Quantifying Max’s First Year

The first year with Max went by so quickly, and now we have a toddler. He’s growing up so fast that I want to remember all the details, big and small. It’s funny to think that a year ago Aaron had never changed a diaper and I had only changed a handful.

Breastfeeding was tough (I wrote about it here). I was determined to exclusively breastfeed for the first year, but more and more it seemed like that was not going to happen. When Max was 7 months we started supplementing with formula. I stressed about that decision for a while, but in the end it was the best thing for our family.

By early December (when Max was about 10 months old) I was officially done. I didn’t plan to be done on a certain day nor did I know the last breastfeeding session was going to be the last. But luckily Max adjusted well and had no problems taking a bottle from me. I have to admit I felt a little pang of hurt that he transitioned SO easily. I was surprised that I didn’t feel more relief and even more surprised that I was sad it was over. Even though I didn’t make it to a year, by the time I was done I had logged 405 hours breastfeeding and pumped 2152.9 ounces! Here’s the breakdown month by month.

I’m not equating the significance of breastfeeding to the movie Titanic (even my 13 years old self, who had a huge crush on Leo, knows better). But being a new mom is hard, so it’s important to celebrate all the victories. Even though I fell short on my breastfeeding goal, I can appreciate the hours I did spend and that feels good.

Diaper Duty. Before Max was born, Aaron and I created an Evernote notebook to keep track of various parenting notes. As I was recently perusing the notes I came across this screen shot:

My first reaction was to laugh at how “prepared” we tried to be. My second reaction was to see how Max’s diaper data compared to Google’s.

While Google predicted we would be changing 3360 diapers during the first year, we changed 2752! (Note: We did our best to record every changing but it is possible that we missed a couple.)

I’d love to know if any other parents tallied the number of diapers they changed? (If you are still reading, we also tallied my sleep as a new mom here and the first year cost of an infant here.)