I call this the new mom edition.
Top photo is filtered and bottom one shows more of the “entire picture.” No shower, no make up, and two baskets of laundry that need to be folded and put away.
I hope social media doesn’t negatively affect Tove as much as it did me in my teenage years. It’s so easy to forget that most of what we see has been curated, and isn’t always the truth.
Throwback to when Tove was just 5 days old. I look at this photo and feel ALL THE FEELS. Everything was so new for her, for me, for our little family. We were still struggling with feeding due to tongue tie and I was having a hard time with my breastpump. My hormones were all over the place. Ben would come find me in the room just bawling my eyes out. Exhaustion, fear, and anxiety were pumping through my veins.
Yet here we are..
it’s amazing the amnesia after giving birth. I miss the newborn stage already but I’m trying to also remember how much of a struggle it was. I felt like nobody prepared me for the fourth trimester. I did so much prep for giving birth when in reality I should’ve been preparing for when we brought her home.
The best part of the photo is that it’s edited 😅 below is the real deal- taken at 2:42am with a pillow case covered in after birth mess and newborn poop.
This one hits close to home, in more ways than one. Not only did we consider having Tove in Dallas, but we also have family/friends still in Texas. Unfortunately rumor has it that Oklahoma is pushing for similar laws to go into effect here as well. This also hits close to home because like this post I shared on Instagram, there are so many reasons behind why a woman would ever choose to have an abortion.
I got pregnant in 2020 around the time Covid hit. Ben and I were SO EXCITED! Especially since all Ben has ever wanted in life is to be a dad. Having never been pregnant before, we immediately told our family the second I had taken multiple pregnancy tests and they all came back “pregnant”. When I saw the results on the pregnancy tests I cried because I was so happy and emotionally unprepared for what that feeling was going to be. We weren’t trying for a baby but I hadn’t gotten my period and well.. maybe the stars had aligned? So I scheduled an appointment with an OB, little did I know that I was about to be “Vanessa”.
I believe I was 6-8 weeks pregnant when I had my first appointment (this is the first time I’m writing about this and/or thinking about it since I pushed these memories into a “forget” folder in my brain.). Ben was at work so I drove to Edmond on my own and met with the OB for my appointment. Everything was normal until they went to listen for the heartbeat. I laid there on my own as they kept trying to search for one without avail. Something didn’t feel quite right. They told me not to worry because it was still early on in my pregnancy, maybe we were too early in fact and it just hadn’t developed yet. So I was sent to get some blood work/labs done next door and come back for my second appointment in 2 weeks. I left feeling very uneasy, but also had to share the “no news” with Ben that evening.
Was I worried? Hell yeah I was. But I had never been pregnant before and wanted to trust the doctors. However, a few days later I miscarried in the middle of the night in our apartment bathroom. It was a traumatic experience, but I am SO LUCKY that I didn’t need medical intervention. Or that I didn’t have to carry a “baby” to term who never even developed a heartbeat because I was past that 6 week mark. I am still grieving the loss from our first pregnancy, so much so that it totally robbed us of any joy our first trimester with Tove. In fact when I took the pregnancy tests and they came back “pregnant” I cried when I told Ben because I was so damn worried we wouldn’t be able to carry to term again. Plus I was so sick following the miscarriage and it continued well into my pregnancy with Tove. I was barely able to eat, I was violently vomiting all the time and had terrible IBS symptoms.. it was a nightmare. I cried so much in the beginning because I was scared to feel any resemblance of joy in case I got robbed again. We waited until the second trimester to tell our parents this time around and my mom told me “we are your family, you could’ve still told us” and it wasn’t that I didn’t want to share with everyone it was that I didn’t want to have to answer those calls or texts if I had another miscarriage. The aftermath was gut wrenching and emotionally draining and I didn’t want to have to share that with anyone again. Now imagine having to share with them that we had to have an abortion mid-pregnancy because our pregnancy was no longer viable. That’s definitely not something you want to share with the world.
Luckily we now have a beautiful HEALTHY baby, whom I was able to carry to full term but I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t called planned parenthood out of fear because I didn’t think I could handle being so sick and losing another child. So to take away these rights from girls and women is so fucking ludicrous, and it hurts my heart for the ones who didn’t have as favorable of outcomes as we did. An abortion isn’t a quick fix or an easy decision, and I for one hope that my daughter will have the right to autonomy over her own body.
Donate to help other women HERE if you’d like.
I cannot get over how creative and unique these children’s books are! I was casually scrolling through instagram when I came across The Little Homie and decided to check out more of their books on their website. I immediately wanted to purchase all of them. Thinking about adding one or two to our registry… or maybe I just treat ourselves to reading from the four book pack!
I liked Who Run The World? mostly cause GIRL POWER (of course I want my daughter to be a fearless female) plus my curiosity is wondering who all is in this ABC book. Also how fun of a spin on the traditional ABC book isn’t this?
I immediately thought of my Pappa when I saw the ABC⚡️DC version of the traditional ABC book. He’s a fan of ACDC and rock music but then when I was looking at the page views Tina Turner popped up; Dad’s favorite fearless female singer. So now I feel like I have to have this book for him to read to his first grandchild. 🤗
1 2 3 with the Notorious B.I.G. is a BRILLIANT take on numbers. I could totally see Ben reading this to our daughter in between rapping his favorite songs to her 😂 . As a matter of fact I feel like this book would make me start replacing lullabies with other nighttime tunes. She’s already been listening to hella different genres in the womb through me. Ben didn’t seem too impressed when I told him we’d listened to Young Jeezy Thug Motivation, Lil Wayne The Carter III, and Kanye West Graduation albums in the car to and from work recently.
Honestly I think I would want the entire collection of the Raised On Hip-Hop series. It would be too hard for me to pick just one out of the three they have. The pages above are en excerpt from Vol. 1. I’m starting to think I want these books for myself, and not for my child… oop.
If you’re expecting or attending a baby shower soon, I feel like these are GREAT gifts to give or buy for yourself. I mean if I’m enjoying the book I have to read over and over again to my child then maybe it won’t feel like a chore.
“Open up Instagram and see the lives of others, the life we could have. See the places we’re not traveling to. See the lives we’re not living. See the people we’re not dating. We bombard
ourselves with stimuli, input, input, input, and we wonder why we’re miserable.
We wonder why we’re dissatisfied.”
How we portray ourselves on social media has been a topic for a while now. I heard it when i was in university, how it would affect my career. I was never censored, i was just smart about it. I never put a name to my opinions and i never posted defamatory posts on Facebook. I made sure to delete the entire existence of my high school years online. But today i still suffer from the effects of “the interweb”. I see beautiful people, beautiful pictures, in beautiful places and i want MORE. I’m never enough, my life is never enough.
What i forget is that i take 20 selfies to only post 1 of myself. I scroll through Instagram and see beautiful girls and wish ‘i could be just like them’ when really, its a photograph. I know nothing about their life or whether or not they are happy. What’s to envy?
So i’ve stopped following triggering profiles on social media and i try to stay as genuine as possible. At the end of the day im happy being ME, so why not show my friends the real me? …even if that includes some less than flattering photographs.
Pinksaint 