This little sweetie… (pictured below) made me a mommy on January 27th. I read parenting books and blogs. I made schedules and followed them to a ‘T.’ I asked my mom, sisters, and in-laws for all of their best parenting advice. Everything was going well into my first few months of motherhood.
Okay – you’re 4-6 months into this baby-raising thing. You’re starting to feel like a pro with diapers, naps, bottles and/or breastfeeding. But at your 6-month appointment (or maybe sooner) your pediatrician tells you it’s time to start solids. Baby food. Lovely.
On my 21st birthday, my mom handed me a large stack of papers in a pretty box, all neatly stapled together. She said, “This is something that I have wanted to give you for a long time.” As I started looking at the pages, my mom explained to me that every year on my birthday she would sit down and write a letter to my birth mom… (I was adopted, and I’ll share more on this in a different post). She made a copy of every single letter and kept it; waiting for the right time to give them to me.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve started and stopped writing this post.
On this attempt, Lilly sits on the couch watching a movie (she’s feeling a little under the weather) and I start jotting down my thoughts laying on the floor next to her. She looks so perfect in that moment, that I kiss her little foot—which has lost all of the extra delicious baby chunk it once contained. It’s long, skinny, and it has Barbie pink toenails. It’s not the foot of a baby; it’s the foot of a little girl.
As I write this, Maddie is officially 38 weeks old—exactly how long she was in utero. “38 weeks in, 38 weeks out.” I’ve been fortunate enough to have an amazing breastfeeding journey with her these past 8.5 months, and while I never envisioned going beyond a year, this weird part of me isn’t ready for it to end in a couple of months.
Is it because she’s my last baby? Is it because it’s actually kind of easy this go-round? Is it because breastfeeding is literally the only thing allowing me to skip the gym AND burn calories? I guess it will remain a mystery… 😉
I remember welcoming our first baby girl into the world and all of the excitement we shared with our friends and families. Along with the excitement, it brought a ton of advice on how to be a parent and people wanting to share their personal experiences. The thing we heard the most, even from strangers, was to enjoy your child it because they grow up so fast. Man were they right!