 16 week baby bump. Too small to be noticed as a pregnant belly by anyone who didn’t know, yet, big enough for me to feel anxious and scared about the changes I was going through. I should have loved the way my body was morphing in preparation for my beautiful little baby’s growth. I should have found myself even more beautiful with each passing day. I should have...but I didn’t.  I cried as one by one my pants became nick nacks on a crowded closet shelf. The body I had worked so hard to create withered away with each pound of beautiful baby fat I put on. And while I was over the moon in love with the creature growing inside of me, I hated myself and the changes I saw in the mirror. No matter how hard it was to look at my...

Week 12 hit. We were finally out of the first trimester and I could not have been more excited. For the past ~8 weeks my anxiety had been running so high I’d need a ladder to bring it back down. Let’s find out why. ——- Around week 10 I was in my office when I started to get severe abdominal cramps. When I got to the bathroom there was significant bleeding, so, naturally, I panicked. I immediately did the wrong thing and consulted the experts at Google.com on “week 10 bleeding”. Let’s just say the results did not help with the anxious feelings. - miscarriage - ruptured placenta - uterine tearing - cancer - (like what?!??) So many things could be going wrong. I had been terrified of miscarriage from day one because of the surgery I had just 2 months before we found out we were pregnant, I was always worried it was too good to be true and maybe God did not intend for us to have a child. Regardless, I took Dr. Google’s advice and called my OB’s office (but not before calling...

Sometimes the perfect pretty picture you envision for your life strays the path a little bit. Or maybe even a lot a bit. There are casualties caused by paths no longer heading in the same direction, or jealousy, or even for no reason at all. Some friends are mere stepping stones in this journey through life and others are more of a solid foundation on which you can build and change and they will grow with you. I’m a firm believer that both kinds of friends are necessary.  People change and that’s okay. It would be easy to get angry at the friend who chooses to no longer speak to you because you are having a baby. It would be easy to be sad about the family member who doesn’t show up to visit your son/daughter or even call to check to see how you are doing. It would be easy to continue wasting your time and energy focusing on all of the wrong things instead of using that energy to focus on 1. The people who always make sure you are whole. And 2. That beautiful human you are growi...

There is nothing I hate more than a human who feels the need to: 1. Piss on your joy & 2. Tell you the rules of parenting I’m sorry - did I miss the “parenting 101” book we are required to study and follow through this journey? Because Nancy over here seems to have studied this thing twice over and got an A+ for sure. NO. No one wants to hear your opinion on the “right” way to do things. We are all out here just trying to figure it out one day at a time. So when Know-It-All-Nancy and her band of followers tells me I’m supposed to wait until 12 weeks to announce our pregnancy... We tell everyone at 6 weeks in and don’t even think twice. The first ultrasound we had was a turning point for me in my “delayed joy” journey. At first, nothing really changed because it just looked like a little odd shaped peanut and I was not impressed. But from the moment they turned up the volume and I heard that little heartbeat for the first time - so tiny and vulnerable - my heart was tor...

Okay, okay - my last blog was a total cliffhanger . Sorry not sorry. I was actually hiding in the bathroom from my one month old heinously crying and was hit with major mom guilt. Needed to cut it a bit short. After the first test was positive, of course we took 3 more tests, because - statistics? Like the first one being 99.9% accurate was not accurate enough. We were just in total shock. We did the math a bit... It was the first day home from our honeymoon. I calculated back to my last period - definitely a month and 3 days before that, and the test shows as early as 4 weeks. Holy crap, we got pregnant the day I got back from my bachelorette party. (Apparently I really missed him while we were gone. ;) ) The news settled in a bit and immediately Cj was over the moon. For me, it was a different kind of feeling because just 2 months before that I had made the decision to start thinking about   the potential of having a baby and here we are. Trust me, it’s not that I was upset...

You know how some movies start by showing the end of the movie and then work backwards to how they got there? Yea, this is not one of those blogs.  For years I was told the possibility of me having children was highly unlikely due to the structure of my Fallopian tubes. My mother, whom I do not speak to for reason I may dig into a later date (mommy issues), was known to have endometriosis and had to have a full hysterectomy at only 30. Lucky me, the one thing she contributed to my life was some jacked up reproductive organs. Cj & I had discussed the potential of never having children and we were completely okay with the fact that we would be doggie parents for the rest of our lives (I mean seriously, she is the most perfect creature).  We were pretty content in our own little world. We were high school sweethearts, graduated from Purdue, and started our careers. We upgraded from the typical crappy college apartment to an overpriced house in wannabe suburbia and love...