So, Lily had her first birthday at the beginning of this month. I actually find it hard to say, her first birthday. I didn’t think it would come so fast. I remember at the beginning saying, ‘I can’t wait until her first birthday, it will be so exciting!’ Now that it has come and gone I am wishing I could just go back a little and have my itty bitty baby back.
It has been quite a year! A lot of change in my life. Going from just me, being who I want to be when I want to be it, to being ‘Mommy’, being who she needs me to be when she needs me to be it. It’s hard to keep up with her, to be what she needs all the time and still have time for me to be me. Not to mention trying to grasp the idea of being a stay at home mom. This is something I have always wanted to be, but it is also something I didn’t have, so I am trying to figure it out without much to go on other than movies and television. Please, don’t take that the wrong way, my parents were amazing parents and I would not have wanted anything different growing up. However, growing up, I always thought it would be really cool to have a Mom who stays home and makes a sit down dinner every night and makes brown bag lunches everyday (although, truth be told, I wouldn’t have liked it if I had had it). But, having had two working parents and a very busy extra-curricular schedule for the whole family, we rarely got to have those sit down meals, and my mother always joked about how KFC, Swiss Chalet, Steak and Stein, etc, were ‘her cooking’. So, I am now, trying to learn to balance my child, the housework, the cooking and myself. Unfortunately, I still have not completely figured it out. I have some good days, and some not so good days, and then, some downright terrible days.
A full year later and I can still remember all the details of Lily’s labour and birth as though they were yesterday; with all the same fog that I could a full year ago! I still remember the heart-wrenching pain I felt when the doctor came into the hospital on February 1, 2012 and told me that I would have to have an epidural because I would likely be having a c-section. It still brings me to tears when I think about it. But, I also remember the amazing over-powering love and joy I felt when they finally laid Lily on my chest for the first time; the feeling of all the stress, anger, and hurt that I had been feeling just vanishing into thin air as if I had imagined it all. Some of those feelings (the latter, obviously), I never want to forget as long as I live, others I would rather be a distant memory. I remember the anxiety I felt as a new Mom; feeling so ill-prepared to take care of this new little person; feeling frustrated that I was getting different information (and at times no information) from the nurses at the hospital; and feeling like the worst mother in the world for not being able to do the things that should come naturally to me as a woman (giving birth and breastfeeding); worrying about this tiny new person and what effect it might have on her to not be breastfed. Now, it all seems so silly. We are her parents, we will do what is right for our baby because she is our baby, and maybe it’s not what it says in the books, or ALL OVER THE WALLS IN THE HOSPITAL, but it is what was right for our family. Oops. You might have sensed some lingering frustration there. I just don’t get it! Yes, breastfeeding is ideal, there are millions of benefits for it, but can’t you put up just one sign that says, ‘if it doesn’t work for you, it’s okay’, or, ‘formula fed babies and their families are welcome here, too’? I guess a year wasn’t enough time for me to get over that, either.
Well, in any event, we got through those rough days of feeling inadequate and insecure and Lily has developed wonderfully and is very healthy in spite of being on formula. She rolled over the first time, from her stomach to her back, before I even felt like I had started recovering from my surgery. All of her gross motor milestones were hit ahead of ‘the norm’; although I wonder if the textbook ‘norm’ is accurate anymore. She didn’t gain weight as quickly as I would have liked, and that worried me a little, but I didn’t worry too much because she was always a very happy baby; AND, she was growing taller and taller, she was just a tall skinny thing is all. I now look back and think it might have been that she didn’t enjoy her formula; she has yet to drink more than a 6oz bottle of formula in one sitting, but she has had as much as 9oz of cow’s milk in one sitting; since starting the cow’s milk, she has started getting that little belly you always expect a baby to have.
So, it has been a very eventful year. She went from barely holding her head up; to rolling and sitting up supported; to sitting up unassisted and pulling herself around the room on her tummy; to crawling and standing holding on to things; to walking assisted and pulling herself up to standing; to walking unassisted and climbing up and down stairs (yes, she climbs DOWN stairs). She went from not being able to hold her own bottle; to holding her own bottle; to drinking from a sippy cup and being spoon fed purees; to feeding herself finger foods; to feeding herself table foods; to drinking from a straw; to using a fork and spoon to eat occasionally with help. She has slowly learned to communicate with us using signs and a little bit of language and she is picking more and more up everyday. Even watching the way she interacts and plays with her toys has changed immensely over the last year. It is so amazing watching the amount she has developed over the year. This is exactly why I wanted to work with infants, they amaze me, to be able to learn so much and to develop so many new skills in such a short amount of time, absolutely amazing!
Before
After
Now, Lily will continue to develop and learn new skills at an amazingly rapid rate, but there will be fewer and fewer firsts in her life. She will continue to grow bigger and one day I will no longer be able to pick her up. She will never be my little baby again, and that makes me very sad. She WILL, however, be a pretty amazing child, and hopefully continue to be amazing for her whole life.
Sitting here, looking through the pictures of her from a year ago, and thinking of all the things she has learned, it is very hard to believe. I suppose I will leave it at that. I am one astonished Mom!