About 3 times a day, I ask "what day is it?". I lose my phone approximately every 5 minutes. I wear the same clothes to bed that I wore all day, because I'm too tired to change into real pajamas. I have to make a note on the bottle sterilizer that says "clean" or "dirty" because i can never remember if it was already run or not. There are more Amazon/Target packages coming to our door these days than ever before. Every single AD that pops up on my social media feed is baby related.
This, I'm learning, is the life of a mom. And I learned that these next few weeks are often called "the fourth trimester". This week has been, without a doubt, the hardest week of my life. There's just so much to learn, not only about my baby but about myself. I've cried a LOT, and had the occasional moment of "can I do this?". But..here I am. Doing it. Because I love him with my whole heart.
It's been one week and two days since I became "mom" to someone and it still feels incredibly surreal. This tiny little human belongs to me? Are we sure? And while his name is Zackary, I almost never refer to him that way. I just say "him" or "he" and assume people know who I'm talking about. Because HE has become the center of my world. The nickname "Poppy" has long gone out the window, although I'll always think fondly of the 9 months I called him that. Poppy was a made up person. Zackary is his own person.
In many ways, I'm anxious for "this part" to be over. In others, I'm perfectly content with a life that consists of eat, sleep, poop. I'm working to learn to balance cherishing the moment and looking forward to the future.
If I start to think too far ahead, it triggers my anxiety. I'll start to think things like "when do we start a real bedtime?" "how much will he be eating in a few weeks? Months?" "What am I going to do with him when he's awake for longer than 20 minutes at a time?" "Am I setting the right routine?". "When do I start setting a nap time?" There is so much unknown to our future life with this little guy, and it's both thrilling and exhausting.
The truth is I have no idea what I am doing- and I am doing my best to be okay with that and to be willing to learn through trial and error. I'm also learning to be okay with the fact that I can't always "fix"things immediately. It's going to take Zack and I time to communicate with each other. The kid is 8 days old, and I've never done this before. We're both tired from childbirth. He'd probably rather be in the womb.
I say all of this as someone who is slowly weaning down from that hormone high, and who is about 1000 times calmer today than she was yesteday or the day before. Tomorrow, I could be back to my emotional, irrational thinking. But today was a good day, and I have to take those where I can.
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