Motherhood: One Month In

So I’m one month into motherhood. I definitely wanted to document my thoughts and emotions because it will be interesting to see how I feel come two months in, or even a year in.

When you are pregnant you just think about this cute tiny little baby inside of you, you prepare the nursery, take labor classes, but I honestly never really pondered motherhood much. Not sure if I was just too busy working on house renovations or the fact that everyone tells you motherhood is great, so why think about it much? I’m not saying it isn’t great, it’s just a lot different than I imagined.

I’d say the first month was pretty tough. You have all these crazy emotions, baby blues, you are exhausted, you start missing your old life when you didn’t have a baby needing your attention about 23 hours a day. The best way to describe my emotions were that I was jealous of all my friends who didn’t have babies yet, and if they were pregnant I wanted to reach out to them and tell them the honest truth about having a baby… get ready, your life is about to change and it’s not all rainbows.

I came across this article and I read it a lot, it puts into word my exact feelings the first month: What Nobody Tells You About the First Three Months of Motherhood. The whole “sometimes it won’t feel worth it” and the  feeling like an ungrateful jerk” part really were how I felt. Many times I thought about what it would be like if we waited a few more years to have a baby… and then the mommy guilt sets in.

When I was going through some of the baby blues, I also read this blogpost The Baby Blues, My Fear of Pampers and Finding Joy Again. While I wasn’t facing depression, just the normal baby blues, this girl reminded me about the true purpose of motherhood. She also reminded me about how God’s called us to be Emerald’s parents and he picked us to raise her and how he is changing my priorities to make room for her and focus on us as a family. Suddenly my perspective changed, in that it wasn’t just all about me and my old life and how it is no longer existent, but about this new chapter in life where God’s growing me into Emerald’s mom. I’m now reminded how much Emerald needs me and her dad, that I need to be there for her. I think the thought of being needed changes so many things, everyone wants to be needed.

I’ve also learned to stop googling all my questions about babies, milk supply, and motherhood and really start praying and asking for God’s help and guidance. Sure I can try all these things to make my baby take a nap, but I can also ask God to help show me what she needs to she can nap. And I need to remind myself of this everyday.

So for me, motherhood is about changing your perspective from looking at myself to thinking about what’s best for her. It didn’t come easy, but I’m there and only expecting things to get better. There is a season for everything, and this too shall pass were things that I remind myself, so that I cherish where we are now, but look forward to where we are going.

Fourth of July 2014

My family got together to celebrate my dad’s 53rd birthday and the fourth of July. Now that there are three babies and one toddler we try to just all hang out at the house since it’s a challenge to get them all out of the house well-fed, well-rested and happy at the same time!

We managed to have a pretend slumber/pajama party on July 3rd!

On the 4th we headed to the Pewaukee parade and fireworks and grilled out at our house in between, since it’s such a short walk!

And a few outtakes…

 

Drew’s First Father’s Day

Emerald came just in time for us to celebrate Drew for Father’s Day! He was a dad for less than a week, but he already took his job seriously and was taking great care of us both in the hospital! We love you!

We also took this quick video on Father’s Day – we’re hoping to keep documenting little moments like this throughout the year.

 

Emerald – The First Few Days

Emerald’s birth day was such a blur as I described in another post. Because I had a c-section we expected to stay in the hospital from Tuesday-Friday. Days were filled with nurses checking in on us lots, feeding Emerald, getting rest and a few visitors.

The first evening the nurses had me up and walking and taking a few steps. The first time I got up I was so nauseous that I threw up 🙁 The next morning at about 6am they had me walking the halls and I felt so much better, granted I was on a lot of pain meds. Tuesday they also were able to remove the catheter, IV, and all the other machines that kept me tied to the bed. It was so great to get up and shower and feel like a human again. From there on out, the pain was minimal and I was moving pretty good, and was much improved as the days went on. I just had to remember to slow down a bit and take it easy.

Emerald had lots of visitors throughout our stay in the hospital as well as the first few days at home. Sometimes we remembered to get out our camera, sometimes we totally forgot. I blame sleep deprivation. Also, we tried to snap a few family photos the first few days…

39 Weeks!

Hello 39 weeks!

This is officially my last weekly photo, can’t believe we are so close to meeting our baby girl. It hasn’t quite hit me yet, but I’m sure it will! It’s kind of crazy thinking this belly of mine that I’ve had for 9 months will soon be gone and we get to hold her on the outside.

Our next 48 hours are filled with last minute cleaning and finishing packing our hospital bags!

Charleigh Mae

Last weekend, I got to go down to Joliet to meet my new niece Charleigh Mae who at the time was 3 days old. It wouldn’t be a complete weekend if we didn’t attempt to take some newborn photos of her. We tried, but we weren’t very successful because she wasn’t thrilled…

She even thru up the middle finger to show how she felt about these photos. 

The day after I left, my sister was able to take some of her own with her new lens after I showed her a few tricks and she got some great shots. I edited them for her….

Can’t wait until our little girl is here too and they can be BFFs!

35 Weeks

Our baby girl is 35 weeks!

This week was quite a week! On Wednesday our baby girl’s BFF cousin was born and we got to see our little girl’s 3D ultrasound on Thursday, then Saturday got to meet little Charleigh Mae.

Here are some snapshots of how our baby girl is growing. Unfortunately we weren’t able to get a great shot because she is still breech and had her feet and hands in her face the entire time. Oh well, I guess we’ll just have to be surprised when she’s born!

Since I’m trying to save up all my vacation time, I didn’t get to be at the hospital when Charleigh arrived like I did for Reese. So Saturday my dad and I drove down to spend the day down there and came back Sunday morning. We had a little quality auntie time and also tried to get some newborn photos of her, however 3 day old babies don’t always cooperate. This one I think is one of my faves, but I still need to sort thru the rest and will post those later!

PS It’s a lot harder to hold babies and toddlers with a big belly!

Christmas 2013

Wow… just realized I never even looked through my photos from Christmas or posted them on here. I’m going to use the whole pregnancy card, I’m sure I was exhausted or forgot. I also realized I didn’t take very many photos this year, and I think I’ll use the same excuse. Sooo blast from the past of a few months ago, here was our Christmas…

Now that I’m thinking back too, Christmas was when we told our family that it was a girl. It would have been fun to capture their reactions on camera, but yea, that didn’t happen. Hopefully next year will be better, since I’ll want to document baby girl’s first christmas.

Schirpke Maternity Photos – Baby #2

My sister and her family were here for the past weekend (she and Reese are still here for my shower), so we thought it was the best chance we’d have to take maternity photos before Charleigh Mae arrives in early May. Here are a couple of my favorites…

Taking photos in winter and with an almost two-year-old limits you greatly, oh well… it forced us to get creative!

16 Weeks

16 weeks yesterday! Since my sister is in town for Christmas, we thought it would be fun to take a comparison photo. Here she is 22 weeks, crazy the difference of 6 weeks, but this is also her second baby, so I’m not surprised.

I just keep telling myself that I’m not showing as much because of how good my ab muscles were, ha.