040. My First 3 Months Postpartum: The Highs, The Lows, and What I Was NOT Prepared For

Speaker A: It's another baby related episode. So if you don't already know, I had a baby last year in September and this episode is going to be recapping my postpartum experience, sharing the things that have brought me so much joy in this season of life and also diving into the things that have been really hard as I've navigated this new role in my life of becoming a mother. Hi there, My name is Mara Kasarek and I absolutely love exploring online courses, passive income, and running a profitable online business. I'm an online course designer and strategist who left her 9 to 5 in her 20s to start a small business and that tiny little business has grown up over the years and now provides me a regular six figure income. On this podcast I pull back the curtains of what it takes to create, launch and run a thriving online course that helps your students achieve their dreams and allows you to grow your passive income too. Here you'll find launch, strategy, marketing advice, curriculum design, and so much more about what it takes to create a better course. I'm currently about four months postpartum. I'm not sure exactly when I'm going to release this podcast episode, but I've been doing a lot of reflection the last several months and thinking about making this episode and thinking about what would I want to know when I was pregnant and what would I want to know about someone's postpartum experience because it really is such a wild journey. I don't know how else to explain that. There's been things that were so much easier than I expected and so much more joyful, and there has been a lot of stuff that was way harder than I expected or different or I didn't feel particularly prepared for. So I really hope this episode feels like we're friends and we're having a cup of coffee and just talking about life and motherhood and laying everything on the table. And to structure this episode, I'm going to start by sharing things that have been easier than I expected. So things that I thought were going to be super challenging I was really afraid of and overall have gone well. And then I'm going to dive into things that have been harder, things I didn't really know a lot about. And along the way I'll share some stuff that really helped me during the postpartum period, navigate it, survive newborn life, and all of that stuff. So just to set the scene here, which I did an entire podcast episode sharing my birth story. I'll link to it in the show notes, but that goes into My actual labor and delivery. I'll give you a quick overview, though, that I had a very quick labor and delivery. Overall, my pregnancy was great. I didn't really have any complications. My labor and delivery was good. I did not have a lot of complications during that. And I also had an unmedicated birth without an epidural. So if you want to hear the full story about how I delivered, how that went, I did a podcast episode on that. But this is going to be focusing on everything that happened after I had our daughter, Hallie. So to start, I want to talk about the things that have been easier than I expected. And these are things that I was really scared about and intimidated before I had a baby. So I want to kind of just normalize that. While these things are hard for some people, that might not be your experience. And the first one is recovery after giving birth. I was really expecting to feel absolutely terrible after I gave birth. Like so many people told me, you'll never feel the same again. You'll feel, sorry. I'm about to laugh because the image of it is so funny. But you'll feel like that scene in Alien where there's, like, this alien creature coming out of your body. People also told me you'll feel like you've been hit by a train for months. And obviously experiences vary. If you've had a C section, your experience is probably totally different than what I am about to talk about. But I just heard so many things that you are going to feel like you're falling apart physically for months and months and months. And that was actually not my experience. So in the birth story, I recapped that I didn't have a lot of complications and that I didn't use any pain medication. And I felt pretty good after having a baby. Like, shockingly good. I remember when she was born, and I'm talking, like, literally minutes after she was born. I had no pain whatsoever. I never had any pain medication during that time. And then in the next few days prior to delivering, I was expecting, like, I was going to feel so terrible. And I actually felt the opposite. I was on top of the world and had so much adrenaline after giving birth, I felt like I could have wrestled a grizzly bear. I am not kidding at all. Like, I was so amped up and have never felt better in my life, which I think, honestly, a lot of it was like a hormonal thing of your body has so much, like, hormones and adrenaline coursing through it that it blocks a lot of the pain. After giving birth, I Think it was on like day five, I had a postpartum follow up because I worked with a midwife group, so they did some extra postpartum follow ups that traditional doctors do not do. And at that appointment, the midwife was like, how are you feeling? Like soreness, your whole body, all sorts of stuff. And I was like, I feel great. I have so much energy. And she was like, yeah, it's probably going to wear off in a couple of days. And it did. But those first three to five days I felt amazing and like, really didn't