Our First Year

Getting ready to ride a water taxi into NY

It is the last day of 2016 and all I can think about is how tomorrow morning I will wake up in my baby's birth-month. My little, tiny, swear I just had her, baby is turning one soon. I have been trying to wrap my brain around it since we entered the end of the year Holiday rush but it just won't sink in, so I woke up inspired to share a little about this first year hoping it would somehow slow time down just a smidgen.

Boobies Please

When I was younger I wasn't exposed to people breastfeeding, I don't think I ever saw anyone breastfeed in person. I knew women did it but my lack of first hand exposure set me up for a big shock when I finally educated myself on the subject while pregnant with little miss.
I took the breastfeeding class offered by Kaiser (3hrs of nothing!), I read the literature, and I even checked out websites so I could get some idea of what I was in for. Unfortunately, NONE of that prepared me even a little bit. All I heard a billion times was how good for my baby it was, which clearly I knew, I was in the freaking class trying to learn HOW not WHY.  They droned on and on saying "breastfeeding shouldn't hurt" and "latch" but without any in-person demonstration the pictures and talks didn't help me understand. I should have hit up YouTube, I'm sure they have helpful tutorials, I just didn't think of it at the time. They also failed to mention anything remotely useful:
1. Tips
2. Problem Solving
3. Funny anecdotes about what it is really like
4. Time commitment (I asked questions about this repeatedly and was only given vague answers)