If you’re just joining For Stitch & Giggles, I’d love for you to read my postpartum story. Here’s Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4. I write this newsletter for pregnant and postpartum moms everywhere. You’re not alone.
I’ve seen quite a few of you posting these minute-by-minute breakdowns of your days. So I decided to give it a try. It’s a feat! I had to keep up with my day in my iPhone notes app. The day was busier than I expected, but that’s a normal Saturday for we moms, isn’t it?
For those just joining For Stitch & Giggles, I have a four-year-old little boy, Jude, and a nine-month-old baby, Charlotte. My husband’s name is Nathan. I truly have the best family in the world.
This is a day in the life for us.
6:33 am - Our kids slept in! It’s a miracle!
6:40 am - I get our baby up, change her, and give her a bottle
6:45 am - Jude wakes up, and I tell him to go jump on Daddy
7:02 am - After Nathan has been stepped on, tackled, and near suffocated, he gets Jude his breakfast while I put Charlotte down for playtime
7:04 am - I feed our dog, Murray, before we both forget
7:15 am - While Jude is happily eating his breakfast, I start cooking ours while Nathan plays with Charlotte
7:16 am - Jude leaves the table to go join Charlotte and Nathan. I tell him to go back to the table.
7:17 am - Jude leaves the table to go join the play. (You’re getting the picture.)
7:30 am - I finish our breakfast of eggs and bacon, and Nathan and I sit down to eat breakfast. Jude decides he also wants bacon.
7:45 am - I finish eating and put Charlotte in her high chair for her solids. I turn Blippi on for Jude. Nathan goes to the shower.
7:50 am - After Charlotte eats her solids, I put her down to play while I get on my laptop to start the process of turning on paid subs on my Substack. I get 10 whole minutes!
8:00 am - Charlotte cries. I pick her up, soothe her, put her back down.
8:03 am - I sit down again at my laptop to drink my cold cup of coffee.
8:04 am - Baby fusses again. I pick her up and hold her.
8:09 am - I hold baby while getting Jude ready for the day by one-arm wrestling him into his clothes while holding Charlotte.
8:10 am - Nathan emerges from his shower (finally) and takes Jude with him to a morning meeting at our church
8:11 am - Charlotte refuses to be put down, so I hold her while I try to finish my Substack paid sub set up and then the article I decided to post about it
8:46 am - I look at the time, freak out, jump up, and leave my Substack article unfinished while I rush around the house to get myself and baby dressed
9:04 am - I leave the house to go to a birthday party…that started at 9am
9:10 am - Stop by the church to get Jude and take him with me
11:03 am - I leave the party with a very angry baby. I had forgotten to pack her bottle. Mom fail. I speed across town, practicing in my head what I will tell a cop if I get pulled over (if they can hear me over the screaming baby in the backseat)
11:14 am - I rush into the house, change her diaper, and finally get the girl her bottle
11:33 am - Charlotte starts singing the opera crescendo of a baby who missed her morning nap. I bounce her and walk her around to try to calm her down.
11:37 am - I take her into the bedroom and my ears are ringing. I feel like crying while I sit on the bed. It sometimes still happens, even 9 months postpartum. I feel exhausted from the day, and it’s not even noon.
11:40 am - Charlotte calms down. It was really only about 10 minutes of screaming. But it’s amazing how long it feels to a strung out mom. She refuses to be put down, so I carry her on my hip while I walk around the kitchen as I make my grocery list.
11:45 am - Nathan and Jude get home. Jude starts weeping because he’s over-tired. I realize this immediately, but he is extremely upset because he wants to watch Toy Story. He does not want to take a nap. He wants to watch Toy Story. I have a weak mom moment, and I give in just to calm him down so we have any hope of actually getting him to rest his over-tired body.
12:00 pm - I finish the grocery list after handing Charlotte off to Nathan. I heat my own lunch up. (Leftover Chipotle, the BEST)
12:15 pm - Nathan gets Jude his lunch now that he’s calmer
12:30 pm - I finish my lunch and put Charlotte in her high chair for solids
12:32 pm - Nathan takes over giving her her solids so I can pack up and head to the grocery store
12:33 pm - I leave the house and head to Aldi (my sacred place)
12:55 pm - I’m following my route through the store, grabbing things off the shelf with a control and speed that should be an Olympic sport. And while I’m shopping, my mind is spinning out. I had just turned on paid subscriptions on my Substack. I had really debated doing that. I didn’t want anyone to feel pressured to pay me for something I’m doing for free anyways. Then my mind spun out further. What if people think I’m trying to make a buck off of other mom’s pain? I felt like vomiting right there in the paper goods aisle. I couldn’t do this. What was I thinking? I had to delete my whole Substack. Fade away into obscurity where no one would feel obligated to pay money or think I’m trying to guilt people into subscribing. It was decided. I was going to just delete my whole Substack.
1:05 pm - I leave Aldi still feeling stressed out and overwhelmed and head to Store 2: Walmart (not my sacred place)
1:09 pm - I walk into Walmart as quickly as possible to do my shopping for the things I can’t get at Aldi. (The only reason I ever venture into Walmart.)
1:30 pm - I check out and start power-walking towards the exit. The Walmart receipt guy is there. (sigh) I’m always nice to the Walmart receipt guy. He has a terrible job. People are really mean to him. People just ignore him and walk right on by even when he asks to see their receipt. I am always nice to him. He pays me back by asking to see my receipt, every. single. time. I see him every week. I always buy diapers. He always thinks I’m stealing them. It’s our whole routine. But I’m still nice to him. I just have my receipt ready at this point.