have a lot of issues with pain or soreness. Now I did about five days in, I was taking Tylenol and I mean, I felt like I had a baby. I didn't feel like completely normal, but I did not feel like I was hit by a train. I did not feel like I had to stay in bed all the time, which, uh, a lot of people do need bed rest after giving birth. But that's not how I felt at all. And pretty quickly I really wanted to, like, go on walks and go outside and just be up and moving around because it made me feel better. So that's my first big lesson of you might actually not feel that terrible after you give birth. For me, the afterbirth, like, immediately, the first few days was way better than being nine months pregnant and like feeling huge and just like having trouble sleeping and you could never find a comfortable position. Of course, I had a newborn, so there was a different reason I wasn't sleeping, but at least it wasn't because I had like this huge bump on my body. The second thing I want to share that was easier than I was expecting is breastfeeding. So I expected to absolutely hate breastfeeding. And maybe that sounds weird because most people, it seems, have the opposite perspective of they think it's going to be this like, amazing, magical thing and then it's really hard and painful. And of course, breastfeeding experiences really vary depending on you, your baby, all sorts of crazy, different factors. But I was expecting that I was going to fail at it, which that probably sounds really weird, but it's something that really intimidated me. I had a lot of fears about it, especially when I was talking to midwives and doctors. They were like, okay, you're gonna have the baby and then we're gonna give her to you and then you're gonna do this golden hour and you're gonna feed her right away. That freaked me out so much. I was like, wait, I have to go through the most pain I have ever gone through in my life. I have to have a baby and then immediately I have to figure out how to breastfeed. Like, that sounds so overwhelming. So I had a lot of fears about that. And then like just breastfeeding in general, I have had so many friends tell me that it's not worth it, it's really painful, it takes up so much time. So I was just expecting it to be absolutely terrible. And. And I had given myself the grace of, if it's not working, it's okay, formula is totally fine. When I was younger, I was a formula only baby due to some health issues that my mom had. She was on some medication, so that way she couldn't breastfeed. So I had like proof that it is going to be okay. My husband and I even bought some formula ahead of time just to ease my anxiety because I was kind of worried that they were going to expect me to breastfeed and they were gonna have this baby at home and I wouldn't be able to feed her and she would be starving and it would be terrible. So we just bought like a canister of formula to put my mind at ease that it's completely okay to do formula. And that is actually not what happened at all. So I was expecting for it to be terrible and hard and I was going to fail at it. And I've actually really enjoyed it now. I don't want to minimize how much work breastfeeding is because it is so time consuming. And now that I am four months into it, there's a lot of feelings I'm starting to feel about it that are different than how I initially felt. So I just want to focus on that initial phase. But now that I'm a ways out from is exhausting. It takes up so much time. It feels like your body's not your own. There's a lot that goes into it. But those initial weeks, really, the first three, three months, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed breastfeeding. And I don't want to use the word easy, but for me it was manageable. And it was almost kind of like a fun project to learn about this new thing that I have never known about. Like, I really did not know a lot about breastfeeding. And then I had a baby and all of a sudden I was like, tell me everything about breastfeeding. And that was really enjoyable to me to learn this new thing and then really be able to bond with our daughter. We did have some minor breastfeeding issues, by the way, but I think because I was Expecting it to be so terrible. I really set myself up for success. So I had already researched lactation consultants and made an appointment. So that way we went in two days after she was born, and that was really helpful. And we went in several times when she was really little, and that was so helpful to figuring out latching and positions and pumping. I highly recommend doing a lactation consultation if you can, and specifically doing one with some sort of outside the hospital lactation consultant, because for me, that was really helpful. And I've heard mixed perspectives from people about the lactation support they get in the hospital. Now. I did not give birth at a hospital. I gave birth at a birth center. So there wasn't a lactation person there, but there were midwives and I had my doula to help me. And. And then we went to a separate place and they, uh, pretty much gave me a crash course on all things breastfeeding, which was so helpful. They showed me how to pump, how to do the settings. They showed me all these different positions. They showed me, like, which pillow to use. That was very helpful. We did have some issues with a tongue tie, though. Hallie had both a tongue tie and a lip tie. And there's recently a New York Times article that came out about how some tongue ties are kind of a scam. I recommend Googling