Motherhood: Expectation Vs. Reality

Lately I have been feeling the need to tap into all of my creative outlets. I don't know what planet is in retrograde but I can't seem to shake the need to read, write, draw, sing, braid, color, create. This post is currently (hopefully) going to fulfill the incessant feeling inside of me telling me to write. What better to write about than the most insanely life changing experience that has happened to me to date?

1. Timing

I always knew that I wanted to be a mother. It's one of those things that I could just sense from a young age, I could feel it in my bones that it was already a part of my identity, and until I became a mother I just felt like I was waiting around for something that was... missing. I thought that I didn't want any kids until I was at least 30 years old, had done all of the things on my bucket list and was completely, 100% ready.
 Little did I know that timing would be the first thing that surprised me about motherhood.
When I first met Blake I was just about to turn 21, and getting pregnant was easily the worst thing that I could imagine happening to me at the time. Alas, time is something that ceases to amaze me. By the time the wedding came, we had both grown up so much- I feel like we grew into different people. We started "trying" right away, and by February we found out I was pregnant. I wanted so badly (at the time) to be pregnant right away.
I constantly look back and thank God that it didn't happen any earlier than it did, or any later as a matter of fact. Even just a few months before getting pregnant we still had so much growth and learning to do as a couple. Any later, and I feel like I would have chickened out, gotten into trouble, or been too set in my ways. God has a way of knowing when we are ready: what we need and when we need it. I needed my Dean right when God gave him to me.

2. My life isn't over.

I know that sounds dramatic, but part of what scared me the most about motherhood was the idea that once I had a child, my own life would come to a stop. According to so many women that I talked to, I  supposedly would no longer care about hair, makeup, travel, fashion, home decor. I would say goodbye to my sex life, my body, buying things for myself, and all of my super far-fetched dreams.  I know that all sounds extreme but we as women truly do grow up believing (for the most part) that when we have a child we sacrifice everything else. And the worst part is, we glorify it. We are praised for saying things like "well, that doesn't happen any more" or "everything changes." I am not ashamed to say that I still care just as much about my appearance, my wardrobe, my hobbies, spending time with my friends, and my outrageous goals as I did before Dean was born. If anything, I care about them more! I want him to see a mother who is fulfilled, loves herself, and is her own person. If he sees his mother going after what she wants most and living her best life, what's to stop him from living his life the same way and hopefully finding a wife who takes care of herself and is just as motivated? If we stop our lives for our kids they are going to think the world revolves around them, and that it setting them up for failure because it certainly does not. Self love and individuality is so, so healthy.

3. How fast it goes by.

I know this shouldn't have been a surprise because on a regular basis everyone and their mother says "They grow up so fast!" But, it's true. They do grow up. SO. FAST.
It is still such a trip to me how I can close my eyes and picture Dean's littol newborn hands and feet and tiny littol body in my arms as I'm sitting in the rocking chair crying postpartum happy tears all over him. It felt so permanent in the moment. The entire newborn stage felt so incredibly permanent. Even pregnancy felt so permanent. I had a baby and he would be my baby forever. I gave birth to a baby and I would have a baby for a long time, or so I thought. I genuinely feel like I blinked and I have a 9 month old. This concept gives me a panic attack when I think about it because I know some day he will be my big giant 18 year old baby but it also is a comforting thought.
If everything goes by fast, so do the hard times. The nights that he was waking up every 2 hours went by fast, looking back. The days that he was crying from teething went by fast. Even the days where I was recovering postpartum went by in the blink of an eye. I wish I would have known that the hard times didn't have to feel permanent either.

4. Less anxiety.

For the most part, my anxiety has lessened tremendously since baby boy got here. I just... I feel like he is so great and amazing and such a blessing that all of the minute shit doesn't matter any more. I used to worry about the most insignificant little crap that genuinely doesn't phase me now. Don't get me wrong, I have my days and I have my triggers but for the most part I don't sweat the small stuff like I used to. I have bigger problems, bigger things to worry about. I don't have the time or energy to worry about insignificant details or opinions like I used to. It's beautiful, really.

There are so many details that were surprising to me, but I'll save that for another post. Baby products, pregnancy shockers, postpartum surprises, anything like that I can go into if you guys would like! I feel like there is so much that happens during the ride that's motherhood that isn't discussed and I am an OPEN BOOK.

