The Road to H...

You know what they say about good intentions (you know... the road to hell is paved with them). Anyway, I had intentions of blogging about mommyhood from day one, but that shows you what an inexperienced mommy I am. Those first couple months I was lucky to have time to shower and eat, much less think about things like blogging.

So what have I learned? It's okay not to have time to do my hair. It's okay if the toilets don't always get cleaned once a week or if I go 3 weeks in between mopping. It's okay to go to the store in sweats with no make up and it's okay if I don't manage to cook homemade meals at least 5 days a week. Because what I won't get back is that extra hour I spent playing on the floor with my boy William. Or that hour we spent sleeping together on the couch. I won't get back that day I never showered because I was so enchanted about him laughing for the first time that I spent all his waking moments trying to make him laugh.

What amazes me is how much I've forgotten already. I thought my first entry could be a catching up on these past 9 months because there's no way I could forget. But you do. I forget exactly what those 13 hours of labor pains felt like before they finally told me I was having a C-section because he wouldn't descend and his heart rate was slowing. I forget the utter delirious exhaustion of those difficult first nights in the hospital that my mom spent with me where, determined that I would succeed at breastfeeding, I struggled until I was sweating to get William latched on. I've forgotten being a zombie those first two weeks with my mom staying with us, Mike staying home from work and my sister over as much as possible to try to help me somehow get rest in an endless cycle of nurse-pump-eat-wash pumping stuff-sleep if possible and start over. I've forgotten the emotional roller coaster of returning to work and taking him to daycare that first day. I've forgotten packing a "lunch box" full of food for the nursery each night so that I could sustain my energy while nursing William every 2-3 hours. I've forgotten the hand-off with my husband as he took the last late-night feeding and anything else that happened prior to 2 a.m. while I took anything that happened after 2 until we both got up at 6:00am to start all over. I've forgotten the elation of realizing my son slept through the night for the first time on Halloween.

Mike, William and I have now settled into a pattern... or as much of one as you can have with an infant. Teething, fevers, developmental milestones, etc... can interfere with it, but we still have a pattern. Mike gets him up & dressed in the morning while I feed him and pump. I feed William at lunch. When we get home we share the duties of getting William and the dogs fed sometime between 6:00 and 6:30 while getting our own dinner going as well. Then we juggle cleaning up, William's bath around 8:00 and getting him to bed by around 9:00. He'll usually sleep until 6:00 or 7:00 and then we begin again.

It's a good life. An awesome one actually. I thought that tonight as I watched my husband sitting on the floor making his son laugh. I have two beautiful gifts looking me in the face every day... the love of my life and the miracle he helped me create. On second thought this is not the road to hell... but heaven. :)