I’ve gotten so caught up in giving tips for classroom parties, recipes, and skincare recommendations, that I felt it was time to cut through the bullshit and get real. Like, really real. I was inspired after discussing with Vince all the things we had to learn the hard way as new parents. Our neighbor just had a baby and was asking advice, and I had one major piece. Do what you think is best for your baby, no matter what your friends or family try to enforce upon you. Looking back on my time as a new mom, I had a million questions so I would either ask my mom, scour the internet, or buy parenting books. My mom was always honest with me, but some things she just couldn’t remember. Whether my question was if I did something as a baby that I saw Lila doing, or if my mom felt the same way I was feeling, she couldn’t always remember because that was a long fucking time ago. So I’d ask friends or do my own research, and then I got to thinking, why do we withhold shit from new moms? I read every damn page of “What to Expect When You’re Expecting” and had dog-eared countless pages. But you know what? Those books don’t truly get into the nitty-gritty of new motherhood. So the gloves are off mother fuckers – it’s time to be real. After all, I promised a blog without all of the filters, and that means more than just letting F words fly…..

However you gave birth is just fine. Truly. Gave birth without an epidural? Cool! Had allllll the drugs? Also cool! Had a C-Section whether by choice or planned? Also fucking cool. Your birth story is YOUR birth story. If you chose to have that baby in a bathtub in your backyard with calming music playing and flowers everywhere, that’s awesome. If you wanted every amenity of a hospital that’s great too. Shortly after I had my first daughter, my friend who had a baby only a couple months older than mine invited me to join her moms group for dinner. Boy was that a fucking mistake. But I was all-in. Lila was about two months old and I was ready for a night out with other moms who could commiserate over the fact that I had nursing pads in my bra, my hair was falling out in clumps, and I had just finally stopped bleeding. (Yes new moms. You will have a period for a SOLID 6-8 weeks after you give birth. It doesn’t matter if you had a C-Section or not. All those periods you missed while pregnant – guess what? You get THEM ALL AT ONCE NOW! Enjoy! Buy plenty of pads. Like the giant ones that might as well be diapers. That’s one harsh truth you need to know right out of the gate. But I digress.) Anyhow, I was ready to have a sense of belonging among this group of new moms. But as soon as I arrived at the restaurant we were meeting at, my friend who was the only one I knew, was already sitting with a bunch of women around her. So I sat next to a mom I didn’t know and introduced myself. She asked me without even taking a breath how I had given birth. I told her how I had to have an emergency C-Section with Lila. I had a placental abruption that was causing such distress to Lila, that she was struggling to breath so they took her out after seven hours of labor and lots of heavy bleeding on my end. Well, according to this lovely asshat, that didn’t “count” as me giving birth. Until I gave birth through my vagina, my birth story didn’t count?! Never mind that I had my entire abdominal muscles cut into, all my organs pulled out, the baby removed, and my organs put back in. Yes, that’s graphic as fuck. It is also part of a C-Section. Look that shit up. I was immediately enraged and realized it had already begun – I was already being judged from the moment I gave birth as to how good of a mother I was. Which brings me to my next point.

You don’t need to join a moms group if you don’t want to. I never went back to that moms group again, and frankly was quite jaded from joining any other moms groups after that. Flash forward 3 years to me having Winnie, I lived on a new street with neighbors around my age who all had young kids themselves. Those moms have truly become my tribe. We see one of our kids trying to bike home from school and it’s started snowing? We pick him up in our car. We see another kid needs to sell shit for their football team? We buy it. One of us has a baby or loses a loved one? We set up meal trains and help them out in every way possible. Find your moms that do this. If you’re feeling judged by any group you’re in, get the fuck out and do it now. And never under-estimate the resource of using your own mother. I do so alllll the time.

