Motherhood Diaries (Riley at 14 Months)

Oh, what a year! Riley is just over fourteen months old and we, I think, are finally beginning to feel like we have the hang of some things. I know every baby is very different and every parent is too. Those two set of differences combined can lead to all sorts of individual experiences in the first year of becoming a mom or dad. Ours had a pretty rough start, with my bladder injury from birth lingering for a month or so afterward and the pandemic effecting us in ways that would have been much different if it wasn’t present (heavily secluded during pregnancy and not allowing much help after birth).

Isolation combined with injury combined with new baby life — it was a whirlwind! But not one that passed quickly. The first five months of Riley’s life felt very slow and, if I’m honest, mostly painful. We loved being parents and all it would entail in the future, but we were not equipped for baby life in the slightest. My greatest recommendation to those preparing for kids is 1) spend time around other babies and their family’s day to day and 2) research the heck out of baby sleep. (If I could include a third, it would be to ask for lots of help.)

Riley was perfect in every way, she is our daughter and we love her immensely! But she was fussy, did not like to sleep day or night, had reflux, and scared us—being honest here. Newborns can feel scary and overwhelming and we had no idea what we were doing. There were sweet moments and times of joy, absolutely, but we had postpartum anxiety (the both of us) pretty heavily and were severely sleep deprived.

Around five months our bodies were giving up and our mental health was super poor, so we hired a sleep therapist. We went from bed-sharing at night and carrying Riley in a carrier for naps (swinging back and forth in a quiet, dark room hours and hours each day) to moving Riley into a crib next to our bed and doing a little sleep training. I say ‘a little’ because she responded very quickly and well. It was clear to us she didn’t want our help sleeping but didn’t know how to herself. She wanted independence but didn’t have the tools.

This transition was painful for me. I cried and my heart broke moving her out of bed with us, but none of us were sleeping. Not even Riley. She loved her crib, took to falling asleep on her own very quickly, and our lives changed. I began to enjoy motherhood! Our sleep bank began to fill back up as we slept more and more each night—but the greatest relief was during the day. We could lay her down for a nap and walk away to have recovery time for ourselves. Scott was back at work out of the house and I could truly rest and recover between taking care of Riley. It was life changing and deeply restorative for us three! Riley was much happier during her awake time too.

Moving along to our sweet girl rolling and crawling and eating solids! Absolutely the best times. At six months I said “this can’t get any better” and I’ve continued to say the same for each month following.

Riley girl, you are a force of nature and you do everything with your whole heart and spirit. I’m so grateful to be your mom! We ride in the car together to activities, singing little baby songs that you love. We attend story time at the library, meet up at the park for play dates with our friends, go to coffee shops, and even venture to the farmers market together. You love to help wipe down the floors and kitchen counters and really anything your little hands can reach with a cloth. Water is your greatest love and if you could I’m sure would play at the base of a waterfall all day.

You say mama and dada, wawa (water), ball, up, down, kaboom, uh oh, all done, peas, avocado, elbow, nana, and have the cutest fake scream when you’re acting surprised or scared. Your voice makes my heart weak, which in a way is making it stronger. It’s capacity to love is expanding every day thanks to you. Oh and climbing! You little monkey. Is there anything in our house you will not try to scale? I can see your brain working when you see a new slide at the park, thinking “how can I climb this one?”. Up and down, up and down, you could spend all day on the slide mastering your little hand and foot placement.

Music is your next love and you dance with one arm up and the other folded across your chest—I die! Its the cutest thing. You’re dad has a busted pair of headphones he leaves out for you and you hold them up to your ear, bopping up and down, saying boom-chicka-boom to emulate music playing. You love a good beat! And you dance with the baristas at any coffee shop with good music taste. Yes, you have taste, and I knew this while you were in the womb. Your dad would play a pretty melody on the guitar and you would kick/punch/spin, yet when I made a clumsy few strums of nonsense you would hold still. Our little music loving, water obsessed, climbing babe.

It’s a gift to have your smoothie-coated hands grab my clean t-shirt and your sweet open mouth kiss my knee. I cannot believe I get to pick up your toys every day and wash your little clothes. I love finding animal magnets next to the blender and my toothpaste on the deck outside. The way you stare up at me during diaper changes melts my heart, even if you’re screaming to be let down and I have to quickly think of a song to captivate you or a story to slowly tell (you especially love anything revolving around an activity we are about to do).

You let us know when you’re bored, or want something you cannot have—your pipes are big and beautiful and cripple our ability to think straight on the regular! But your sweet babbles and kisses sooth our racing heartbeats too. You create balance with your highs and lows and we are learning to ebb and flow with you, our sweet, sweet girl. You are our blessing. We are not the same two people we were fourteen months ago. You’ve made me much, much better—and continue to melt down pieces of my mind and soul to be remolded into something much more fragile and in-tune to this world and what is most important in it.

If I could say how we’ve grown as parents over this year, one is in knowledge and ability to how to incorporate Riley into our lives. We didn’t know how to at the beginning. Along the way the multiple naps through us for loops as she was pretty finicky about her activities and sleep. But our three lives finally feel like they have molded into one—and I can only imagine what they will look like in another year, or two, or three’s time!

Riley now stands at a little toddler tower in the kitchen and bangs measuring spoons and cups together while I work alongside her clangs. She takes steps around the house to where she wants to go (only as of last week!) making her feel much more independent and “like us” in a way. She really has helped me to embrace messes, disorder, and a flying-by-the-seat-of-my-pants lifestyle I never tolerated well before.

I cry when I look at photos of even just a few months ago, the time really does seem to pass at the speed of light after around the six month mark. Imagining another baby in our future tears my heart up. Riley will always be my baby and my heart breaks thinking that she may not always be our only baby—the one that soaks up all of our attention. Yet, I yearn to be pregnant again and welcome another little miracle. To give her a sibling and friend seems like a really wonderful gift. But I fall to pieces thinking of our family of three no longer being so. Maybe in time it will feel more joyful to attempt another pregnancy. I thought the heavy emotions of postpartum would only linger for the first few months. But they don’t end—this seems to just be parenthood.

To fellow new parents feeling scared, you aren’t alone. The immensely deep love, excitement, overwhelm, hormone overload, crying because your happy and sad about something at the same time, wishing things would speed up but then your heart breaking at the thought of any time passing at all, feeling as if you just cannot clean one more messy floor, be woken for one more breastfeed, pick up your screaming toddler once again, be in charge of all the food and activities for one more week, miss that moment to yourself one more time, or handle the heartstrings being pulled as you walk away from your baby to leave them in someone else’s arms for a quick errand or need.

It’s all too much. But it isn't, as well. We are given what we can handle, and sometimes (oftentimes) the biggest growth we experience in our lives come from this—the struggle, the discomfort, the finding of ones way.

I’m too grateful to express, I get to live my dream job as a mother. For all the ups and downs and pain and joy.

Oh Riley girl, thank you for coming!

x Jessie