and reading that article if you can. I felt some weird mom guilt after that came out, because it came out after she had her tongue tie corrected. But I think we made the right decision because we had multiple professionals, like multiple, multiple people tell us that this was impacting her feeding and was going to impact her probably when she was older. And it's something we really put some time into. And so we did have to go to a pediatric dentist, get her tongue tie revised, and do, like, the mouth exercises, which, if you don't know what I'm talking about, after your kid gets their tongue tie fixed, you have to do these stretches every day for almost a month. And it makes them very unhappy, by the way. So we did all of that, and that did really help her feeding as well. So I guess my big lesson here is just that breastfeeding might not be as terrible as you're expecting and to definitely get some support if it's something you're interested in, because that was so helpful for me. I know a lot of people have the opposite experience where they think breastfeeding is going to be really magical and amazing, and then it's not. I think it's one of those things you have to be Very open about and recognize. It's just so different for everyone based on like, your health, your life, your baby. Like, there's some babies who just like never learn how to latch correctly. But it also might not be as hard and as terrible as you're expecting. I also really did not have any idea about how much time breastfeeding takes. And that's the thing I'm starting to struggle with now, now that I'm four months down the road from having a baby of it takes up so much of your time. I've seen things before about how a year of breastfeeding is pretty much equivalent to having a full time job. And now that I've been through it, I'm like, oh, people are not kidding about that. It is literally like a part time or full time job because you are constantly feeding your baby. Or even if you give your baby a bottle, you have to pump and you have to like be worried about your supply. It's a lot. I'm not gonna lie. It's. It's a lot. While we're talking about feeding, by the way, I will also just share that we did exclusive breastfeeding for, I believe it was the first 16 days. We waited until her tongue tie had been revised to introduce the bottle. So breastfeeding tongue tie revision happened. We went back to the lactation consultant, we went back to the pediatric dentist just to make sure everything was good. And then we introduced a bottle with breast milk. So I was pumping and that was so helpful. Once we were able to introduce the bottle. I'll talk about this in the part where I talk about things that were harder, but only sleeping two hours at a time at most was very challenging. So once we were able to give her a bottle, and then my husband was able to do some of the really late night shifts that helped me so much. And then about a month into her life, we introduced formula just because I was starting to feel some anxiety about pumping all the time and making sure I had enough milk for her. So I like, really kind of got obsessed with pumping for a while and it stressed me out because I would worry, okay, I need to make sure I've pumped enough for my husband Tim to have it overnight. And then if I went anywhere at all, I was so worried about not having enough milk at home for her. I also got kind of anxious and weird about if something ever happened to me. So, like, if I was in a car accident or I died. I know this sounds weird, but postpartum is wild. Your brain thinks of so many Things you've never thought of. And so I started to feel anxious of what if something happens to me? And I am um, like detained for a little bit. And then she needs food. So we gave her formula just to give me the peace of mind that she's going to be okay and she's going to take it and it's not going to be weird. And she did. She never had any issues with taking a bottle or taking formula. And it did make me feel a lot better once we started combo feeding. So that's what we do. Currently. I breastfeed, I pump and then we also do formula sometimes just so that way I'm not constantly stressing out about pump all the time or if we're out and about, it's usually easier just to give her formula versus finding a place where I can nurse her that's private and we're not going to be interrupted. The last thing I'm going to share that was really easy for me was just being happy as a mom. I don't know how else to explain it, but I just from the start was like, yes, this is what I want to do. I love her. And I guess part of this is there was a lot instinctually, I just kind of knew. I don't know if instinctually is the right word that kind of makes us sound like wild animals, but that's not what I mean. But there were a lot of times where she would be crying and I just was like, I think she's tired and that is what it is. Or I think she's hungry or you know, things like that where I was able to figure it out in the moment. And prior to having a baby, I was really worried that I wouldn't know how to handle all of the different situations. Like I wouldn't know what different cries meant, I wouldn't know what she needed or what the schedule should be. And that was all easier for me to figure out what she needed to thrive. And I just really liked being a mom in general. Several people told me about how you cry after you give birth, like in the postpartum period. And some of it is like sadness and then a lot of it is like crazy crying tears of joy