You and your husband will not always be on the same page, but it doesn’t mean you won’t end up on the same team. This story is a long one, so hang in there, I swear it’s worth it. I discussed this at length last night with Vince before writing this blog, because the last thing I’d ever want him to feel is attacked. Vince was just like me, trying to do right by his new baby. When Lila was first born, I had it instilled by mom friends who already had kids that if you didn’t solely breastfeed, it was not good for the baby. Formula might as well have been Drain-O to these bitches. So I gave birth to Lila intending to breastfeed exclusively. Then BAM! Lila was here, and while I tried my best to solely breastfeed, at her two week appointment she had lost a fair amount of weight. Most babies do lose weight the first few days and then after a couple weeks, they start filling back out. Well she was just losing and losing weight. I knew it was me and my production issues and I was a stress-case about it. I would nurse her and then once she was done, I’d get out the pump and try to “trick” my boobs into thinking that I needed more milk to fill her up so that I’d produce more. I took fenugreek, I ate lactation cookies filled to the brim with brewer’s yeast, I drank 100 ounces of water a day, and I drank lactation tea. I went into the lactation consultant at Lila’s pediatrician’s office and she said that I was doing everything I could short of taking domperidone, a drug that is extremely expensive, and at the time was only offered at a pharmacy in Boulder because it hadn’t gone through clinical trials in the US and was technically banned here. (That might still be the case for all I know.) But I left the pediatrician’s office weighing that option. Through all of this I kept lamenting to my mom about my issues and she would remind me how when I was born, I had jaundice pretty severely. The doctor took me from her and kept me under heat lamps and just gave me formula from the get-go instead of bringing me to her to breastfeed. And I turned out fine. (Or at least I can’t say my issues stem from being formula fed!) I am extremely close to my mom so there was no shortage of bonding time just because I had a bottle in my mouth instead of a boob. But I had other voices in my head telling me to keep trying down the path of exclusively breastfeeding.

The next day I had my two-week check up with my OBGYN and Vince took me to it. I broke down. I told her how I was knocking my lights out nursing, pumping, and filling my body with every lactation supplement I could get my hands on, and all the while, Lila kept dropping weight. My OBGYN grabbed my hands, looked me in the eyes and said, “Susie – they make formula for a reason. It is perfectly safe and it is around for many reasons including this one. What matters is that your baby eats, it doesn’t matter if it’s breast milk or formula.” We walked out of her office and I immediately felt lighter. It was the first time in two weeks that I felt I could finally take a breath and succumb to using formula. We all got in Vince’s Subaru and I said, “I’m so relieved Dr. Jones said to just supplement with formula.” And he said, “Well I don’t know about that. I’d still like to do my own research.” Now I don’t say this lightly – I was depressed after I had Lila. I never got diagnosed with PPD or anything, but I knew I was in a hole. I don’t use the word “depression” lightly, as I lost my brother to suicide and don’t think words like depressed should be thrown around. (The F word is fine though, in case you were wondering.) But as Vince told me we needed to ” do our own research” I looked back at Lila in her car seat and thought, “If you weren’t relying on me, I would open the door of this moving car and fucking jump out of it.” It was the first time I ever wanted to just disappear from the Earth. I was at my lowest of lows and rather than handing me a life raft, I was handed a newborn baby and told to figure it out. Now, in fairness to Vince, he was figuring out being a new parent himself and was trying to do right by Lila. But I was sitting in the car thinking, we just had an actual doctor tell us to do it for the sake of ensuring Lila doesn’t starve to death and you want to research more?!?! Which brings me to the next secret.