As always, thank you for reading.
Like, from the bottom of my heart. If you have ever complimented my blog or instagram or hair posts or whatever, thank you. It genuinely makes my heart happy that someone even takes the time out of their day to click on this link and read these words. I'm awkward and bad at showing it but it genuinely makes my day.

lovelovelove,
Tanner

Newborn Sleep & Nursery Tour

All About Newborn Sleep/ Nursery Tour

I will start this post with a disclaimer: I am in no way a sleep expert (obviously), and I do not think that any of the methods I'm about to talk about are the "right way" or the "only way" to do things. This is what has worked for my family, and I get so excited about this topic because it has made our life so easy. If any other method of sleep training (or no sleep training) has worked for you, great. I don't judge anyone who doesn't follow these methods, we're all just doing our best and what we think is best for our families.

I figured since we are talking about sleep this week I should also turn this into a nursery tour! Dean has slept in his nursery since he was 3 weeks old; that's early, I know, and I will explain that later. Some things are missing in this tour from when he was a newborn being that he is now almost 7 months old. A few items that we have stored away are the Dock a Tot, liners for the changing table (boy mom probs), and the Swaddle Me swaddles.

My fascination with getting a child to sleep through the night early on started when I found out that I was pregnant. As long as I can remember people have told me that once you have a baby you will be severely sleep deprived, but that it's worth it. It was made to seem as an inevitability that I wouldn't be able to escape. It was also something that women talked about as if it were a badge of honor. Most parents would seem to brag about the sleep deprivation. This scared the shit out of me. I am a 7 hours of sleep per night kinda girl. MINIMUM. There is no way that I could proudly announce to someone that "I don't sleep." The following steps are the order in which I did my research and applied it to our lifestyle, and I'm proud to say that for the most part I have gotten 8 hours of sleep per night since he was 6 weeks old.

1. One of my clients mentioned to me that she had read a book called Bringing Up Bebe, which talks about French parenting. The main point of the book is that the French, Parisians specifically, manage to have their babies sleeping through the night by 4 weeks old. If someone mentions that their month old baby isn't sleeping they ask "well, what's wrong with him?" That's right, a whole entire group of people are part of this normality where sleep deprivation with a newborn is practically unheard of. This blew my mind, and so my determination to have a similar situation began. 

• The most important thing that I took away from this book was "le pause." What I didn't know was that babies cry out in their sleep, even if they are not awake. It is part of their natural sleep cycle. French women tend to wait a couple of minutes before rushing to soothe their newborn. What do American women typically do? We immediately jump up at the first sign of distress and feed them. We automatically assume that they are hungry or need our comfort. The reality is that we end up creating a bad habit, excessive dependence, and do more harm than good. This book has so many intriguing outlooks on French culture vs. American culture when raising children and if this is even remotely interesting to you definitely give it a read or a listen. I tend to listen to books on Audible now instead of reading a hard copy because I don't have as much free time as I used to.

2. Babywise was the next stop on my research journey. I have always heard good things about this method so I downloaded it on Audible. This is how I learned the pattern throughout the day that new parents are supposed to follow in order to teach their newborn structure and to prepare them for overnight success. My mom used this with both my sister and me, and she said it gave her some decent guidance. 

• This book was a tremendous success for me in some ways and a disaster in others. I love that it taught me the pattern of wake, eat, play, sleep. This way Dean learned how to soothe himself to sleep without needing to be fed to sleep. The negative was that I took this book and its schedules literally. When he was first born I would consider myself failing if Dean didn't wake up exactly according to the Babywise sample schedules. I know now that it's impossible to follow a minute by minute schedule, and I wish I could have avoided that guilt from the beginning. Now, when I talk about a schedule, it's more about keeping consistent feeding and nap windows that are appropriate for their age. That being said, they do have some amazing tips for first time mamas. 

3. Pinterest research GALORE. I found so many great articles on Pinterest where mamas shared their tips on how they got their babies to distinguish day from night. Another fact that I didn't know before all of this research: sleep patterns are established in the womb. When our babes are in our tummies our constant movement during the daytime rocks them to sleep. When we finally lay down to sleep at night, they are awake and active. It makes so much sense that when they are born their internal clocks are backwards- this is all they have known! This article that I found on Pinterest was incredibly helpful and is very similar to what we ended up doing. 

• What I learned here is that babies love schedules. They like predictability. This means feeding them full meals at regular intervals, giving them naps at regular intervals, and giving them playtime and attention regularly. It is also essential that nap time is very different from bedtime at first. When he was a newborn we had Dean napping and hanging out in the living room during the day, blinds open, with the tv on. At night the lights were down, it was quiet, the sound machine was on, etc. This is one of the reasons that we moved him into his own room at 3 weeks old. He would go down for bed around 7:00 at night in the bassinet in our bedroom. Because it was so early we would watch tv, and we started to notice that the lights and sound from the tv, from us talking or even just turning over would wake him up. Moving him into his own room was a game changer. Now that he's older he takes his 3 naps in his nursery.