because you are so happy. And that happened to me. I had these moments where I just was like sobbing because I was so happy with this little three person family we had created. And it was so fun to meet this baby that I had just been thinking about for so long. And now she was a real person with a real personality. So there were a lot of happy tears early on in the beginning. There were also some sad tears as well, which I'm about to cover. Okay. And then I'm gonna dive into the things that have been way harder than I expected about having a baby and motherhood and all of that. And the first one that takes the cake is sleep. Now, I knew that newborns don't sleep very well. I knew they wake up all the time at night, but I had no idea how much waking up that often messes with you mentally. So for the first 16 days, like I said, I exclusively breastfed. And she at, ah, most slept two hours at a time. This was in like the first month, so when she was very young. And so I never slept more than two hours at a time. And most of the time it was not two hours because often she would eat every hour or hour and a half. Cluster feeding was a very real thing for us, where there were a lot of days where it felt like that's all she did was eat and eat and eat. Plus, even if she did eat, go to sleep, sleep for two hours. It's really hard to turn your brain off. Like, you can't just feed a baby, put them down, and then just immediately be asleep yourself. I also personally just had a lot of issues with sleep. So I had a baby that was waking me up all the time, But I also had some pretty severe insomnia. I did not sleep for four days after she was born. I know that sounds wild, but I had so much adrenaline. She was born at 7pm and then we were at the birth center most of that night. And then came home like in the early morning of that day. And I just could not sleep at all. Even if someone else was watching her. I felt so amped up and I had so much adrenaline. And then also I had this fear that something was going to happen to her. I really, really do not like when people tell you to sleep when the baby sleeps. That's one thing that several people told me. And it just like internally threw me into this fit of rage because it is not that easy to just sleep whenever they're sleeping. And I at times could not just fall asleep. Like my body was incapable of falling asleep for a while because I just had so much adrenaline. I was worried about something happening to her. It is a lot harder than I ever thought. And, um, sleeping in such short chunks is fine for a few days, but after you do that for 16 days straight, you really do just not feel like the best version of yourself. This is also Something that my husband really struggled with, by the way, even though technically he slept more than I did. He's just the kind of person where having interrupted sleep, not getting a lot of sleep really, really throws him off. In our relationship, I tend to have more energy. I'm usually okay. I'm not okay if I don't sleep for 16 days, but I'm okay in general if I have a bad night's sleep to just drink a cup of coffee. So we both really struggled with the sleep thing. We both weren't getting sleep, and that was hard. The biggest thing that helps now, looking back, is knowing it's just a season of life and it's not forever. Which, if you're curious about our personal sleep journey, the first eight weeks was pretty much her waking up every two hours. There wasn't really a bedtime. Um, there wasn't a difference between bedtime and naps. And she was really into contact napping, which at times was stressful. And by contact napping, I mean, she didn't want to sleep in a bassinet, she didn't want to sleep in a crib. She wanted to sleep on someone. And if someone held her, she would sleep great. But someone had to be holding her, which meant that someone needed to be awake 24 7. And what my husband and I did, which I highly recommend, is we took shifts. We also had my mom there for the first two weeks that she was born. And that was really, really helpful to have a third person who could just hold her and let her sleep. My husband and I though pretty quickly on, I think at about the two week mark, when we realized that it wasn't working as well as we wanted it to, we started doing shifts. So I would go to bed really early, sometimes at like 6pm after dinner, as she got a little older, that pushed back a little bit, But I would go to bed. My husband would watch her. When I was exclusively breastfeeding, he would bring her into the bedroom so she wasn't in the same room as me because I could not sleep when she was in the same room as me. But he would bring her in, I would feed her, and then he would take her back out. And that really helped me get a little more sleep. So typically from 7pm or 8pm to 2am was my husband's shift, where he would bring her in, I would feed her, and then when she was taking a bottle, he just gave her the bottle and I would sleep. And then at 2am we would switch and I would stay up from 2am to 10am um, and that was very helpful. So that way when she was up at 4 in the morning and she was crying at me, I didn't get so frustrated or tired because I had gotten a bunch of sleep prior to that. I highly, highly recommend doing sh if you have a baby and having spaces where one person can sleep without the baby being there. So typically the person who was on the shift would be out in the living room or be like in our guest room. And then the person who was off the clock could actually sleep in our bedroom