What a fucking trip.
Everyone warns you about the level of love you experience with a child, I mean L I T E R A L L Y everyone told me. And although I believed them, I didn't fully comprehend just how intense it is.
Motherhood is all consuming.
There are so many things that they don't tell you about when you bring your baby home.
Let's start with the overwhelming amount of fear, yes I said fear. I mean every second of every day you are struggling to keep yourself awake just to make sure she is still breathing. Every cry sends you down a rabbit hole of "is she ok", "what if it's something else", "we need to go to the doctor". When she full-on spits up for the first time, you're so scared that you call the pediatrician at 11:48pm crying because you think she's struggling to keep milk down.
Fear is a scary emotion in general, but pair that with the pressure of a human life depending on you, a very serious lack of sleep and experience with new borns and it can wreck you.
With fear, comes self doubt. And with self doubt comes a whole tornado nasty internal talk.
It's so easy to beat yourself up, to think you're doing everything wrong. But, in a month or so you'll get more comfortable and at the end of the day how you parent, is perfect for your baby. As long as she (or he) is loved, safe, and healthy you're doing an amazing job. Every time she has a tantrum because a bottle isn't ready fast enough, I just talk to her. I remind myself that I'm new at this too, and it's ok to not be 100% on top of things.
Like the bathrooms in my house for example, I really couldn't tell you the last time they were cleaned. Or the floors... have I mopped them this week? Your guess is as good as mine dude.
Luna is only 6 weeks old, and yet I'm already a different person. I mean, I'm still a sarcastic asshole who uses the word fuck way too much. But, those things with never change. I'm different because I'm so aware of the need to plan for her future. I'm so conscious of our spending. I deleted my amazon app... like what? I know my limits with spending, and for me to have such easy access to scroll through and convince myself that we need something.. is NOT good for our bank account, lol.
I'm not sure about you, but I grew up in a household where we lived paycheck to paycheck. Or more like penny to penny. My parents would go grocery shopping once a week, and if we blew through the food by day 3.. guess what pickle sandwiches it was. Don't hate.. they're actually delicious.. bread, mayo, and pickles how could you go wrong? We weren't even aloud to take quarters out of my mom's jar because there were times when we had to use them for groceries. I will forever be so grateful for my childhood and the financial instability we experienced because it made me aware of what it was like to struggle.
There are so many things that I want to be able to provide for Luna, and the only way we can do that is if we stop what we're doing and make an actual plan to better our financial situation (see my post "No Spend Month" for more on this).
I could go on and on about all of the things I've realized I need to do in the past 6 weeks since her arrival, but y'all would get bored of my rambling and I don't want to subject anyone to that mess.
All in all, motherhood is a beast. A scary, incredible, magical beast. And I hope that anyone who wants to be a mother has the chance to experience it in some form or fashion in life.
Sending so much love to all of you.
xoxo
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