Sometimes you will feel completely alone. In reality, I have wonderful support system. Vince is always in my corner but I also have my mom and Grandma as well as my cousin and close friends who I could rely on for ANYTHING. But I felt like I was on an island being told, “Do this but don’t do that. If you do this, you’ll mess up your baby. If you do that, you’ll mess up your baby. Don’t mess up, we’re all counting on you.” I am a total empath. I absorb the feelings of those around me as if they’re my own, so if I felt like I was letting Vince down by wanting to supplement with formula, then I was letting myself down. We argued that night about it and I tried to stress just how hard I was working on upping my supply. He wasn’t the one up all night with sore tits breastfeeding only to then pump immediately afterwards. He wasn’t ingesting a ton of shit into his body trying to force it to make more milk. And meanwhile, Lila was continuing to lose weight. Vince went into work the next day and was telling his co-worker, Owen about our troubles. Owen looked at him and said, “We supplemented with both girls! What are you doing? Just give her formula!” Vince sent me an IM from work telling me I could do it since Owen said it was okay. I felt a mixture of rage and relief. My fucking doctor said it was what we should be doing. My lactation consultant said it was what we should be doing. My mom said it was what we should be doing. But what swayed him was that his random co-worker said it was okay? Are you fucking kidding me?! I immediately went and made Lila her first bottle of formula and wept as she gobbled it down. I decided then and there that not only did I have to be a better advocate for her, but I had to be a better one for myself as well.

To this day I know Vince feels bad. He wasn’t trying to further push me under the current, he was just trying to figure out his own way and I don’t think he really knew just how bad I was sinking. When I asked him last night if he would be okay with me being honest in my blog about how I felt during that time, he was all for it. And that’s the thing. Even when we were at odds, he was still my teammate. He never was coming from a bad place or a place of dishonorable intentions. He, just like me, was trying to figure out how to navigate having a new person in our lives who was depending on us to not totally fuck her up. So Vince, thank you for letting me be honest. And I love you more than you know. You’re twice the dad most men are and it’s because you always put a lot of thought into how your decisions will affect our kids! And thank you for allowing me to be one hundred percent transparent in this blog!

You probably won’t feel fully like yourself again until you stop breastfeeding. I loved breastfeeding my girls for as long as I could. I loved looking down at their sweet faces as they were all cuddled in. But the reality of it is that you are physically tied down. Whether you’re having to pump at work, or even if you’re at home all the time and can just nurse on demand, it’s not always convenient. You truly are tethered to that spot for 10-15 minutes while the baby eats. (Or while you pump.) Once your baby is weaned, you feel free again. You no longer have to time events around nursing. You don’t have to take lunch breaks hiding in your car to pump and worry about keeping the breast milk cold. You’re just you again. You still have this adorable baby relying on you, but your life isn’t revolving around your boobs. Your body is now yours and yours alone and it is blissful. So if you’re in the midst of it and feel like you’re still not your old self, give it time, I promise you’ll get there.

Your friendships will change. I was the first in my family to have a kid and I worried that since I had to now give so much time to my new baby that my other relationships would suffer. I used to go out with my cousin Mary all the time. And it din’t have to be beers at a bar. We’d see movies, we’d go shopping, we’d have dinner. I worried that since she was still a swinging single and I was now a stay-at-home mom, we wouldn’t bond the same. While I did see her less (that’s just life with a kid) our relationship is as strong as ever. She loves my kids and while I love to hear of her Tinder dates, crazy passengers on her flights (she’s a flight attendant) and adventures, she also listens to my tales of first grade assholes, neighborhood happenings, and family trips. So while your friendships do alter a bit, the people you make time for will always make time for you. Your stories might not be as exciting as they once were, but I assure you, they’re just as relevant.

