New Mama, It Gets Easier

Just Give It Two Weeks
I remember my favorite postpartum nurse giving me this advice before I took our baby home from the hospital. Wrenn was only two days old, and neither of us could get the hang of this nursing thing. She couldn’t latch; she couldn’t stay latched; she couldn’t stay awake during feedings. This thing that I had assumed would come somewhat naturally was suddenly the most complicated, stressful thing I had ever attempted, and the weight of being able to provide my daughter with the one thing she so desperately needed was almost crushing.

“Just give it two weeks, and I promise it will get easier,” my nurse told me. Wrenn and I were both new at this, she explained, and soon it would become second nature. I repeated this to myself over and over those first two weeks, hoping she was right and doubting her more with every given day as Wrenn and I struggled to find that breastfeeding rhythm. I so badly wanted to give up, but I kept telling myself I would give it two weeks. And you know what? In two weeks, we got the hang of it, and soon I could nurse her while standing up in my bathroom applying my makeup. New mama, it gets easier.

Just Give It Six Weeks

I read all those baby books before she got here and was confident that Miss Wrenn would be a “schedule baby.” After all, how hard could it be? And then she actually got here, and this tiny baby had her days and nights mixed up. Sometimes she would nurse every hour, or two, or three, and I never knew when she would go down for a nap, or for how long. I couldn’t predict what would happen 15 minutes in the future, and all the while, I was exhausted, sleep-deprived, unshowered, surviving on granola bars and bananas. My girlfriend and mother of three came by for a visit. I remember asking, “How long before she gets on a schedule?”

“Give it about six weeks,” she told me. We wouldn’t be perfectly scheduled by any means, but by six weeks things would become more predictable. We would find a routine. And what do you know . . . around the time Wrenn was six weeks old, life seemed to settle just a little bit, and I could (pretty much) predict when she would want to eat and when she would want to sleep. The simple act of being able to anticipate and plan my day was all that I needed to keep going, and things like leaving the house to go to the grocery store no longer seemed like impossible tasks. New mama, it gets easier.

Just Give It a Year

This is what I repeated to myself over and over during those weeks and months that Wrenn woke me up through the night. Even though she was one of those early sleep-through-the-night babies (God’s gift to us so we could endure four months of colic), she still had setbacks every few weeks, and by 5:00 in the morning she was ready to start her day. Months of less sleep than normal takes a toll on your body and your mind. But throughout those sleep-deprived months, I reminded myself that my sister’s one-year-old son was sleeping 12 hours a night. “Just give it a year, and Wrenn will be sleeping 12 hours,” I told myself when I thought the sleep deprivation would last forever. And one year later, my baby girl may not sleep 12 hours, but she sleeps a good 10-11, which is plenty of time for this mama to get her beauty sleep. New mama, it gets easier.

New mama, just when you think you can’t make it another day, know that there’s a light at the end of the tunnel and simply put one foot in front of the other. It gets easier.

What’s your best encouragement for new mamas in the trenches of that first year?