After I had my first baby, I wrote often about my postpartum journey. I documented my body issues, the good stuff, the bad stuff and laid it all out there in the hopes that anyone feeling like I did would be able to relate to my experiences. Since then, I’ve really cut back on the super personal motherhood content on my blog but I think sharing my second postpartum journey is worth shaking things up a bit.
Without a doubt, my second post baby experience has been wildly different from my first and it’s oh, so clear to me that the difference is a direct result of how I view myself and nothing at all to do with my babies.
When I had Gray, I lost myself. 
I had only one priority: keep him alive. 
I unintentionally neglected everything that made me happy and fulfilled, thinking I was doing the best for my son. I wanted to do it all “right” for his sake, to make sure that I was giving him every single thing that I thought he deserved from his mother and in doing that, I gradually left nothing for myself. Looking back, I was as happy and as grateful as I could have been and his newborn days are very precious to me but it took many, many months (and writing this blog) for me to reclaim myself as a person. 
This time, I wasn’t having it.
When Georgia came into this world, I made a point, for the first time in my entire life, to extend myself some grace. Grace and crap ton of patience. She is loved, protected and nurtured and all of that is possible even though I make it a priority to take a shower and check my emails in the morning. 

My body is, of course, different than it was 12 months ago but instead of lamenting it or focusing on the new bumps and lumps, I ran out a few days after giving birth to snag a few items that fit the body I was currently rocking. I still wear my side panel maternity shorts all of the time (they are so damn comfy) and haven’t bothered with anything but granny panties in 8 weeks, but it’s all good. I have no expectations for myself this time and I honestly feel better about my body than I have in years. 
I’ve decided to only focus on what I think is best for my family and have tried my very hardest to shut out the pressure of what I think motherhood should look like. If carving out some alone time is what is best for me then that is what I need to do, even if that goes against what I once imagined motherhood to look like. 
And, as it turns out, allowing myself the room to fail, flounder, be a hot mess, shower, drink wine, make frozen pizza for dinner, grant unlimited screen time, throw away the blow out onesies, be one thousand weeks late on thank you notes, sometimes cry when the baby cries, curl my hair, forget to brush my teeth, never pull out my big girl camera and ask for help has given me an experience I didn’t have the first time: to truly fall in love with my daughter during all of the craziness of her newborn days. 
I’m dead tired, never on time and am constantly negotiating with a three year old while holding a fussy baby but I am ultimately so thankful that this round of newborn weeks has been so different than my last.