Being a Mom is Hard! (Part 2)

I'm going to be honest, I didn't love being a mom at first.  After all, this blog is called "True Confessions", so I'm going to get downright vulnerable with you all in this post.  We brought Juliet home on Sunday, May 2.  She slept all day.  It was wonderful, and we thought, "We have such a perfect baby."  That feeling didn't last long.  At about 4 or 5 pm, she began to cry.  We noticed that she had not had a wet diaper for hours, even though she was eating.  Finally, around 8pm, we were checking her diaper yet again.  Without getting too graphic, let me just tell you that her urethra was blocked, and my mom managed to remove the blockage.  Pee came shooting out, everywhere!  After we cleaned her up, we were relieved, and she seemed to calm down.  However, shortly after, she began screaming and refused to eat. James and I repeatedly tried to get her down, only to no avail.  I became frantic.  After five hours of screaming and refusing to eat, I was beginning to panic.  Around 2am, we called the pediatrician, who was absolutely no help.  Finally around 3am, my mom came in and asked if we would like her to take the baby so we could sleep.  I allowed her to do this, and my husband and I were able to get about three or four hours of sleep.  That was just the first night!

For the first 8-10 weeks of Juliet's life, she cried every single day from around 5-7pm.  There was precious little we could do to keep her quiet.  She liked my husband to lift her up and down in the air, she liked to be outside, she enjoyed walks (but only once she was big enough to sit up in her stroller), and she liked to listen to music.  All of these things helped, but sometimes they worked and other times, they didn't.  It was really a lot of trial and error.  To top it all off, just after she turned two months old, she developed acid reflux.  Sleeping was a huge problem with reflux.  We could get her down, but she'd wake up about 30 minutes into her nap or bedtime and scream.  There was nothing that would calm her down, short of us rocking her to sleep.  As you can imagine, this made nap-time and bedtime extremely stressful.  To make things worse, when she didn't nap, she was even more grumpy during the day.  It was really such a vicious cycle.  She also hated (and even still hates) her carseat.  If I had to drive anywhere farther than about 20 minutes, I could expect some screaming.  As a result, with the exception of doctors appointments, I did not go anywhere with her until she was about 3 months old.

I was warned about baby blues prior to her birth, but I didn't expect it to affect me.  But boy was I blue.  I wouldn't say I was depressed, but I sure cried a lot.  Anything would set me off; looking at my baby, talking to my mom, remembering her birth, watching her sleep...it was nuts!  We were packing up our apartment for our move to Texas during the first weeks of her life.  I remember one night, as I was drawing a bath, I began to cry as I stared at the wall in the bathroom where a picture frame used to be that I had packed up that day. It was just too much.  I used to get into the bath tub and just cry the day away.  Of course, Juliet would wait to start fussing until I was in the tub, which made it hard for me to enjoy my bath.  I was definitely frazzled.  I remember wondering if I had made a mistake in having a baby.  I wondered if we should have waited.  I cried  far more than I ever have before.  It was really hard.

In spite of all my questions, insecurities and problems, I loved Juliet.  I loved her so much it was hard to breath while thinking about it.  I would often look at her sleeping in my arms and just weep because the love I felt for her was so strong.  (I just re-read this and started crying!)  I had absolutely no idea if I was going to hold it together day to day, but I knew she was a gift.  The only thing that got me through some of those really tough days was remembering that I had prayed and prayed for her, and God had answered.  He gave her to me, so He must have thought that I could handle her.  Of all the precious souls in heaven, He placed hers in her flesh and knit her together inside of me.  I trusted God to give me what I needed to be her mother, even if some days I was only getting through one minute, one second, one prayer at a time.

Fortunately, it did get better.  Lest you all think this series is only for complaining about my baby...take heart!  More to come....