No One Told Me

Everyone tells you how much sleep you're going to lose, or how much you're going to love your tiny human, but no one could wholly prepare me for life with a newborn.
1.  sleep No one told me how well I would learn to function on 3-4 hours of sleep. Not 3-4 hour stretches, but 3-4 hours total.  When we brought Remington home he was sleeping 3-4 hours at a time, and we thought we hit the jackpot. We then came to learn that because he had lost so much weight after birth, he was lethargic and had very little energy.  Once he started packing on the pounds, he started sleeping less and less, and so did we. It's amazing that I used to be able to sleep until noon, eat, and go back to bed until 3pm, and now I can function on less sleep than I've ever had. 

2.  poop No one could have prepared me for poop... the amount, the consistency, or the smell.  Lord, the smell. No one could have prepared me to be pooped on, or how hard I would laugh when Remington pooped on Jackson.  There was also no way to convey how quickly babies go through diapers.  We go through 20 on a good day. He's peeing and pooping his way through our bank account. 

3. snuggles No one tells you how sweet baby snuggles are, or how much you'll cherish them, or how much fun they can be.  Remington loves to play opossum, and he will lay there with his eyes open until I look at him, and then he will close them. He's a ham, that's for sure, but boy does he love the snuggles. 

4. patience I am not a patient person, but no one told me how much a newborn would test that patience.  I remember after our third day home, I was crying and asking my mom why he wasn't sleeping more than a couple of hours, and she said "Baby, he's six days old. He won't do that until probably six weeks".... and I bawled. 

5. love No one could have prepared me for the love I'd feel for my sweet boy... or how my love for Jackson would change.  I watch them together and I am just in awe of how amazing this life is. And to think, our love story started 13 years ago with me stealing his shoe and throwing it down the hallway. I remember laying in the hospital the night before we were discharged bawling because I thought it was all a dream and that they were going to make us leave him for someone else to have (hormones, am I right?). I'm just in awe at how much I am blessed with these boys.