without a baby being there to constantly wake you up. And that helped so much. So that was about the first eight weeks of just every two hours she's waking up, she's sleeping on us. And then at eight weeks she got way better at sleeping. So we got a few longer stretches where she did like a four hour and a five hour. And then almost at nine weeks on the day she got way, way better at sleeping where just all of a sudden she could sleep in longer stretches. And that's what she's currently doing of, uh, typically she goes to bed around 7pm it's not always the same. And by goes to bed I mean we do the last feed of the day, we read a story. So really she's falling asleep probably more like 8pm and then she almost always sleeps solidly until 3am and then around 3am to M7am she wakes up. But if you give her her pacifier back, she goes back to sleep. So it's pretty easy. We have her crib right next to our bed and then one of us, which we rotate every other night, who sleeps right next to her. So one of us sleeps there, puts the pacifier back in. But for the last month or so she's been really great at sleeping. And I'm um, very worried about a four month sleep regression. I keep telling her that she's gonna skip it, that we don't need to do the four month sleep regression. But we're getting right up on that where we might be facing some hard stuff soon. So the next thing that was way, way harder than I was ever expecting is something I'm going to call becoming the default parent. And this is something that people told me about a little bit before I had a baby, but I did not get it until I went through it. And it's something that was very, uh, frustrating for me. So before we had a baby, my husband and I talked a lot about equal parenting roles that we were both going to contribute, that we are both Going to be doing all of the different work of the feeding, diapering, all of that stuff. So we were very much on the same page and had the best of intentions. But what happened was there was just so much more on me. And that was due to a lot of different reasons. The first one is I was breastfeeding, so I was the one literally feeding her a lot more often. I also just kind of knew a little quicker how to calm her down. We went through a period of time where Hallie also was just really into mom. And that makes sense because I was feeding her, I was around her more. So if she was screaming or upset, it was way easier for me to calm her down. And this isn't really the case anymore, but those first few months, this was very hard of if she needed to be calmed down, it was kind of on me. And then I think there also was an element of I was pregnant for nine months. So I spent a lot of time thinking about how our life was going to change and how time was going to look. And that experience was not the same for my husband, like his transition into fatherhood, which he's an amazing father and husband and partner, but it just was different and he had to adjust in a different way than I did. So there was a lot of days where I felt like I was doing way more baby care. Even though we tried to make it fair, even though we were constantly talking about it, there was just way more on me. Something else that did not help, by the way, was I was way more concerned about, like, our house being clean and laundry. We went through this period of time where I was so stressed all the time because I couldn't stop thinking of things to do, of like, I need to pay the bills, I need to do this thing for health insurance, we need to take out the diaper trash, I need to walk the dogs. And my husband didn't think like that. Like, he was a lot more immune to constantly thinking about the never ending task list. He also does a better job switching off. So when he's not taking care of the baby and I'm taking care of her, he can actually relax. And when it's the opposite where he's watching her, I still feel very stressed out. Not really for any reason, but I just worry. I listen all the time. I have a really hard time shutting off and I feel guilty as well. Like I want to go intervene and be watching her all the time. And so what happens is I get burnt out and stressed out. Even though I have a partner who's willing to help me. It's a very weird phenomenon. There also were a few times and there were some testy moments, I'm not going to lie, where my husband agreed to do something or ran an errand without really asking. And not that he needs to ask permission, but it made me feel like at times, wow, it's amazing that my husband has a built in babysitter who will always be there and take care of the kid and he doesn't have to worry about anything. And I felt like just without even anyone asking, I just all the time was the default parent. And then in return it doesn't really feel that way for me. And that's not because of anything he's done, it's just different. So there were some testy moments of uh, where he went out and like ran errands and I felt very alone. Another mistake we made was my husband had a trip planned when our baby was six weeks old and I didn't want him to go on it. I voiced my concerns before having a baby, but it was kind of an important trip he ended up going and I found that really hard. Like looking back and if we have another kid, absolutely no solo parenting in the first two months. Now that she's older, solo parenting doesn't feel like as big of a deal. But six weeks in, it was very raw and it felt very overwhelming for him to leave for three days and I just was taking care of our two dogs and our