Motherhood Challenges

Me and my little one

Today makes 19 months of me being a mother and I can’t believe how quickly it has gone by. A year and a half later I can definitely say there are challenges with motherhood or being a parent. I won’t talk about all of those challenges in this blog post but I will focus on one that I’ve struggled with probably since the beginning and that is time management. As much as I want to make plans for my day, do things for myself or create content or study that doesn’t quite go as planned. Some days I can barely get to it at all if I’m lucky!

So the question is how do you manage your time or make time for yourself. Good question lol . To start nap time is your best friend. During a nap you can do one of two things. You can take a nap yourself or you can use that time to get EVERYTHING done! . Just kidding, do not do that and try to cram everything into that nap time because believe or not that nap time goes by quickly at least when your little one is past one year old. When babies are first born and in the newborn stages that is when they sleep more. My son used to sleep for 2-3hours and sometimes longer. So you have more time to work with when they are newborns but once they are a little older the nap times become shorter and shorter so do what you can with the time that you have. 

One thing that got really bad after I gave birth was the pregnancy brain. Pregnancy brain turned into mom brain and mom brain is much tougher for me and I forget things easily so when I have ideas for content I have to make sure I jot them down right away or I will forget. So always write down your ideas. Always plan ahead if you can and have either a notepad or use a notepad app on your phone. Even if you can’t get to what you need to do, you know that you have everything written down.

So when it comes to time management when you have children no matter their age we have to adjust and that is one thing I’m learning on this journey of parenthood.

Written By: Vanessa J

The ” Weight” of Pregnancy

Pregnancy is one the most exciting times in a women’s life. To experience the joy of bringing a new life into this world. Throughout the stages of pregnancy and three trimesters the body will go through a series of changes one of the most notable things being weight. That may be the one part women dread the most about pregnancy the weight gain that comes with it. Then you start to think will I be able to lose this weight after?

For me weight gain was not a major issue in the beginning of my pregnancy. During my journey I was not able to eat much at all. Once the nausea started it pretty much stayed with me throughout my whole pregnancy and never went away. For most women nausea usually goes away by the second trimester. It was a tough battle to tackle the nausea and dry heaving on top of already having a history of acid reflux. Most days I didn’t even feel hungry I had no appetite because of the nausea but I still made sure to eat anything I could of course not anything but nutritious foods for me and the baby. Then eventually as time went on I had to drink ensures for extra calories.
My weight pretty much stayed stable until about  25 weeks of pregnancy. I started weighing 138 pounds and by the end of my pregnancy I was 160 pounds. Not bad right? A month after giving birth I weighed in at 146 pounds. Now today I am 156 pounds so I am almost back to my end pregnancy weight. Even though I instantly lost weight I seemed to gain it back. Even though the pregnancy is over the real work has just begun and postpartum weight also counts.

How did I get back 156 pounds ? Well the good news is that it wasn’t instantly but gradually. During postpartum you go through a whirlwind of emotions.  Your getting used to having a new baby, juggling bottles, diapers, pumping, or breastfeeding and no sleep is not easy! And in between all of that you have to figure out when will you have time to eat and do you even have time to cook?
For me, I just pretty much ate anything whenever I could. Most days I wouldn’t eat until at 4 PM.  I ate a lot of chips , chocolate and anything that was easy fast food. It seemed as though all my healthy ways of eating had gone through the window.

Now to this present day I am getting back on track with how I used to be I am eating healthier, meal planning, and even exercising something that I never was really used to doing much at all. I am making sure to drink a lot more water and not beat myself about my current weight. 
The point of this post is to tell you mamas out their not to be upset about weight gain and to embrace it.  The post postpartum journey is not easy but once you ease into a routine and also fit in time to take care of YOU, everything will fall into place.

Blogmas Day 12- Oh Baby!

Me and Baby Boy

This year I was blessed with one of the greatest gifts I found out I was expecting and the baby was arriving this same year! . I was excited and nervous at the same time. As much as I felt I had experience with children such as babysitting my younger cousins and watching them grow up there is nothing like having your own child.  Then you begin to wonder what your child will be like , how will their personality be ?

There is no instruction manual that can fully prepare you to become a parent. For some reason I thought that babies just sleep all day 😩😩😩😩 boy was I wrong! My baby boy was born in October and when I tell you first month was rough , it was rough.  Shortly after arriving back home from the hospital the baby was sound asleep peacefully then once night hit my husband and I were up for hours. We couldn’t figure out how to calm him down everything we did changing him, soothing him, and feeding him nothing worked. We were more than sleep deprived. We soon figured out that our baby boy was colic. I had heard the term but didn’t quite know exactly what it meant. Then I learned that it is the term for when a baby cries for more than 2 hours straight.

Then we started to get nervous because people were telling us “colic” could last for up for up to three months or more. Then at his first doctor’s visit the doctor told us “colic ” is not really a real diagnosis or condition but just a term. We soon figured out that the reason he might be fussy is because he has gas and his digestive system was very sensitive. He was not being breastfed so we tried changing his formula to something more gentle and that seemed to help a lot.

One thing to remember is that babies have to get used to being outside the womb after being in there for nine months. They do not know the difference between day and night, so during the day they sleep and during the night they may be a bit more cranky.

Now at  two months my son is currently much better and started to develop a routine even though the routine is not permanent we are happy he is doing much better!

Oh Baby!!!!