Life After Baby:

There have been some unbelievably amazing days, and some push-me-to-the-edge of a cliff kind of days, and if I (or any other mom) make it look easy, trust me, it's harder than it appears, (and it's much more amazing than it appears!) The joys of Motherhood are incredible beyond my comprehension. It blows my mind.

Mini Dustin

Being parents together has given us deeper intimacy:

I love my husband more, I respect him more, fatherhood has made him way sexier, I've fallen head over heels for the Daddy he's become, he's this incredible pillar of selflessness and patience that I never knew he could be and I want to have like a thousand more of his babies! Or maybe one more and a couple adopted....we'll see. Our marriage has grown so much. The number one thing about my husband that I love most since we had Conrad, is that he constantly anticipates our needs. He's always aware of what's going on around him and we are his main focus. When I think about what it means to be a good wife, he is my example. I want to be for him, what he is for me.

The Baby Blues:

It's no secret that I deal with depression. Post-baby depression, pre-baby depression, everything depression and all of it in between. I'm either all or nothing. All happy and beaming with joyous- joy beams shooting out of my head like Mother Mary, or all confused, sad, disappointed, bitter, and frustrated with the world around me. I have struggled to get my emotions under control as my body is trying to balance out from being bombarded by hormones during pregnancy. I'm still a basket case. Can't there be a happy medium?

Strangers can be your best friends:

I know I may be a "bad" mother for it, but I usually don't care if my sons pacifier goes plummeting to it's demise at Old Navy floor and gets germs on it "God made dirt!"....I don't care if he swaps spit with other babies, or gets hugs from a granny who saw me frazzled at the air port when the little dude wanted sleep, and I felt guilty for dragging him all over and making his life hard, and I was on the verge of tears myself because I couldn't satisfy him right then. So she stroked his little head and talked to him while he screamed on the changing table in the bathroom, and then offered to hold him so I could pee! (Yes, I let a stranger hold my baby while I peed, OK, I admit, it's not the smartest thing, but whatever. She didn't look like a baby snatcher! I would have held her baby too so she could pee if she needed....)

There are bigger fish to fry!

Avocado nose

Last week when we were flying home from Texas, I had 30 minutes to pump before we boarded. So I jetted for the ladies room and was relieved to find an outlet. There must have been 15 or so ladies waiting in line. So I parked my bag, took out my janky breast pump, plugged that sucker in and did what I had to do. (I can't wait to throw that piece in the dumpster, I'm SO over it!) One older lady who was waiting in line said to me in her southern accent, "They really should have a little couch in here for you girls! That's just not right havin' you squat down there like that!" She was sweet. Then once she broke the ice, every mom in line one by one, proceeded to tell me all the crazy places they'd breast fed, or pumped. It was one of my more interesting moments of motherhood. (A side note, when I came out of the bathroom, my Dad was holding Conrad who was as red as a beet, screaming and flailing his little pissed self all over. That's when I went back to the bathroom and was greeted by the granny who held him while I peed.)

I'm a work in progress :

I write this because as of late, I have come to yet another epiphany of who I am and who God wants me to become. A light bulb went off in my pea sized brain this week when I realized that I have been trying to always have it all together. It's impossible. I HAVE ISSUES.

I want to share my life, and tell silly stories of motherhood's up's and downs, of strollers rolling into ditches, and having shitty days where I want to break away and sell my baby on the black market, or drop kick my husband, or buy a life time supply of dark chocolate to melt and bath in, but then there is reality. I may blow my situations out of proportion and poke fun at the struggles I am confronted with as a young, first time mama, but I write these things in an attempt to make other moms not feel so lonely in their struggles. AND, motherhood can be an extremely lonely place to be at times. It's ok to fail miserably at it, because we're all in the same boat. So laugh at me, and don't feel so bad! I'm not perfect. I make mistakes, I don't have it all together. I'm very impatient, I feel insecure about countless things and I have to rely on Christ to snap me out of my deep pits of depression and confusion when they decide to show up and throw a wrench in my day/month. Pride, envy, jealously, and fear have been spewing out of every orifice of my being as of late, and for that I need forgiveness. Being a Mom Stretches and Grows you beyond what you thought you were capable of.

There Is No Such Thing As a Perfect Mother:

It's easy to get discouraged when I see other moms who seem to have all of their ducks in a row, and ALL of my ducks are running as fast as their little webbed feet can take them away from me- and I can't catch up to grab them and put them back in line. Little bastards! But seriously. It's not as easy as us Moms make it look. We could read all of the books and do all of the research, but it will never fully prepare us. In my attempts to love on other Moms, It's been important to me to be as transplant as possible. I know how isolating it can be. Without Jesus we can never make life work. I don't claim to be a "perfect" mother, or have a "perfect" marriage. None of us do!

We all have things we could work on. Although we try to have it all together, we sometimes fake it well, no one is buying it. No money, or vacations, or success, or health, or possessionscan give us fulfillment. It is only but for the grace of God that I can make it through a single day (without shaking my baby...kidding.) because lets just face it, MOTHERHOOD AIN'T NO JOKE! IT'S HARD! Period.

These are all things I'm learning.

Having a child is satisfying:

The feeling I get when I'm feeding my baby and he reaches up to touch my face, pull my eye lashes, squish my nose and grab my lip....that's what makes my heart melt.

Life is so purposeful and so much fun!

Little screamer

God is Good:

I'm glad that He has promised to not leave me as I am, but change me as I stay close to Him. I won't always be who I am today. God is humbling me, teaching me that I don't have to measure up to any one's standards but His standards, and If I do onto my baby and husband as I would do onto Him, and worship Him by laying my life down for these crazy dudes daily and never give up, I will be the wife and mom he's made me to be.

What does DAD have to say about his new life:

We talk a lot about postpartum depression for woman, we all have our horrible (or wonderful) labor stories, and we all are striving to be "good" parents, but seldom do we talk about what a DAD goes through after baby's home is no longer a warm cozy womb, but a cold, bright outside world with two young idiots who don't know their heads from their asses, (slipping on the hallway rug, running into the kitchen trying to satisfy a hungry baby with warm milk in the wee hours of the night....) and so is our life! We don't focus on the HUGE life change a Dad goes through. Most Dad's will acknowledge that the relationship with their offspring wasn't realuntil they could actually hold their baby, when Moms have a whole 9 months to get to know their baby, and get ready for it.

Later in the week you will hear from my better half on what "Life After Baby!" has meant for him. He doesn't ramble as much.