baby. Fortunately my mother in law was able to come help and that did help a lot. But I did not love that feeling of being alone and overwhelmed and like trying to figure out all of the baby stuff and still kind of healing from postpartum. The last thing I want to share that has been a lot harder for me and this is more of a long term thing than it was the first few weeks. But it's working and having a baby because I run a business, I have a very fast paced business where I've got a lot of client work, I've got a lot of stuff going on. I'm very ambitious and balancing work with taking care of a baby is so hard. I know that's nothing new, I know everyone will tell you that, but it is something I have struggled with. Especially after the six week mark, which what I did was I took off fully six weeks from every single piece of work I was doing. And then about six weeks in I slowly started adding back on client work and other things like recording this podcast. So I wasn't doing everything Right away at the six week mark. But basically each week after six weeks I added something new on and that worked overall. But it was very challenging because even when my husband's watching the baby, I'm constantly thinking about her. I feel guilty for when I'm working. There also was kind of a hard time of figuring out what is the best schedule. So right now what we're doing is typically I do baby duty in the mornings, like the early mornings from 7am to 10am Then my husband wakes up and in the afternoons I do more work and then in the evenings we kind of switch on and off. And that has worked well, but that took us a while to figure out. And there were some days where I felt like I had to work and take care of a baby and take care of a house and it was very overwhelming. If you're curious what we're doing about childcare, by the way, I don't know exactly. Our current goal is that for the first six months of her life we'll have her home. We will rotate care. So I work from home. My husband also works from home and we both are working more part time so that we can rotate care. I think that's going to work for six months. I think after that though, I would love to have a few dedicated days where we do have daycare or some sort of person to watch our kit. Because I've noticed it's very draining to me to constantly be switching on and off into work mode and mom mode. And it's really hard to get things done when she's home. It's just such a distraction hearing noises she makes. And even if my husband's watching her, like he might have to go to the bathroom and then I'll end up holding her, which is fine, but interrupts the workflow. Breastfeeding and working is a whole thing, which I am very fortunate that I work from home. So I'm not dealing with finding a spot to pump or dealing with having brakes to pump. But it still takes up so much of my time. And often what happens is I'll be in the middle of doing work and I'll think I'm just gonna feed her instead of giving her a bottle because otherwise I have to pump anyway and that feels like a waste of time. But then I accidentally end up feeding her a ton of time during the day and I don't get the work things done that I want to. So just figuring out that balance has been really hard. And I'm hoping at some point, which this is something My husband and I are talking about trying to figure out the right solution that we will do two to three days of dedicated care. When she was about two months old, my husband started taking her over to his parents house one day a week. And that has been so helpful, infinitely helpful. Like the first day he took her over to his parents house and I had a full day where I could work, I could nap. No one interrupted me. Oh, it was life changing. Also, just by the way, anytime I said I was too busy before I had a baby was a lie. I did not know what I was talking about. To wrap up this episode, I want to talk about some things that were really helpful during the postpartum phase and tips I would give myself if I had to do it all over again. So the first one is walking. Go on tons and tons of walks, which is what I did. But it took me a little bit of time to figure out how helpful going on a walk is. There are so many days and I still do this all the time, by the way, where I will take the baby and I'll take our one dog and we will go on like a two hour long walk. Because Hallie is so content on walks, when she's in the stroller, she either falls asleep or she's just perfectly content to look up at the sky and the trees. So going on a walk really gives me a much needed mental break. And I can call someone on the phone, which was very helpful in the early days when I was feeling kind of isolated because we weren't leaving the house a lot to call someone. Or I can listen to a podcast or an audiobook. So walks are amazing. And there are days, I'm not even kidding, where I went on like a three hour walk with Hallie just because I wanted that peace and quiet of her sleeping or not having to worry about her crying. My second tip is to have extra sleep spaces. So when you're pregnant, you think a lot about where your baby is going to sleep, but spend more time thinking about where you are going to sleep, especially if you have a partner. For us, it was very helpful to have a guest room. And so that way one person could be watching the baby and they could be in our room, which this is especially helpful right now because she still sleeps in our bedroom. She's kind of a noisy sleeper. She sometimes wakes up in the middle of the