lessons at one month.
pregnancy taught me a lot.
having shepherd here has taught me a lot more.
1. my time is not my time. as christians, we spend our whole lives trying to grasp the idea that everything we have is not really ours and we are merely temporary stewards of it all. including our time. after 25 years of battling God for my time, it took one night home from the hospital for this idea to click. Shepherd is not quiet or subtle. When he wants time with me or needs something, he lets me know (with a shrill waaaah)- and as a mom i’m programmed to jump up immediately and see to his needs. as a christian, i should do the same. jump up when i hear a call. be programmed to meet needs. ah, surely, i’m learning. 
2. a very tiny person can hold a whole lot of stuff inside. this includes 30-40 oz. of milk and formula each day as well as copious amounts of pee and poo. i thought we would manage with eating a couple ounces every 3 hours at first, without taking into account how unique my little boy would be. just like every pregnancy is different, so is every new baby. mine happens to have the metabolism of a nigerian marathon runner and has to eat 4-5 oz. every 2-1/2 hours, or else not gain any weight. others just have to eat a couple ounces every couple hours. motherhood is all about getting to know the specifics of the little person you push out on your labor day, and figuring out how to balance all your duties to fit them as well as you can. for us, that means each feeding session is a half hour of boobie time followed by 3 or 4 oz. of formula in a bottle. then this is in turn followed by changing a very warm, very heavy diaper. :b
3. plans are for the inexperienced. i started learning this when i was pregnant and had to cancel plans often because my body wanted to spend the day in the bathroom. then, it because very clear to me that this was true when absolutely no part of my labor and birthing experience went according to my carefully researched and laid out ‘birth plan.’ now, i am completely unsurprised by how frequently any plans we make go flying out the window. planning to go to bed early and wake up in time to do something productive for the day? nope. baby probably wants to stay up late and cuddle until noon. planning on eating lunch while it’s still hot? eh, baby would like to eat at the same time, so you’ll have to wait. in these early stages, while we’re getting to know each other’s schedules, it’s unheard of to be on time if we make it to a planned destination at all. my formerly hyper-punctual self has been kicked in the butt and shipped away. i’m newly patient and empathetic toward the compulsively tardy (seeing as they’re my people, now), and am open to the idea of being late everywhere for the next year, all while feeling absolutely no guilt. 
4. a baby changes everything. in the first few weeks of being a mommy, i found myself riding the high tide of hormonally charged emotion fluctuations. i was amazing. i could go from laughing at a mac commercial to crying uncontrollably about it all inside of 3 seconds. some nights, gerry comes home and asks how my day was, and all i can do is grunt. back in the day, i was a pretty emotionally steady person. happy things would make me happy, sad things would make me sad. it was all very predictable. but now, i can’t tell which way is up!
along the same lines, my body has learned to consistently react positively to one thing, and that is shepherd. holding him has become my new sweet tea. i am immediately comforted and calmed whenever i put him in my arms. surprisingly to me (formerly miss impatience), this applies most dramatically when he starts bawling at 4am and i have to wake up to feed or change him. i wake up all snippy and irritated and then i touch him and melt. i think if not for this automatic reaction, i wouldn’t be able to be the mommy i want to be.
5. little people are good bridges. so many people are in contact with me now more so than any other time in my life, including when i got married. when i found out i was pregnant, i was congratulated by old friends and new, and even acquaintances from times gone by. having shep multiplied this. in the last few weeks, i’ve even had people i’ve never spoken to reach out, curious about how shep’s doing, wanting to know if they can do anything to help out while we’re getting the hang of things. we’ve had uncountable visitors, phone calls, text messages and notes come in, and we didn’t have to do anything to get them. shep’s been the material that helps mend burned bridges and the spark that ignites new conversations.
6. selflessness is a necessity, not an option. along with #1, this is another related factoid that following Jesus should have made obvious to me somewhere in the last 8 years. but for me, it took being a mom to figure it out. I’ve found myself okay with giving up a lot of things I thought I couldn’t live without before Shep came along. Even things as simple as cable television. I’ve been a television fanatic since the first time mom bought a tv that had a closed captioned button, and i haven’t gone without my 60+ channels since that day. I haven’t even entertained the thought. But when Gerry told me last week that we would be disconnecting the cable to make sure we had enough money for Shep’s formula (he eats soooo much), i didn’t argue. I’ve become someone else since Dec. 9, someone who is starting to “get” that some things just really are not all that important. I still have this residual pang when I think about missing Food TV, Discovery Channel and TLC during the day, but I know that Shep and my time is better spent doing other things. Like getting together with friends and family, or singing nonsensical songs about dodo birds!
7. everything becomes more sensitive after having a baby. physical senses, emotions, relationships, they all fall under this category. the obvious sensitivities come from the actual act of carrying and birthing an itty bit. things are stretched out, rubbed raw, or just inexplicably hypersensitive for weeks after labor. and if breastfeeding, a couple things just get more sensitive with time. on top of this, the most miraculous of things has happened to the hearing-impaired mama i am. i have been blessed with superhuman hearing between the hours of midnight and 8 a.m. gerry sleeps like he is dead, and so to balance this out, i can now hear every little noise shepherd makes while he is asleep. sometimes i swear i can hear his individual alveoli inflating and deflating as he breathes! it is a pleasant surprise, a welcome curse, and part of the reason i can get any sleep at all. i know i’ll wake up if he so much as whimpers in a whisper.
8. mommy brain is real. i can’t even count the number of meals, showers and other important duties i’ve neglected because i was enamored with, distracted by, or up to my eyeballs in shepherdstuffs. one day, i forgot to brush my teeth until gerry got home from work at 8:30p.m. and i realized the bad breath smell that lingered after i kissed him hello was lingering because it was located in my dirty mouth. another day, i didn’t eat until 10p.m. and i only ate then because the lion in my stomach was growling for attention, and shep was passed out in his chair. mommy brain is, i think, nature’s way of programming the mother’s brain to impulsively put baby-related thoughts and actions before any others. this is one way, i hope, that we’re guaranteed never to leave baby behind in walmart. at least until they’re 4 or 5 and old enough to ask someone with a nametag to page us.
shep’s awake and has more to teach me, so i have to go
