My First Experiences as a Mother

I am a first time mother to my sweet beautiful baby boy whose name is Emmanuel Joshua Garcia. I never regret becoming a mother and I am so overjoyed of having a beautiful son. However, acknowledging the hardships that come with being a mother does not mean I wish I wasn’t one. Sometimes it seems we are not allowed to talk about the hard things that comes with being a mother. Even though there are hard things that come with it I wouldn’t change it for anything else in the world. The day that I had my baby boy I was induced because I had developed gestational diabetes and my baby was becoming very large. I have never felt period cramps in my life, guess I am one of those lucky girls who never experienced them. Once my water broke, I had strong cramps, but it was a continuous pain without breaks. My sister said that when you get induced the labor pains are more continuous not sure if she is right but it did happen to me. My husband looked concerned. I decided I would take the epidural once I was 5 centimeters dilated, and let me tell you that epidural worked like magic on me. Before my husband left the room he saw me in agony and pain. Once he came back after getting the epidural shot he said I looked like a completely different person. The epidural got rid of the pain fast but my entire bottom part of the body fell asleep, and it felt weird but I def preferred it over being in pain. Once it came to 10 centimeters dilated and it was time to push, I pushed and only ten minutes into it and I heard my baby’s first cry. It felt unreal, I was shocked and I could not believe that baby is my baby and that he just came out of me. It just felt like a dream like it wasn’t real. I knew right away I would love this baby so much, it’s a love I have never felt before. I genuinely believe that I would take a bullet over this baby. The first couple weeks were absolutely difficult. I was not making enough breast milk and initially I wanted to exclusively breastfeed only as I knew that was the most natural and healthy way to feed my baby. However, I never produced enough milk to satisfy my babies hunger, so I constantly had him on my breast and my baby was constantly crying. I kept advising the nurses that I don’t think I was making enough breast milk and they would just tell me to continue breastfeeding. It was so difficult, I lost an entire week of not sleeping from morning to night pretty much. I’d be lucky if I slept two hours atleast. All that could have been avoided if I gave him formula since the beginning only because I didn’t produce enough breast milk. What eventually happened was that I was overwhelmed, stressed out because the baby was on my breast and still crying so much. I took him to the pediatrician and he advised me that his jaundice levels were dangerously high and that it can affect something in his brain. Apparently newborn babies are commonly born with jaundice, and the way that they get rid of it is by pooping. But since my baby was starving he never pooped anything out. I had to have him hospitalized, and luckily they let me stay with him, but again I was extremely exhausted as I couldn’t even get enough sleep in a hospital. While in the hospital I could not breastfeed him because he was in a box with a bunch of blue lights. I was only allowed to pump or give formula. I decided to try both, I gave him formula when I was unable to pump and I tried to pump a bit as well. If I had given him formula at the beginning then the baby might not have had such high jaundice because he would have been eating enough. I tried to pump but sometimes didn’t make enough so I would also feed him formula and breast milk. He quickly got well again in no time and even gained some weight. I was so happy to see that my baby was finally feeling a lot better after all this. Now I continue to formula feed for the most part and partially breastfeed sometimes. As mothers we go through so many body changes, so many things that we have to go through and we got to take care of a little one 24/7 of every single day. We don’t need to hear from other people that we are not doing the right decision with our babies when it comes to feeding. Many people can look at me and judge me for not exclusively breastfeeding but have no idea why I started to formula feed. Mothers need support and a reminder that you are awesome and are doing the best you can sometimes. Formula feeding is something that is looked down upon. however, mothers formula feed for many reasons, and some mothers don’t have the mental stability they need when exclusively breastfeeding because let me tell you that breastfeeding can be hard. So let’s try to be there for each other and not judge another mother because she decided to feed her baby differently. I am so happy that my baby is healthy and thriving as a normal baby should, and glad I decided to formula feed as well because in my case that was the best decision since I was unable to exclusively breastfeed. If you are a mother, remember that you are a beautiful, amazing woman 💙