SacMomsClub.com

First of all, I would like to thank everyone for the encouraging words.  I really need to get over myself.  I think part of the reason that I am so uptight is that it took me five years, miscarriage and running the fertility clinic wheel until I finally had a successful invitro.  Now, I have a beautiful baby girl and I really need to put the other experiences aside.  Not to say that they aren't important and I shouldn't draw upon those experiences.  Those experiences are because it puts into perspective how important and what a gift my baby is.

I didn't meet my husband until I was 36.  By then, I had figured that I was never going to meet anyone that would be anyone that I'd want to have a child with.  By the time we started trying to get pregnant, it turned out that I had fertility issues.  During my run on the fertility wheel, I learned that many other couples had a harder road then I have had to take, so I do have to be grateful for that.  I was so focused on getting pregnant and maintaining the pregnancy (lots of shots.  Hormones are fun!) that I never looked to educate myself on what I would do when a baby got here.  I was afraid to.  After so much disappointment, it was difficult for me to look that far ahead.  But what I did learn during this stage was that I had no control.  For my type A personality, the total lack of control is very difficult to accept and very humbling.  But, as it turns out, a very important lesson in preparation for the next phase.

I am a tightly wound person.  But I mean well and try not to inflict it upon anyone else.  I never had any nieces or nephews, and I didn't babysit, so I had never changed a diaper until my baby came along.  In the hospital, I had a hard time with breast feeding.  Erin did not eat for the first 24 hours.  (I wonder if it was because in the recovery room (I had a c-section), someone was sticking her heels to take blood every time she tried to latch.  Talk about aversion therapy!)  On our third day, the nurse put my husband, the baby and me on time out because we were all having a melt down.  I was crying because I thought I was starving my baby and hadn't had more than three hours of sleep, the baby cried probably because I was so tense and upset, and my husband's blood pressure was through the roof.  I thought, after all that we've been through to have a baby, how could I be so incompetent that I can't feed my baby?  I never imagined that something that should be natural should be so hard.  Women have been doing this for thousands of years.  And while the wonderful nurses and lactation consultant at Sutter Memorial reassured me that this was hard and not a natural, but a learned process, I hadn't been prepared for or even imagined this difficulty.  I know many of you out there have stories that can probably outdo mine by a long shot.

My husband says that I have set the bar so high for myself that no one could ever reach the expectations that I've set for myself.  And he's right.  That's what I do.  It's my nature.  I can't help it, but I do recognize it.  I have to stifle myself all the time.  He's worried that I've set the bar so high that I've set myself up for failure.  I probably have, but I want to do the best that I can for my baby.  But I'm doing her no favors my destroying myself in the process by trying to do everything perfectly for her.  There's no possible way that can be done.  At five weeks, she is an instinctual being and I need to remember that and cut myself some slack.  My joke has been, "I have to give her something to tell the therapist."