NINE MONTHS IN & NINE MONTHS OUT

In honor of Finley's ninth month here are my nine words of wisdom for pregnancy & motherhood from an inexperienced mother (because believe me I make no pretense about having it all figured out!).

1. Everyone said time would fly by, but for me the first two months felt like eternity and then the following 7 were a total blur.
2. My own child's bodily fluids and functions do not gross me out, but other people's kids? Yes absolutely and that's okay.
3. Remember you have your whole life to clean and cook, but you will never get back those small quiet moments with your first newborn
4. (Possible TMI alert - you were warned) Before giving birth I could not fathom why or how women ENJOYED breastfeeding and it didn't seem like anyone could give me a straight answer. So I was apprehensive beforehand, but it magically happened to me too, and I can't explain it either. I'll be honest - getting past the first two weeks was extremely difficult. Breastfeeding was time consuming, painful, and frustrating, but after about three weeks the thought of NOT breastfeeding made me panic. I have learned to love the relaxing snuggle time when we are both still and silent especially now that it is such a rarity.
5. No one told me the extent to which labor recovery hurts. I was injured, injured bad.
6. Desitin smells disgusting. That is all.
7. Make one goal a day then whatever you accomplish beyond that is gravy.
8. The best advice I got about mothering is this: You are the mother, no one knows your baby more than you, always trust your instincts even if occasionally that means other people think you are crazy.
9. And the biggest lesson I've learned: you can not judge other mothers because they know their babies more than you, if you think she is crazy you might just be catching her in one of those moments.


And here are Finley's nine recent advancements.

1. She can successfully pull herself in to the standing position but she has not yet mastered shuffling from one item to the next. She can also finally sit down after standing because until recently after standing she'd hang on for dear life until she fell over or we rescued her.
2. She's got the pincher action down and can feed herself snacks. Hooray!
3. She can drink from a sippy cup but finds more enjoyment in playing with it then actually taking a drink.
4. Outside of baby food and baby snacks she has tried baby sized portions of chili, strawberries, hummus, rice, cheerios, oranges, bread... so far her favorite flavor appears to be banana.
5. She has always had this funny silent laugh where she open her mouth as wide as possible and then breathes through her nose. But lately she started scrunching her face so it adds a new level of hilarity. Whenever she does it Brad and I start laughing and then she gets confused and stops.
6. Her new favorite thing is to take all the cards out of our wallets. I'm excited to lose track of our credit cards. Not.
7. She was loving bath time but suddenly she has started getting really anxious to get out as soon as we put her in - I'm not sure what that's about and hopefully it ends soon.
8. Separation anxiety is in full force when other people are around, but when we are home alone she is totally comfortable with crawling away from me as fast as possible.
9. And the cutest thing she does now is communicate. She mimics us when we say "teeth" and says "t-th," apropos considering she's a dental student's daughter. She is also learning to wave and clap. And she says "mama" and "dad," but I'm sure she doesn't really associate the words with us yet since she says them all day long.

In conclusion: I've got to say that 9 months of pregnancy felt a million times longer than the past 9 months.

PS - After reading this post I make it sound like I'm a single parent. I promise Brad exists! He's been extremely busy with school and research and I meant for this to be a mother/daughter post anyway... I promise a father/daughter post will come soon so the dad can get some credit too!