Dear Readers!

What a difference a year makes or.. this too shall pass.

I remember last Halloween with startling clarity.. it was very very scary.

I had hit the zenith of my frustration with the process of breastfeeding and so had my daughter. After hours of trying and failing to have her latch or feed, I gave up, cried uncle and said that is IT! I really don’t know how else to describe how helpless you feel when you can’t do the basic thing that you are supposed to be able to do when you are a mother, but let me try. It’s like you are a fisherman and you can’t bait a hook. It’s a seemingly simple process but for whatever reason you can NOT do it. You can’t blame the bait, it doesn’t talk or do anything other than what you direct it to do, and you just keep getting more and more frustrated. Not fun for anyone.

10/31/2016- We were both struggling and both upset and both crying. The picture above on the left is me looking at her in her bassinet and marveling over her lovely costume and sighing a very large sigh of relief that she FINALLY stopped crying.  (this was after almost 6 hours non-stop fussiness. It was on this day that I called in the experts and after getting a lactation consultant to help us, we were well on our way. I know some mothers where that is not the case so I consider us to be very lucky.

The picture on the right is one year later and to be frank, my husband had a pretty rough day with her but for completely different reasons.

She did not nap today and was an absolute terror. She did pull it together enough to come visit me at work and I sure hope that Daddy has had a better night with her tonight as he takes her trick or treating in her handmade ladybug costume.

(in case you read this later, my love, it pains me to write it, AND it’s true!)

So if she was fussy both times what has really changed, you may ask.. and it’s a good question..

A few things.

1. My patience is a lot better than it was a year ago.
2. My list of “wins” as her mom, are longer than my “losses”.
3. She is starting to communicate, we aren’t much past Mama and Dada and Hi.. but we are getting clearer everyday with what we are trying to say.
4. I am back at work and learning the balancing act of manager/mom
5. Jeremy is home with her full-time, last year I was on maternity leave.
6. I have learned to ask for help and to walk away* if it really gets hard.

*walking away – only after making sure the child is secure in her crib –

A year can bring a lot of change, and this year certainly has, I am excited to see what the next year will bring.. we might even get ourselves together enough to do our own matching costumes, but for tonight, we dressed as what we are.. TIRED PARENTS!