My son Zachary just turned one year old, and the weight of mom of two still feels a bit awkward on my tongue. I can hardly believe that this precious little boy is real. I really wasn’t sure I would be able to have any more children.
The journey to this point was incredibly difficult. The struggle to conceive. Loss after loss. Holding Shiloh in the palm of my hand. An uncertain week when my husband was hospitalized and we didn’t know what was wrong yet.
Zachary’s existence doesn’t erase the grief I have over losing Shiloh or any of my other miscarriages, but it does ease it a little. I ended up having a total of 7 losses before him. I wrote about some of them in my Recurrent Miscarriages post a few years ago. Somehow, I kept going.
The cycle before my son was conceived was also a chemical pregnancy. When I saw those two pink lines the very next cycle I was skeptical. I was guarded. I wasn’t getting excited yet.
Pregnancy after loss, especially so many losses, is wrought with anxiety. I wish I could tell you I had it all figured out, that my trust in God was rock solid, and that I could “feel” it was different. I can’t.
I counted past each miscarriage, holding my breath until I reached 15 weeks—the point where I had lost Shiloh.
After that, I told myself I just needed to get to viability. 24 weeks. That should feel safer. It didn’t, not really.
When I reached 30 weeks and my baby shower came, a new fear took its place. I couldn’t bring myself to open the gifts. I was terrified of coming home to a house full of things I might never use.
Every milestone brought a small sense of relief and promised safety—but it never stayed long. As soon as I reached one, my mind was already reaching for the next thing to worry about.
It felt like Facebook somehow knew my greatest fear and proceeded to show me post after post and reel after reel of women who lost their babies during childbirth, or late in pregnancy, or died in infancy. There was also an influencer who died during childbirth right around the time I was preparing for my own birth. I began to dread the end of my pregnancy, especially because I was high risk and had to be induced.
I’m not saying women shouldn’t share their stories, but it was not the best thing for my emotional state at the time. Every headline felt like a bad omen — as if it was foreshadowing my fate.
The day finally came, and off to the hospital I went. Unfortunately we both went into distress. I ended up wheeled into the operating room with an emergency cesarean faster than a blink of an eye.
My son was born blue and purple, and not breathing. He scored a 2 on the Apgar scale at birth. Thankfully he responded well to the oxygen treatment and I had a better than expected recovery. As scary as that was, we all came out of it relatively unscathed. Perhaps one day I will share that story.
It became apparent while in the hospital that my son also had some kind of lip/tongue tie or oral motor issue as he would not stay latched. He kept popping on and off. They pressured me to give him a bottle, so I started pumping in hopes that I could eventually bring him to the breast. I saw a few lactation consultants in and out of the hospital along with a speech pathologist and feeding specialist, chiropractor and eventually had his lip and tongue ties revised.
We had lots of appointments, daily exercises, mouth stretches post-revision, and nothing seemed to really help. My son developed breast aversion and would cry if I even took my breast out. I tried feeding him before the bottle, after the bottle, partly in between, at night, during the day, all kinds of positions. It felt like Green Eggs and Ham Breastfeeding edition.
By the time he was 4 months old I had a hard truth from my lactation consultant. We tried using the SNS (again), but all he did was drink whatever was dribbling out of the tube. He would. Not. Latch. The truth was that he was losing his suck reflex and probably not going to nurse at this point. It was not impossible, but considering his issues and the lack of progress it was very unlikely. The speech pathologist said that sometimes babies don’t re-learn how to suck even post-revision. They are stuck in the suck pattern that started from before birth. I had to return to work, and I knew that I wasn’t going to have the stamina to keep trying.
I was extremely upset. I cried. I felt like a failure. Every mom I saw breastfeeding in person or online felt like a painful reminder of what I desperately wanted but couldn’t have. I had a lot of self-pity … why do I have to do everything on hard mode? Can’t ONE thing just work like it’s supposed to for once?
I exclusively pumped for my daughter for 14 months. I knew exactly the difficult road ahead and was trying to avoid it. I sincerely thought that with the knowledge I had, the right support with the specialists I had lined up, and the lip and tongue tie revision… that I would be able to nurse.
That door slammed in my face and it was brutal. I felt silly for believing that I could have a different result.
When I finally accepted my fate, I decided I needed to figure out a more sustainable solution for pumping. The pump I was using was gifted to me, for which I am extremely grateful, but it was old and the motor was gradually getting weaker. It was taking me 40+ minutes to empty, which was way too long. I bought several different pumps as economically as possible, a bottle washer, and experimented until I found what worked best for me.
My son is 12 months old now and I’m proud to say that I’m still pumping. But it came with a cost. The early days were stressful, and a bit of a blur if I’m honest. Due to his oral motor issues we had some major gas problems until we were able to get the revision done and bottle feeding improved. It was difficult trying to pump, do all of the exercises and stretches, try to latch, on very little sleep with a baby that wouldn’t stop screaming. I wish I could have enjoyed the newborn stage more. Maybe I would have enjoyed it more if I switched to formula.
After his revision, he didn’t learn to nurse, but he was able to latch onto a bottle more effectively. The clicking stopped, and he no longer dribbled milk or took in excess air. His colic improved as a result, along with the natural progression of his digestion.
With that, and with the pressure to keep trying to latch finally gone, things began to stabilize. I was able to let go and focus on my happy, healthy little boy—what I had once dreamed about and prayed for.
He was growing well on my breastmilk, even if it wasn’t “off the tap.” I had a decent supply that was enough to feed my son—a point I don’t take for granted, given my struggles and stress over a lower supply with my daughter. This time I was even able to donate 440 ounces of milk before an injury led to losing my oversupply.
After an uncertain beginning, every milestone was a celebration. He rolled over around 5 months, started crawling at 5.5 months, took his first steps at 8 months, and started walking at 10 months. We have been so proud of his accomplishments.
He’s fiercely attached to me and wants to be right at my side at all times. I often joke that if he could crawl back in the womb he would. He gives me kisses and blows raspberries on my arm. He nestles into my arms like it’s the safest and best place in the whole world.
He adores his big sister and daddy (except when daddy is trying to take him away from mama). Seeing the bond between the rest of our family grow has been so sweet. He leaps into Annika’s arms and follows her around. He laughs so hard at her antics. He snuggles daddy and rubs his head (right before he yanks his hair… sweet and spicy).
His little voice is the best. I love his babbles and when he ‘sings’ with the congregation at church.
He wants to sit on my lap at my desk to bang on my keyboard and grab every item on my desk which I promptly extract from his death grip. He then looks at my laptop screen for the computer people (my coworkers) even if there’s no active call. They wave at him and gush about how cute he is and how big he’s getting.
It took a while for him to come to us but the world is a better place because he’s in it. And now that he’s finally here, the first year went so fast. Too fast. I wish I could go back and experience it a little longer, but babies don’t keep, do they?
Motherhood is achingly beautiful.
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