What I Learned “Year One”

By Lisa Weinheimer:

Year one is over. I survived. I learned a ton. And like Letterman, I would like to share with you the Top 10 Things I learned being a first time mom in year one! Feel free to add to my list. I’m sure everyone’s experience is a little different, but I am sure some are the same too!

1. Gag Me With a Spoon!!! Somehow during year one your gag reflex disappears. Seriously, I used to turn green at the sight of an eye boogie on my dog. Now I can pick boogers off my daughter’s face and laugh when poop gets under my finger nails (Don’t judge; it will happen to you at some point).

2. Kids Bounce. New moms will do something stupid year one. You will turn your back at just the wrong moment and your kid will fall from the couch, or off a bed. Your heart will stop. Three years will be taken off your life, but both of you will be OK.

3. You Will Bring Sexy Back. I don’t know how, but somewhere along the line you get your sexy back. How my husband still looks at me the same I will never know, but he does. Thank goodness!

4. You Will Have No Sense of Shame. You will sing in a food court at the mall, dance like a clown at the post office and put out an all points bulletin in aisle four at the Harris Teeter for a missing lovie or binki.

5. Tissue Please! Something is so irrevocably altered in your DNA, that you now have the “mom crying gene.” You cry at commercials, in church when the choir sings, at every milestone or proud moment you encounter. It’s embarrassing, but there is nothing you can do about it.

6. The 5 Second Rule Takes Affect! Or as we say in our house, “God made dirt; dirt can’t hurt!” Around month eleven, your kid takes up shot put and tosses everything from the sippy cup to spoons to their muffin at breakfast. That germaphobe you were month one is long gone and you will rub toys on your pant leg, blow on a cookie with grass on it and move on!

7. Name That Tune! Every song ever played on battery operated toys in your house will get stuck in your head on a vicious loop. Your husband will yell at you to please top singing insane children’s songs while cooking dinner.

8. You take up Alligator Wrestling. Around month ten, that sweet baby who used to stare into your eyes and love your songs now goes into a death spiral at every diaper change. Some days it is a two person job just to get pants on your child. I did not see this one coming!

9. Secret Decoder Ring Now Included. While on day one you had no idea what was going on or what the heck you were doing, by the end of year one you can decipher every cry, whine, look and babble. It’s like you’re a translator at the UN. Oh, she’s hungry or oh, he needs his lovie. When did you become the baby whisperer?

10. Love. Sometime during the first year, you fall in love with your baby. For some it is immediate, but for me, it took a little while to grasp the deep, overwhelming love I feel for this little person in my life. But like the saying goes, “A mother’s love knows no bounds.” And this loves grows every day.