I knew hours into meeting my daughter – let’s call her E – that she and I were going to have the same feeding issues as my son – let’s call him H – and I had. I once again couldn’t breastfeed, she was also tongue-tied, and I wasn’t going to go through torturing either of us the way I had with H. So, I decided on formula night 1 and thought it would be smooth sailing like it was once I had made that decision for H.

There is a loneliness that comes with motherhood. Predominantly in the beginning, but even as time goes on…

I spent this past holiday with my family in Florida… 5 adults, 5 children for 5 days. On Christmas Day, there were about 17 of us. Needless to say it was mayhem, and when we were in the thick of it, I found myself enjoying it of course, but also really tired. The thought of nap time and bedtime excited me because it meant a break.

Dear Sleep, I simply cannot put into words how much I miss you. Mostly because sleep deprivation has resulted in the inability to form full sentences. I cannot wait for the day that you come back into my life for the full 8+ hours we used to share back in the day.

A year after I wrote Beauty After Baby: The Honest Truth, Yahoo Beauty asked me to come back and write about how I felt one year later. Did anything change? Did I feel better? Worse? Did I regret writing the initial piece? Was I maybe experiencing postpartum depression? They wanted to check in at the one year mark to see where I was at.

Don’t be so hard on yourself. I hear it all the time. I also say it to myself during those moments when I am most likely holding myself up to some ridiculous, unrealistic standard, aka a mom guilt moment. Truth is, all of the mothers I know are hard on themselves.

The Struggle is REAL. This pretty much sums up #momlife. Especially those moms who juggle #worklife with motherhood. Now, let me make a disclaimer: I think moms who stay at home can have a harder job, but because I am not a SAHM, I can only speak for those working moms like myself who I know struggle with a lot of the same issues that I do.

Breastfeeding is a bitch. There, I said it. Obviously, not the case for everyone, but for way more women than I had ever heard about before I had kids. While I was pregnant, I heard every horror story in the book about pregnancy and postpartum, but nobody really warned me about the trials and tribs of breastfeeding.

I shared my thoughts on Beauty After Baby with Yahoo Beauty three months after my son as born, and then again one year later. I learned a lot in that year, so I also wanted to share which products and services helped me heal and find myself again.

I gave birth to a baby boy in May 2014. He was my first child, so I had never been pregnant before, and therefore did not know what postpartum (not depression, just post pregnancy) had in store.