You may be used to new parents “going dark,” and not updating you in the beginning. We certainly were no exception. In addition to figuring out how to be new parents together, we’ve also been juggling a bit more.

These are two faces of Sarah. The one on the left was me having my first “mom breakdown,” two days after Simeign was born. I was trying to let Kielen rest, and Simeign wouldn’t latch in order to eat, even though she was clearly hungry. I felt like I was already failing and I had no idea what to do.

Little did I know, this would kick off:

• Six medical appointments for our little one over the course of ten days (plus appointments I needed), and
• Feedings every three hours around the clock, with each feeding consisting of breastfeeding, bottle feeding, and pumping. If one person did all of this, it took 90 minutes!

I now see that I couldn’t get her to latch to eat that evening because eating was hard for her. We learned that she had a tongue tie that prevented her from properly pulling milk from me. She lost 12% of her body weight in the first three days after birth. (They expect 7-8% weight loss, but at 15% weight loss they put kiddos back in the hospital.) On Monday, we had a procedure done to release her tongue so she can move it properly to eat.

After a very intense couple of weeks, we hit a milestone today! Simeign is officially over her birth weight and she is pulling almost all of the milk I produce!

The photo on the right is a satisfied, yet tired, Mama Sarah. I feel victorious. We are on the other side of our first big parenting challenge, already!