Hi! Welcome to That Millennial Mom Community – I’m Caitlin!

Hi! I am so happy you are here! My name is Caitlin and I am a millennial corporate girlie who spent her whole pregnancy saying she couldn’t see herself being a stay at home mom. I loved my job and I loved my team and what I did. Joke was on me! I turned in my resignation after 3 months back and haven’t looked back. Here’s a breakdown of my story:

Conceiving and pregnancy were both difficult roads for me. We spent 3 years trying to conceive and turned to IVF after 6 failed IUIs over 18 months. We found a wonderful clinic with a Reproductive Endocrinologist who some would consider a “mad scientist”. He did a massive deep dive with testing and discovered I had Hashimotos, High D-Dimer, and histamine resistance and high inflammation markers. He spent time with us working on lifestyle changes to help manage all of these things. 

2 of our 6 failed IUIs were with this clinic and we decided, as a team, to move on to IVF so we could control more of the variables. I felt the best I’ve ever felt on meds to prepare for our egg retrieval – which is not the norm if you are familiar with IVF! We opted to do a fresh transfer with no testing as our genetic testing showed no markers for anything. We were beyond surprised when our first 5 day fresh transfer stuck. 

After the initial shock wore off, Hyperemesis Gravidarum set in and I spent weeks 8-22 of my pregnancy fighting to keep any food or water down. It was truly one of the most difficult things I ever did. It’s hard to not feel like the magic of pregnancy was stolen from me. Once we got past week 22, my HG seemed to resolve and I had about 5 blissful weeks. I then seemed to suffer from every pregnancy symptom possible –  or at least that’s what it felt like! I felt like I just couldn’t catch a break and was so exhausted that I barely had the energy to “prepare” and honestly didn’t do any nesting.

Because of the HG, I lost all muscle mass so standing for any period of time was difficult and exhausting, I had round ligament pain, congestion, carpal tunnel in both wrists that required me to wear braces most of the time, terrible insomnia that required me to take a Unisom every night, and the cherry on top was the unbelievable heartburn that I had and I could only sleep sitting up. You can check out this video here of how I had to set myself up every night to get a few hours of sleep! It was truly just a fight to get through every day at the end of my third trimester and I admittedly didn’t do as much as I probably should have to prepare for postpartum.

I went into prodromal labor at 36 weeks, which then stalled. I was sent home after a few hours in L&D triage and was told to come back if my contractions returned. I had Braxton Hicks every morning around 2:00 am and that was SO FUN. Then one random evening 10 days after our stint in triage, after finishing work, I was standing at my kitchen counter at 37+5 and felt a pop. I thought my back had cracked. Then I thought I was peeing…turns out my water had broken. I called my husband and hopped in the shower thinking I’d be laboring at home the rest of the evening. 

Turns out, all that praying for an early “birthday” for my little guy was answered. Because 3 hours and 47 minutes after my water broke, our 8lb IVF miracle was on my chest. We did skin to skin for an hour and then immediately started trying to nurse. I was in pain almost immediately but was told that sometimes it takes a bit for all the hormones to “come down” after birth. Into our first night together, I was still in a lot of pain and baby was falling asleep at the breast. He had to have his blood sugar tested twice because he was going so long between nursing sessions. 

This should have been my first red flag. There were feeding issues but I was just so overwhelmed and so tired, I didn’t realize I wasn’t getting the appropriate education from the Lactation Counselors in the hospital. Our difficulties continued at home, my milk still hadn’t come in after almost 3 days, and I was in so much pain every time I latched. I went into feeding open minded and was fine supplementing with formula but was determined to make breastfeeding work. I luckily have a friend who is a nurse midwife and she was able to get me the info I wasn’t provided in the hospital and helped me get my milk going after 4.5 days of barely producing any colostrum. 

I was still in a lot of pain and was having vasospams that were lasting hours. I finally got into an IBCLC at 6 weeks postpartum. She immediately identified my son had a tongue and lip tie. This was after two pediatricians told me he didn’t and I felt so validated. I just KNEW something was up and felt like everyone brushed it off as “normal”. Breastfeeding should NEVER hurt!  We got into a new pediatrician who specializes in oral ties and we all decided to, at the very least, release just his tongue to help him move more milk and to hopefully get me some pain relief. After 2 weeks of stretches and STILL no pain relief for me, we decided to release his lip as well. There was a lot more that went into all of that but my IBCLC and I made the difficult decision to exclusively pump, which is also a story in and of itself!

On top of the pumping, PPD/PPA/PPOCD coupled with D-MER made my fourth trimester really dark and hard. I felt like I dreaded the sunsetting, I felt like I didn’t have the “gut” instinct everyone kept telling me to rely on and that I didn’t “know” my baby. I was so overwhelmed and confused and so unbelievably tired because I didn’t know much about baby sleep. I started googling everything and got VERY overwhelmed. While I did have close friends that were moms, they had their own stuff going on and the last thing I wanted to do was be a burden. I’m not sure why it was so difficult to ask for help, especially from those closest to me. It seems as if it’s just a canon event postpartum. We all have so many shared experiences but tend to suffer in silence. 

I spent the next 8 weeks thinking about going back to work. We had no idea how we were going to make it work. We couldn’t get into any day cares but even if we could, we couldn’t afford it. It was $1980 for 5 days a week, for 6 hours a day at the only daycare in our area that had availability. It was so incredibly stressful but I was so ready to get back to work so I could have something for me that wasn’t also me and the baby. 

After spending my entire pregnancy telling my sweet and wonderful manager at the job I loved that I could never be a stay at home mom, I turned in my notice after being back for 3 months. I was met with nothing but love from my team which made this scary decision easy. I knew in my heart that this is where I was supposed to be. 

Before resigning though, I decided to start a little mom page on Instagram to help with the loneliness that came with Exclusive Pumping. Some of my friends pumped but all of them got baby back to breast and it just wasn’t something that was going to happen for me and my little guy so I turned to the internet moms and posted my experience, the things I was using, and was asking other Experienced Moms for help and I’ve grown this little community over the last almost year!

So here we are! I wanted to create a space for First Time Moms and Experienced Moms to connect because I know some of us don’t have a “village”. We might not be in the same boat, but we are weathering the same storm and I am a firm believer that Moms Need Moms. I am still asking Experienced Moms all the questions and gathering their answers on topics for you to read through in one place, sharing what I’ve learned during the last 10 months being an Exclusive Pumper (and poking fun at it). I’ll also be sharing all the baby and postpartum products that I feel like actually work as a first time mom in a culture that is inundated with “must haves”. I’m not going to tell you HAVE to have something or encourage you to buy something and I will encourage you to look things up (but won’t be mad if you purchase from one of my affiliate links as that helps us with groceries and baby things!) and give you terms/phrases to use to research things you are unsure about! So I am so happy you are here! My inbox is always open so please don’t hesitate to send an email to me here.