4. The fourth, last, and most important point of all of this is Taking Cara Babies. Ah, where do I begin? I did all of this research for 9 months. I read, read, and read. I was confident, I'm not going to lie. In all reality, nothing can prepare you for newborn life. It wasn't miserable, in fact it's still possibly my favorite stage of motherhood so far, but it wasn't as cut and dry as I thought it would be. Dean was not naturally a good sleeper. For the first two weeks (give or take) he woke up every two hours on the dot without fail. He had a great schedule, I did everything "right", and he still woke up every two hours to eat. He would eat and immediately go back to sleep but it was still hard. By the 5 week mark he was only waking up once a night to eat, which is great, I'm aware! Regardless of that quick progress I still couldn't get the damn French out of my head. I had seen several bloggers promoting the @TakingCaraBabies Instagram and just assumed that she had paid them to do so. One of them posted one day that she actually had paid for the class and that Cara refuses to give her class away for free to anyone because she wants everyone to know it's the real deal. That got my attention.

I linked her website at the beginning of this step, and if you are pregnant, have a baby, or plan on being pregnant in the near future do yourself a favor and read her blog. This is how my obsession with her started and I will forever be grateful. Like, if I see her in person I will hug her. I scoured her blog, which is free, and every tip that she gave I applied. Every tip helped. Because of the success that we had just from her blog tips I decided to finally pay for her class. That was the game changer. After watching her videos all day long and applying them to our schedule, Dean slept his first 10 hour stretch. That night. It was amazing! I know not everyone has this level of success right away, but we did and I am still so happy to report that he has not woken up for a meal since he was 6 weeks old.

• If I had to choose to only take away one thing from Cara's class it would be her method for soothing an overtired baby. It's impossible to describe in in writing, but basically she has you swaddle, bobble their head a little (to mimic the walking motion that they felt in the womb), use a sound machine or shush them, and use a pacificier. It sounds so simple but the way she has you do it works like magic. We thought Dean had colic until we took this class. I had no idea that babies being "over tired" was a thing, and that it caused them to cry and be inconsolable as if they had colic. All of his "colic" symptoms went away once we took her class.

***All natural baby products courtesy of @arbonne.with.roslyn, thank you Roslyn! Our little man has sensitive skin and any Johnson & Johnson products make him break out in a rash. We love Arbonne, Burts Bee's, and Honest. 

Honestly guys, I have so much more that I could say about this topic because of all of the research I've done and because it's such a process, but I think I've covered the basics. If you have any questions feel free to ask on here or Instagram! I can talk about it all day haha. Also, if you have any decor questions let me know and I'll be happy to let you know where everything is from! Most items are from Target or Home Goods. 

Before I end this, here's a little realness for you LOL. Our little man is such a good napper but he has major FOMO and gets sad when he knows he's about to nap. Sorry buddy! haha

As always, thank you SO MUCH for reading!

lovelovelove,

Tanner

Workin' Moms

Alright guys, I promised that I would do a "grab a glass of wine and let's talk about some real shit" post so here it is. I've got my glass of wine (it may or may not be my first), and I'm about to dive into some real shit. This blog post is coming to you on a Monday night rather than the Sunday that was promised, all thanks to- you guessed it: work.

Let me just start this post by saying this: I am a working mom. I love my work and I love being a mama. But this in NO WAY means that I think being a stay at home mama is not work. I stayed home with Dean for 4 weeks without working, and although I enjoyed those irreplaceable early days with my newborn, I know for a fact I don't have it in me to be a stay at home mom. This isn't because I think I'm better than anyone, it's because I am not mentally strong enough to handle it. Taking care of another human being all day, every day, is such selfless hard work and you have to truly know yourself and respect yourself on another level to do it. Stay at home mamas, I respect you more than you know.

With that being said, being a workin' mom is also hard work. It is extremely rewarding, but it is also exhausting and takes a different type of mental strength. Disclaimer for all of you: I only work 3 1/2 - 4 days a week. They are long, 10 hour days and most of the time I don't even schedule enough time to eat but I do spend about half of the week at home. Full time working moms, you are the SHIT. I literally don't know how you do it and if you have any magical wisdom please share it with me in the comments.

