(Diary) 3 Lessons in 30 Days as a Mom
Welcome to my diary. These are entires I wrote during my own pregnancy. What youāre about to read is unfiltered, unedited, and perhaps a bit uncanny. But these are my raw feelings written in real-time. Everyoneās perspective and journey is different. This is mine.
Dear friend,
Jen Glantz here.
Iām in my second month of being a new mom.
This morning, someone asked us how itās been going. Adam said it best:
Itās hard to notice change. Itās hard to even tell how much the baby has grown because we spend every second with her.
Heās so right. If we donāt completely stop time and pay attention to the little details, we miss them. The only way to measure change, growth, and even success is to count backward.
More than 30-days ago, I didnāt even know if I could get through the fears of giving birth. I really didnāt know if I could be a mom.
But now, here I am. Iām doing it. Iāve done it. I have a newborn and Iāve been her mom for a month.
Are we experts? Are we superstar parents?
It doesnāt matter.
What matters is that we know more now than we ever have before.
When I take the time to see that, I canāt help but feel:
Proudā¦scared still..but proud to be a mom.
Ps. Know someone who would enjoy reading this?
Some quick things I loved this week:
ā¤ļø Products that I fell in love with this week:
After a month of trying a ton of different diaper brands, we love Kudos the best. I found them on Shark Tank and they are the only brand Gemma doesnāt leak through - plus they are ānaturalā - so no chlorine, cotton, and have two absorption layers. I reached out to share my praise and they wanted to offer my readers a discount code: GLANTZ10 for 10% off.
My feeding journey has been quite the adventure that iām going to share soon. But as of now, Iām exclusively pumping and supplementing with formula. Iām using Bobbie and really love them - the baby does too. Natural ingredients that mimic breast milk. They also wanted to offer up a discount code: XO-JENGLANTZ10 for 10% off.
These arenāt paid partnerships and I donāt make money if you use the code - I just really love them!
ā¤ļø Heard this quote today and wanted to share it. Itās on setting boundaries - which is something you need to master as a new mom because youāre exhausted, healing, and donāt need extra stuff floating into your life:
No is a complete sentence. You donāt need to explain yourself.
ā¤ļø Iāve been spending time spilling my thoughts on TikTok. Watch some of that fun stuff right here!
3 Lessons in 30 Days as a Mom
Lesson #1:
You are the only one who is allowed to judge how youāre doing as a new mom. Not your friends, your family, a random mom in a Facebook group, or a person you havenāt seen since high school who is sliding into your DMs telling you what not to do.
Just you. Only you.
However, if youāre a tough judge, like I am, you might be super hard on yourself. You might even have an entire week where you live inside a cloud of guilt and feel like the worldās biggest failure. But as you emerge from that fog, you will realize that youāre doing the best you can and while it might not feel like perfection, one day you will look back and be amazed by all that you did, every single day.
Lesson #2:
The biggest challenges of having a newborn are the unexpected ones.
Itās not sleep.
You wonāt sleep - but you already know that, you expect that.
Itās everything else that blindsides you.
Itās figuring out how to give a newborn a bath, how to feed a newborn if breastfeeding didnāt go as planned, and even how to soothe the baby when sheās crying.
Pro tip: have the pediatricians number on hand and find one who offers late-night virtual appointments. Also befriend other new moms. These two things really come in handy.
Lesson #3:
Realize youāre experiencing a brand new kind of love. Most relationships are built on getting to know a person through hours of conversation. Not this one. This type of love is built on sounds, eye contact, quality time, endless amounts of care, and just so many other things.
It reminds you that deep love is patient, unconditional, rare, and special.