Goodnight Mom

There’s a lot of body pain and exhaustion in the first few days/weeks of postpartum, so celebrating the things that feel good is important to me. Even if they seem strange! This post is going to be deeply personal and very real, so I hope you’re ready!  Little Nico's hand on my thumb in the wee hours of the night. Full Bladder Having full use of my bladder again is a beautiful thing. I feel like it slipped away slowly as my pregnancy advanced. It was like, one day (or one middle-of-the-night, as it were) I realized my bladder is so squished up I can hardly hold anything anymore. I had to always pee before going anywhere, and if I sat down for a while it was guaranteed I’d need to pee again as soon as I stood up!  A few days after Nico’s birth, I was on the toilet and was just amazed at the amount of urine I could pass in one sitting. A full, thick stream for a good half a minute. It physically felt so good! It really did. It wasn’t like I was holding it for a long time either....

This post was drafted a few weeks ago, in late January. Going into the final month of my pregnancy, I found it challenging at times to get excited about it, which I think is what people expect. It can be exciting. It can also be daunting and generally exhausting. I definitely was looking forward to no longer carrying around a heavy baby in my belly, and the aches and pains that came with that!  But getting excited about having a new baby was not as accessible.  A fun photo from our NYE party As we draw closer to meeting baby#2, some friends, and even Steve, have asked me what I’m excited about. I found this question particularly difficult to answer in this past month. It’s not that I’m not excited, but there has been so much else to think about that my ability to get into a place of excitement has been a challenge. At the start of the year, we grappled with the decision over our dog Porter’s end of life. Max had an exposure to COVID-19 again from a daycare buddy (thankfully, M...