Your social life and activities will come to a halt for awhile. Vince and I crack up anytime we talk to new parents, because we were just as doe-eyed and ridiculously naive as them thinking that our social calendar wouldn’t get altered by just.one.kid. We laughed when one of my buddies swore he’d still be able to play on the kickball team with a new baby or that his wife would still do singing groups as much as she used to. Vince thought he’d still be playing basketball and volleyball with his co-workers once a week when Lila came onto the scene. We laugh now because now that the kids are older, we have found our way back to our old activities, and in a sense – ourselves. I play in a community band for fun twice a month, and Vince and the kids are my biggest groupies. Vince started a basketball league with some men in our neighborhood and loves playing again. But the thing is, those activities HAVE to take a back-burner to your kid(s) for awhile. And I mean AWHILE! I realize that when you already lose your identity as a new mom, that giving up your hobbies on top of that seems intense. But the harsh truth is that it just happens naturally, but it won’t last forever. I love playing in my little community band now where most of the members are retired. I get to play clarinet, my kids get to dance around in the park while I play, and Vince gets to witness me with my first great love – music. Those pieces will come back to you, just not while you’re navigating being a new mom. But don’t go into new motherhood thinking that your activities won’t take a hit, because they will. So mentally prepare for it and have a plan in action on when you WILL get back into the things that you love.

You will get loads of unsolicited advice. You might mention to your friend how your baby is keeping you awake as you co-sleep, to which she’ll tell you to put that damn baby in their own room. You may lament over the fact that your kid can’t break their pacifier habit and your mom friend will tell you to just toss them out and deal with the repercussions. Whatever it is you mention, you will get hit back with advice. And some of that advice will be helpful, and some of it you should just shove aside. People are just trying to help, so as long as you know they’re coming at you with good intentions, you can take away the pieces of advice you want to follow and toss the rest.

You will fuck up your kid in new, original ways. It’s human nature to want to do better for your kids than you had for yourself, even if you had a great life. I had a wonderful childhood. I take pieces of what I loved about my parents, like the fact that my mom was always an involved mom who supported me and came to every band function under the sun for instance, and I want to be the exact same mom for my kids. I loved that I always knew she was there for me – both literally in the audience, and also emotionally, like when I would be upset if I messed up an audition. She was a jock in high school so while me being in band was out of her wheelhouse, she still supported me in all my music ventures. So, I take that piece of her with me and am very involved with both my girls and their school activities. I am their room mom, on the PTO, on the SAC committee, and the hostess of frequent play dates. I also try to foster in them a sense of pride in doing what they love. I don’t care if they’re popular, I don’t care if they play sports, or do band, but I do care that they have a passion about something. But in doing something like that for my kids with good intentions, I often get way too over-protective of them. If a kid is mean to Lila at her school, I legit want to punch them in the face and react accordingly. I will tell Lila every single day before she goes to school how to handle mean kids in all kinds of different hypothetical situations. And then I do it too much and make her a wreck. Aha – I over-corrected. It happens. So here’s to us! Let’s fuck up our kids in our own ways, not in the same ways our parents fucked with us!

Lastly, it’s okay to ask for help. This seems like a no-brainer, but trust me, it’s advice many new moms don’t fully listen to. They want to be everything to their kid which means they take on the lion’s share of all that comes with that. But if your friend or neighbor offers to watch your kid so you can run the store without towing them with you, take them up on the offer. If your mom offers to babysit for a night so you and your husband can escape to dinner where you get to have an uninterrupted, adult conversation, do it! Don’t feel bad that they’re trying to help you. Accepting help does not make you weak. When Lila was born, my mom would come watch her so I could go nap and I’d feel guilty that I napped versus doing laundry or cleaning. Do NOT feel guilty. If you don’t take care of yourself and fill up your own bucket, you’ll have nothing left to give your kids or partner. If you need a nap because you were up all night with a sick kid, take a fucking nap. If you haven’t had your hair cut in six months because your’e too busy with your baby, get a sitter and get your hair done. You can’t fill anyone else’s bucket if yours is bone dry. I love that saying, “The days are long but the years are short” because it’s the most accurate description of life with kids. Those endless nights being up with a fussy baby will soon be a distant memory. Then the memories of them toddling around in diapers and saying things like “waterlemon” instead of “watermelon” will take over. Then they’re in preschool and you realize three years went by at warp speed. And then you’re getting them ready for grade school, so on and so forth. So just breath. I’ve been there. I see you. You are not alone.