EDIT: I originally started this post as an attempt to give you guys insight on how I do it all. In reality, this weekend brought to light a very important point: I can't do it all. I definitely overbooked myself, overworked myself, and I definitely had a mental breakdown today. I debated on being this honest because I don't want it to come off as negative or complaining but the more I talk to my friends the more I realize that this is what most other women want: honesty. SO before I give you my pointers on how I usually do it all, know this: I have breakdowns. I feel overwhelmed. I struggle with anxiety. I rip my husband's head off for no good reason. I am human. We all are. Do not be fooled by the perfect picture that social media paints.

This post is in one way an appreciation post for all of my mama friends (and future mama friends) out there but I would also like to give you guys some pointers that I've picked up on along the way to make life run smoothly as I attempt to balance work and home.

 Here is some advice to any moms returning to work or having a hard time doing it all:

• Pick your battles wisely.
• It honestly blows my mind but I have been the most productive I've ever been since becoming a mother. I am naturally a HUGE procrastinator (sorry, Mom) and when it was just Blake and me I had all of the time in the world to cook, clean, work out, manage my business, etc. What happens when a procrastinator has all the time in the world? You guessed it, things rarely get done. Now that I have Dean I take every bit of spare time I get and use it wisely because I don't know when I will get another chance to do it. Would I rather sit on my phone and scroll Instagram? Yes. What do I want more than to scroll Instagram? A clean house. Meals that are ready to go. Text messages from clients answered. A toned body and the energy that comes from working out. Prioritizing is key. One of my favorite quotes is from Rachel Hollis, and I go to it whenever I feel like procrastinating. "Success is about choosing between what you want right now and what you want most." 

• Don't be afraid to ask for help.
• I am a very prideful person. I love to think of myself as independent, self sufficient, strong, and capable. I am all of those things, but I'm also a human being. Sometimes genuine life problems happen and sometimes I just need a break. I am not used to asking for help but it's something I've learned to do in order to keep my sanity. Sometimes I need a date night and ask mine or Blake's parents to babysit. Sometimes I need help from Blake doing the things around the house even though it's my turn. Being vulnerable and asking for help is okay. You don't have to be a bad bitch all of the time.

• Maintain a schedule.
• Soooo many people roll their eyes at this, but I don't care. Roll away, girlfriend. My child has slept through the night since he was 6 weeks old and I know exactly when he'll be hungry and exactly when he will need a nap during the day. I can take him anywhere, any time because of this schedule. If I have a second child and this type of method doesn't work then I will gladly call you and apologize for my ignorance, but I read a LOT of books and articles about the benefits of a schedule and even paid for an online class about it. This shit works. I will save all the details about that for another post, because I can preach about it allllll day. Set a schedule. Follow that shit. You're welcome.

• Fuck mom guilt.

• I'm gonna start by saying sorry for dropping the F-bomb, Mom. But I genuinely don't know how else to word it. Before becoming a mother I used to hear my mom friends talking about how they felt guilty for the most irrational stuff. I would think to myself, "Really? Why would you feel guilty about that?" Apologies are in order because now I completely understand. I second guess E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G, dude! Everything. Why? I don't know. I want my child to have the best life possible and I assume that everything that I'm doing is going to damage him in some way. It's irrational, I'm aware, but we all do it. Did I just let him cry? He's going to feel abandoned. Did I just stop him from crying when he got bored? He's never going to learn to entertain himself. Did I just go to work? He's pretty much being raised by someone else and is going to forget me. Did I just stay home for 4 days straight? He's never going to have the life and things he deserves because his mom chose to only work 3 days a week. Do you see how irrational all of this is? It's a lose- lose thought process. Stop those thoughts in their tracks. I try my best not to entertain them any more. I am doing my best and that's all that matters. The reality is that a bad mom wouldn't care. I care. FUCK MOM GUILT.

• Girl. Gang.
• Honestly, this is possibly the most important point of all. Without my girl gang, I wouldn't be typing right now. They pushed me to start this blog, and I am so grateful. Having a good support system will make or break you. My friends are ride or die. They motivate me better than I could ever motivate myself, and I don't know who I would be without them. Any time I'm in a funk, need to get my creative juices flowin, or just need a break from the stresses of every day life, I call my friends. Having people that will support you, ground you, listen to you, relate to you, and love you is priceless. Find your girl gang. Love them hard. 

Okay I believe I've talked your ear off and if you've made it this far then I am truly grateful. If you guys would like a more schedule- type post let me know! Comment with any suggestions to help life run more smoothly if I've left anything major out, I welcome any advice I can get.

Lovelovelove,

Tanner