An interview with Danielle Cooper Williams
Danielle is mom to 22-month-old Micah. She, her husband, Ryan, and Micah live in Brooklyn, NY.
On childhood and her own mother
I grew up in Chicago in Lincoln Park for the first ten years of my childhood and then moved to a northern suburb of Chicago. I lived there until I went to college. I'm the second of four children. All four of us are very different. I had a stay-at-home mom, and my dad worked quite a bit.
My mom did an excellent job of letting us be who we are and mothering us differently. I applaud her for that because I think she was very careful in the way she addressed each of our needs and personalities and interests. She was very good about catering to our uniqueness. She was also fairly strict. She didn't keep the pantry stocked with a lot of sugary things. She had a lot of weird rules that I'm starting to appreciate now. Like, she would get so mad if you touched the walls.
I think I've always been very maternal. My siblings joke that I'm a very cold person. But I think of myself as very loving. I'm not the most emotionally attuned or warm and fuzzy person but I’ve always wanted kids. My sister and I are seven years apart. When she was born, she was my child. I felt like I raised her.
On pregnancy
I had a very easy pregnancy with Micah and I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it. My first trimester was really easy. I never threw up. I was a little nauseous and strong smells would really bother me. I had a good amount of energy, basically all the way up until the end. I was never too uncomfortable sleeping wise. I did have really bad heartburn in my third trimester.
It took us four months to get pregnant, which I was a little surprised by. Growing up, they make you think that it's going to be instantaneous, like the one time you don't have protected sex. So I was getting a little frustrated. And then we got pregnant. I was crazy with the tracking and I wouldn’t do that again. It just wasn't fun. Next time, I’m not going to do the ovulation test kit every day.
On labor and delivery
Micah’s due date was November 16th and I was induced the night of the 18th. We went to the hospital at 1 am, they started the induction at 3 am, and he was born at 5 pm. I think it helped that I was already a little bit dilated and fairly effaced so I wasn't starting from zero, but the induction was much better than I thought it was going to be.
For whatever reason, I was waiting to get an epidural. I thought I wanted to experience labor a little bit but my contractions were really intense and long but not close enough together. After they took out the balloon catheter during the induction, my OB said, “I have to break your water and there's really going be nothing there to absorb the contraction. So this is the time if you want an epidural.” I said yes to that. It was amazing. I had the best epidural where I could still feel my legs and could move around but was feeling nothing else, which was fantastic.
Micah was sunny side up. So we spent some time trying to turn him, which didn't ultimately work. They kept saying he was fine with all the contractions, that he was “enjoying them,” whatever that means. When I really started actively pushing it was going really well. He arrived after 30 minutes of pushing.
The one thing I did not understand was what the whole pushing thing was going to be like until I actually started doing it. You read about bearing down, and I was always like, What does that mean? It’s such a weird thing.
When they broke my water there was meconium in it. Ryan, my husband, wasn't able to cut the cord because as soon as Micah came out, they had to take him away to make sure that he hadn't aspirated any of the meconium. Then they cleaned him up, gave him to me, and then left. We were like, What are we supposed to do? He wasn't in a diaper. He was just laying on me. Am I supposed to breastfeed him? No one was in the room with us.
Finally they came back. I don't think I changed a single diaper in the hospital. I let the nurses do all of that, and I was trying to get a little rest. Ryan was the opposite of helpful. Our first night in the hospital, Ryan was somehow in the deepest sleep of his life. He has more than made up for it since, and I feel very fortunate to have such a great partner.
On postpartum
Ryan's dad picked us up from the hospital. and my mom was already at our apartment when we got there, as was our night nurse. It was really helpful to have a night nurse. After I fed him, she would change him and put him back down. Once my milk fully came in, I was producing enough that she could do the middle of the night feed for me. That was really, really helpful.
I had a bit of postpartum anxiety, which I wasn't fully prepared for. I would get irrationally anxious about bedtime. Every day was sort of like a countdown to 7 pm when the night nurse got there. Usually we'd go have dinner and she'd get Micah ready for bed. But then it was this panic about how he was going to sleep during the night and how many times I would have to wake up.
The other thing I would get so anxious about was knowing when and how to teach him things. Worrying about things like, Am I hitting all the milestones? What if we forget to teach him something important and he’s not going to be a fully functional human? For some reason I felt like I needed to have this blueprint of every single part of his upbringing.
I think part of it was that I don’t like asking for help. I like to do things on my own. That was a big shift for me, being able to lean on the village and ask for help. You appreciate that there's a wealth of knowledge from people who have done this several times or are doing it now.
On feeding
We moved houses when Micah was three months old. I went back to work when he was almost five months. Moving was way more stressful than I thought it was going to be. My supply really took a hit. I went through the little bit of breastmilk that we had stored after the move. When I went back to work, I was really bad about pumping regularly in the office. When I did pump at work, I would go in the lactation room for however long and get no milk. It was really frustrating.
At a certain point, our nanny pointed out that we didn’t have enough milk. In my head, I was thinking, I can't give him formula. I'm such a failure if I give him formula. I have to figure this out. At this point, he should have been sleeping through the night more regularly than he was. I started working with a sleep consultant. She said that he was waking up because he’s hungry and not getting enough food during the day. That finally woke me up to the fact that it's totally okay to give him formula.
On how she’s changed since becoming a mother
Becoming a mother has completely changed my outlook in so many ways. It makes you reprioritize almost everything. I still care about my career, but I don't care as much as I used to. It's a job. It pays the bills and lets me use my brain, but it's not everything.
At the same time, I was very surprised when I went back to work how much I appreciated having a job to go back to. Taking care of Micah is so much harder than going to work. I never thought I would be so excited to go to work.
On what she enjoys most about motherhood
It's pretty amazing when you think about how much you love your parents and how much you look up to them. It's so crazy that I'm Micah’s everything.
Watching him discover the world and learn new things and how proud he is of himself when he does something for the first time – it’s pretty cool. It’s an incredible responsibility, and it’s hard. It’s really fucking hard. But it is very rewarding.
Thank you for sharing your story, Danielle!