night. But if one of us sleeps in the guest room and then one of us sleeps with her, it's much better for everyone instead of all three of us Just being extra exhausted and tired. So that is something I would think through of. It has been so helpful to have a second sleeping space, which fortunately we already had a guest room, but if we didn't have a guest room, that would have been challenging. And for future pregnancies, I might actually think about putting like a twin bed in the nursery. We don't really have a traditional nursery set up right now because our house is smaller. And so we wanted more guest and office space while she's in our bedroom. And then eventually her crib will move into my office and then my office situation will change and I'll probably move my desk either out into a common area or my husband and I will share an office. We'll have to figure that out. But having different sleeping spaces really, really big. When you have a tiny baby, my next tip is to just really take advantage of as much help as you can get. And specifically you have to get good at asking people to help or telling them how they can help you. There were a lot of times early on in like the first six weeks where I had people who were willing to help me, like my mom or my mother in law or a friend, but I didn't really know how to tell them what I needed. Something that really helped us was having a list on our fridge that gave ideas of different things you can do to help. And so that way we didn't have to ask. So it just said things like take the dogs outside, take our dogs on a walk, do the dishes, do the laundry. And my mom did all of that stuff when she was here staying for two weeks. Unfortunately, she does not live close to me. She lives very far away. So she wasn't able to stay forever. But that was so helpful those first few weeks, just having someone who took care of us while we were taking care of a tiny baby. And on the flip side, if you know someone who has just had a baby, think of ways you can help them without them having to tell you. Because that's really hard to be like, hey, I really need someone to do my laundry, or I really need someone to just run my dishwasher or take the dog on the walk. It was really hard for me to ask for that stuff. And I wish more people had been like, hey, can I drop dinner off at your front door? Or can I come over and just clean your kitchen? Like, I wish they had been able to propose some of the tasks because a lot of people were just like, is there anything I can do to help? And I was exhausted and overwhelmed. And. And I didn't have the extra brain power to even think about how they could help. The last tip I want to share is kind of weird, but it's something I read early on in the newborn phase and it's something I still think about often. And it's when you're having a hard moment or a hard day, which I've never really had a really hard day. I've had a lot of hard moments though, but the entire day wasn't hard. But when you're having a moment where you are just so sleep deprived or you don't know how to calm your baby down or whatever it is to, uh, think about future you and pretend that you are going back in time and you have this one day to spend with your child when they are young and you've experienced their whole life, but you have this magical day where you get to go back and just hold them. I know that sounds weird, but I have thought about that so much and there's been so many times where I'm tired and I just think about like, future me will miss this moment so much someday when hallie is like 20 years old or 30 years old and she's a full grown person and doesn't sleep on me and I don't get to see her every day. So thinking about like this time travel thing and just staying present in the moment and recognizing that the hard stuff doesn't stay. The first two months were the hardest of the sleep deprivation, breastfeeding around the clock, and then month three got way easier. And since then it's continued to get better and better. So even though when you're in it it feels overwhelming and tough, it really doesn't last as long as it feels like it's going to in the moment. Okay, that's my full experience. There's honestly so much I could share. I could record a five hour podcast episode about what it's like to have a baby and becoming a mom. But I'm going to cut myself off here. I might do some future content around motherhood and I still am very much in this season of life, of figuring out how do I balance being a business owner, being a mom, doing all of the normal adult stuff you have to do, like getting oil changes and going to the doctor, like all of that feels very challenging now. And so know that it's still something I'm figuring out and will continue to share my journey about. But so far it's been great. We love Hallie a lot. She is such a funny, goofy baby. It's so interesting because we're in the phase right now where her personality is starting to come out. So, like, she smiles and she laughs. She's able to play a lot more with us. And that just, like, melts your heart and makes you so happy. M hey there friend. You made it all the way to the end of the episode, and I am so incredibly grateful and appreciative that you're still here. I hope this episode really helped you dive in deeper. And if you want to hear more about online business course creation and growing passive income, then you'll want to hit that subscribe button so you never miss a new episode. I released one every single week. I will see you on the next episode.