Mother Knows Best

Six weeks, y'all.

We made it six weeks!

The first week that Avery was home with us, I had another first-time mom friend come by to visit. She answered all my crazy, hormonally-driven and anxious questions, with tears from me. She also said, "I've told other moms this - just make it to six weeks. You can do crazy for six weeks."

Now, at not even one week old, the prospect of making it one more week sounded awful let alone 5 more weeks. But here we are, and we have made it. So what's the deal with six weeks?

I would say the biggest difference is that I'm "used to" having Avery around. I'm used to the routine - feed, play, nap every 3 hours, used to our method of feeding her (more on that later), can kind of understand her temperament and know when she's being unusually fussy - but not always why. We have become accustomed to staying home most nights and really only venturing out with Avery to church, small group, and appointments. We run errands alone on the weekends with the other one staying at home with her. We are not necessarily fully used to it, but it is definitely easier than it was the first week. We have found our lifestyle groove and while there's still things to work out, we get it now.

But as with all things parenting, the only constant is that things will always be changing!

I only have two more weeks of maternity leave left, and Avery will start daycare when she is a mere 2 months old. In some ways, I'm excited to get back to work that I love, have break from taking care of an infant all day (can be boring, can be exhausting), and starting our routine with both parents working and Avery at daycare. But I'm also bummed because I know I'll miss her and she's so young and small, I'll worry about her all the time. It will be hard to know it will take a few weeks to adjust to being in a brightly-lit room all day and trying to nap without a swaddle (eek!).

But I also want more time to get to know her. As of now, she puts herself to sleep within 15-20 min of me laying her in the crib. I love watching her fall asleep because I learn so much about how she soothes herself, her movements, which undoubtedly helps me at 2 am to know if she's awake or just passing from one REM cycle to the next. I also know that once they grow out of the newborn stage at 3 months, they begin to do a WHOLE lot more. I love playing with Avery and watching her interact more and more with the world - and learn new sounds besides crying!

I love researching and reading and I can probably say I've read most of the books on babies. It has helped me some - but what I really will miss is developing my mother's instinct. I know I will still be working on this for some time, but I really wish I could be there for all the moments she does something different and I have to react and make a decision on how to help her best. I want to make those mistakes, cry, and learn from them. My journey to motherhood has been mostly the Lord breaking me of being so by-the-book and learning to be flexible and go with the flow. And while I know I'll still be doing that in the times I have with her, I am missing out on a chunk of her life.

I'm pretty confident I will enjoy being a working mom. But I'm beginning to see why it's hard, why it's a sacrifice, and why America needs better maternity leave policies (ugh, don't get me started!). I just hope the next two weeks go slow enough to enjoy them but fast enough that they don't drag on.

And in another six weeks, I'll be looking forward to the next milestone: babyhood.