1:42 pm - I’m exhausted. I finally get back home. Nathan has been playing the game of trying to keep Jude in his room for rest time in the hope that he will actually nap. He hasn’t. I unload the groceries from the car and pile them on the cabinets. Nathan starts putting them away. I tell him I need to go lie down for a nap. He does what he always does, “Of course, sweetheart. I’ve got it.”
2:50 pm - My alarm for an hour goes off. I turn it off and go right back to sleep. My body just really needed to rest.
3:18 pm - Nathan pays me back for allowing Jude to jump on him this morning by bringing both kids in to jump on me to wake me up from my nap. Understandable.
3:19 pm - I stumble into the kitchen. Nathan hands me a full bottle and the baby. I give her the bottle while Nathan gets Jude his afternoon snack.
3:32 pm - Charlotte finishes her bottle and I put her down in the living room to play. I look around at our destroyed kitchen and living room. It’s truly a disaster. I have a list of chores I needed to accomplish today, and I’ve done exactly zero. I just start doing one thing at a time.
3:33 pm - I got one thing done and then Charlotte spits up everywhere and needs a full outfit change.
3:35 pm - I return her to the floor on her playmat and start cleaning again. Jude happily sits on the couch to watch Toy Story 3.
4:40 pm - Nathan leaves to run an errand. I’m still cleaning.
4:45 pm - I take a break from cleaning to try to figure out how to appeal an insurance claim. (It’s a nightmare btw)
5:15 pm - Nathan arrives home just as I put the last toy in the toy chest and have finished cleaning the living room. He says the famous words, “Ok babe, how can I help?” I try not to strangle him.
5:18 pm - Nathan takes over with the kids while I start cooking our dinner.
5:23 pm - Nathan feeds Charlotte her solids. I feed the dog before I forget again.
5:32 pm - Jude eats his dinner of tortellini noodles and salad (and he actually eats it!)
5:34 pm - I plate up tortellini and pink sauce for Nathan and I (we’re toddler parents, we eat about as early as elderly people)
5:59 pm - We finish up dinner, and I make the impulse decision to load the kids up and everyone go get ice cream
6:04 pm - While I’m putting her in the carseat, Charlotte says “ma, ma, ma” for the FIRST TIME. I cry. Naturally.
6:09 pm - We finally have everyone loaded up, and we head to Dairy Queen to get extremely unhealthy Blizzards
6:20 pm - We have our ice cream and we drive around our sweet town, looking at houses that are for sale and dreaming about moving into a bigger house with a yard for the kids
6:57 pm - We arrive back home.
7:05 pm - I change Charlotte into her pajamas and give her the final bottle of the day while rocking her in the rocking chair I inherited from my Gramma. While she takes her bottle, I type on my phone to finish the Substack article I’d left unfinished that morning. The afternoon has calmed me down. I’ve decided not to delete my whole Substack, but to just give it some time to settle before I make any rash decisions.
7:19 pm - Charlotte finishes her bottle and I rock her to sleep in the quiet darkness of her room while Nathan puts Jude in the shower to wash his hair
7:22 pm - I put the baby down, exit her room, and pull up Substack again. I had gotten my first paid subscriber. Tears filled my eyes. Someone wanted to pay money to support me? I do what most postpartum moms do, and I had a little cry. (Tears are good!) It was exactly what I needed to feel a bit more confidence in my decision to turn on paid.
7:30 pm - Jude comes out of the shower, and I brush his hair and get his bedtime milk. He asks for Daddy to read him a story, and I sit on the couch and listen to the wonderful sound of my husband reading to my son in his room. How could I be this lucky?
7:40 pm - I brush Jude’s teeth and put him to bed. He wants to hear a song, so I sing him “It Is Well With My Soul,” the old hymn that carries so many memories for me. It is well. All is well. No matter what. God has brought me through such a hard season, made me stronger, and made me the mother I need to be right now. I get a little choked up at how beautiful my life really is.
7:45 pm - Both kids are down. I get to sit on the couch and actually read the Substack articles I’ve been saving.
8:05 pm - My phone alerts me that I’m nearing my time limit for the Substack app for the day (I have it set to 50 minutes a day.) I am shocked because it feels like I’ve barely been on the app all day.
8:06 pm - I put my phone away and pick up a book. Nathan sits on the couch next to me and plays his video game. In a miraculous stroke of fate, both kids go right to sleep.
10:30 pm - We realize we have stayed up way too late. We have church tomorrow. We quickly turn in. And I lie awake for a while, just thanking God for everything I have in my life.
3:00 am - Baby wakes up crying. I end up spending the rest of the night with her in our bed while Nathan sleeps on the couch. She keeps me up for a few more hours before I’m finally able to get back to sleep. The perfect reality-check for a mom with a baby! Hahaha.
My Saturday was busy. I had good moments and hard moments. But it was all so beautiful. I’m learning to soak it all up. These days will go so quickly. I want to cherish every moment.
Whatever you’re going through, you’re not alone. Whether you’re in a sweet moment, or one of the hardest seasons of you’re life, you are seen and loved. If you want to talk, my inbox is always open. I’m here for you. <3
Important note: I am not a licensed therapist. My experiences are lived experiences and not intended to be taken as medical or psychiatric advice. If you are in a crisis, call 988, the national suicide hotline. If you are not in a crisis, but need timely support, call or text 1-833-852-6262, the National Maternal Mental Health Hotline.
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