Parenting an infant after struggling to conceive
The struggle to conceive is not the only struggle (and parenting an infant during a pandemic was a unique situation)
After Hannah was born, I was so grateful to have her be here and be a healthy, beautiful baby girl. Everyone was so thrilled for us that after our long (about 3.5 years) struggle to conceive we had the answer to our prayers. But that was not a pass to avoiding struggles in early parenthood. The first thing I found out as a first time mom is that even when you wanted to be a mother so badly for so long, it is okay to have moments where you feel like you’re having a hard time. The first month was a huge learning curve- somehow even though Sam and I are huge planners we had never really talked through how we were going to divide the workload of caring for our sweet little girl, and it was hard. In the early days we were both on leave, and it was all a blur because all of us were barely sleeping at night (Hannah was great at sleeping during the day but not so much at night, and I never was able to nap much during the day). I either breastfed her or every now and then she had a pumped bottle so I could get a little extra sleep for the first two months or so. I remember getting 4 or 5 hours of broken sleep (which I have a track record of not needing more than 4-6 hours of sleep to function well, but having my sleep be broken up into 1-2 hour chunks was exhausting even for someone who doesn’t sleep a lot). I also had anxiety and intrusive thoughts for the first couple of months where I would imagine something bad happening to her (her falling on the sidewalk or hitting her head), so I was thankful that with more family around at the holidays, my anxiety seemed to diminish because I was able to get help from others (shout out to my sister-in-law Tamika for letting me sleep a full night at Thanksgiving and Christmas while she got up with Hannah the whole night). By Christmas we were trying to prepare for me to go back to work (I took 10 weeks of unpaid leave, and Sam had FMLA paid leave but was still working some off duty jobs in November and December so that we could finish finally paying off my student loans- our final payment was 12/27/2019 after months of throwing any extra money we had at my loans). I was pumping more so that we could see if I could pump enough for Sam to feed her bottles of breastmilk for the first four weeks I was back at work before she was going to start attending day care (she would be attending with me at the same center where I have worked since the week before I found out I was pregnant with Hannah). We quickly figured out that it didn’t seem like I was getting enough pumping to actually be able to get her enough milk for a full feeding. We did a few trial run days where I didn’t nurse during my usual work hours, we just fed her breastmilk I had pumped the day before, and it seemed like she wasn’t getting enough. So after Christmas, we discussed combo feeding and supplementing with formula to take the pressure off needing to be so worried about how much I was able to pump at work. Eventually she would mostly get formula at school, but I nursed at night until she decided she was done nursing at 10 months old (she randomly decided she was done about midway through September of 2020).
My first day back was January 6, 2020, and her first day at school wasn’t until February 3, 2020, so Hannah had time at “daddy day care” before coming into the infant room. I felt more comfortable coming back to work knowing she was with Sam, but it was still a hard transition back, especially the first week. On my second day back in the classroom, I remember having a tough time where the 2-3 year olds in my class were testing the boundaries. At the time I had no co-teacher because there were only 8 kids in the class, but I was having an especially tough time at nap time. I remember tearing up and saying something like “maybe I should just go back home to my baby,” and a sweet girl in my class told me, “I don’t want you to go.” That was enough for me, and I called for help from the director so that we could pull it together. I ultimately liked being back at work even though it was a hard transition.
Once Hannah started being at work with me, I was at the end of the hall, and I trusted my coworkers Angie and Francesca who cared for her. Hannah wasn’t the best napper because it was so different from our home setting, but I was reassured that she seemed happy albeit tired from being at school. Then in March of 2020 the pandemic abruptly changed our experience at school. I was moved into the 1 year old room because so many parents of the 2-4 year olds pulled their kids out that they had one class for those kids. Hannah was moved into infant B (the classroom where I currently work which is normally for 6-12 month olds). Angie was nervous about her being 4 months old with all the older infants, but Hannah ended up starting to crawl at 6 months old, so she held her own. Thankfully our center never closed. I worked reduced hours in March/April, but by May all of us who wanted to work full-time did. By June some parents were returning to work, and I was able to move to the 3 year old class. Hannah was doing well and had started eating menu food at school. We finally started seeing my sister and her kids again starting at Naveed’s birthday party on Father’s Day even though we only met them in outdoor settings. We didn’t feel comfortable going to the beach in the summer, but we went in October and loved being able to be on a family trip with our 11 month old baby girl. It was her first trip with my parents, my sister and her family, and my mom’s parents. We had fun and thankfully we all stayed well.
Our beach trip also marked the moment before Hannah officially moved out of the infant room. They moved her up a few weeks early before she turned 1 because she was very mobile and always climbing on everything. It ended up being a blessing because once she was finally on a one nap schedule her sleep at night improved (don’t be like me and wait until your child randomly weans herself from nursing at night at 10 months to finally sleep train- Andrea or babysleepanswers is my favorite baby sleep consultant on Instagram, and I used her affordable course to sleep train Hannah without having to use cry it out or the Ferber method). There were of course a lot of challenges that first year, but ultimately (despite the pandemic), Hannah got to spend a decent amount of time with my family, and I realized that I enjoyed being able to work while also being a good mom to my sweet girl.
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I love this pic of you! I remember the mastitis at Christmas 😱 I had fun on our maternity leave play dates, I’m glad when they were their tiniest we did get to see you every week pre pandemic.