The Things I Had No Idea About...

I am so incredibly grateful for the comments and emails I have received over the past two weeks. This is the only time I have made it on my computer besides the one week update I did last week. It is safe to say that so many thoughts and ideas I had of what I thought life would be like with a newborn were so off base from the way things actually are.
We have family in town through this weekend and Ryan is still at home for a few days, so responding to comments and emails has been incredibly difficult to balance with all of the other craziness going on in our home. I apologize that I haven't been the best at getting back to people, but I have read everything that has been sent our way and it has been so encouraging and comforting through all of the adjustments our family has been making.
Bringing home a baby was so much more overwhelming than I ever thought it would be. No amount of book reading, blog scouring or question asking could have prepared me for the past two weeks. I have been an emotional rollercoaster.
To start with, you go into having a baby thinking you have really done everything possible to make sure you are ready for this huge event. Then you bring the baby home and she isn't sleeping in the bassinet you bought her - she isn't waking up every 2 hours to eat...because she isn't even willing to go to sleep at all. Our first night home I was crying in bed at 3am because I had no idea what I could do to help her fall asleep. I was already exhausted because she hadn't slept the two previous nights in the hospital either. That feeling of helplessness - THAT is something you can't learn beforehand from reading a book. But we got through it. We figured out that she wasn't sleeping because she was having reflux and couldn't lay flat on her back. We ordered a rock n' play (based off of so many of YOUR comments) and two nights later, she was sleeping for 4 hour stretches. In the days that followed we had tons of these moments - times when you look at each other and try to come up with a creative solution to whatever is staring you in the face. It's scary and you worry you aren't doing something right or that you are a "bad mom"...but you do your best and by the end of the day you are pretty darn proud of yourself that you made it through another 24 hours. I can happily say that two weeks in I feel like we are getting the hang of a lot of things, even though I am sure there will be thousands of moments in the future where I say to myself "Oh my gosh I have no idea what I am doing...".
Another thing I never expected was that I would cry so much. That probably sounds so silly, but the first ten days I was home I feel like I was crying about everything. I would look at Ryan and say "I have no idea why I am so emotional!!" I would cry because I wasn't sleeping - I would cry when I looked at Rilynn and realized she would only be 8 days old once - I would cry when I thought back about how we had prayed over this baby for such a long time and now she was finally here and is perfect. I am not typically an overly emotional person. I didn't cry that much through my pregnancy, so the fact that I felt like my hormones were out of control once we got home was another thing I wasn't prepared for.
Along those same lines - you always hear about postpartum depression. I talked with a lot of bloggers that have gone through it and I was aware of the signs to look out for once we came home. Thankfully I have not experienced symptoms as of now, but I did have a lot of confusing thoughts and emotions over the past two weeks. I thought I was going crazy. Shortly after Rilynn was born I started getting this awful feeling like something bad was about to happen. I was getting terrible anxiety and was worrying that Rilynn or Ryan were in danger or that they would be taken away from me. I know this sounds irrational,  but these feelings were so strong that I would find myself crying (some more) when I would sit quietly by myself and be overwhelmed with these emotions. Eventually I broke down and told Ryan about it - and I googled it. Apparently I was not alone and the anxiety I was experiencing was another common occurrence in the days after giving birth. Fear and anxiety revolving around "impending danger" are something I never heard about or read about before having Rilynn...but it felt good to know that I wasn't alone.
I wanted to share some of these things from the past two weeks because sometimes I think we believe we are going through things on our own. I mentioned this last week, but one of the most comforting things after I came home was seeing instagram comments coming in at 3:30am on my feed. As I crawled out of bed for another middle-of-the-night feeding, I knew these comments were coming from other mamas who knew exactly what I was going through...and it brought me encouragement and peace. Having a newborn at home is not easy! I thought I was going to have so much more free time than I do. I thought I was going to cope better with the lack of sleep. I thought I would have a "book answer" for almost everything. But even though this experience has been SO different from what I thought and planned for, I absolutely love it and wouldn't trade it for anything. Yeah, I may not always know what I am doing - I might still be sitting in my pajamas at 5pm & not have gotten a chance to shower - I may feel so incredibly lazy because my butt is planted on the couch the majority of the day, breastfeeding my daughter...
But this whole thing is amazing. I look down at Rilynn's face and I am so content just being there, in the moment with her. I try to soak up every second I have because I know from so many of you that before you know it these moments are gone and I'll be chasing around a rambunctious two year old. It has been hard to "slow down" - it's just different from what I am used to. But I have started to really enjoy it - I try to realize that this is my "job" right now. My only responsibility is to take care of Rilynn. I am so grateful to Ryan for giving me the opportunity to stay home with her and I am thankful that God has blessed us financially as well.
So that's what my life looks like right now! The past two weeks have had ups and downs, but I am happy to know that it seems to be pretty normal when you bring home a baby. I am looking forward to all of the new things that come up over the next few weeks and months, but I am also mindful that I need to appreciate the moment I am in because I know I will never get that time back - even if I am running on 2 hours of sleep and feel like a total hott mess...

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