Words I Learned As a New Mom

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Words I Learned As a New Mom | Columbia SC Moms BlogThe holiday season is in full swing with Halloween behind us and Thanksgiving and Christmas quickly approaching. If you were like me, though, you may have missed the significance of October 16. That, my friends, is Dictionary Day, in honor of Noah Webster’s birthday.

As an English major, I have always loved words, and I always felt pretty confident in my vocabulary. When I became a mom, however, I realized there was an entire lexicon of words I’d never even heard of. Not to mention, words I thought I knew all of a sudden took on a whole new meaning. So, to celebrate Dictionary Day, albeit a little late, I’m sharing a few words I’ve added to my vocabulary since becoming a mom.

Bilirubin

When my first child was born, he had jaundice, which I had heard of before but didn’t know much about. When doctors and nurses kept mentioning “bilirubin,” however, I had no idea what they were talking about. Thanks to my lack of sleep, I kept thinking they were saying two individual words, and I started wondering if they had a friend named William who loved corned beef and sauerkraut on rye. Finally, I figured out that bilirubin was actually one word, a medical term for a pigment formed by the liver, and too much of it can cause babies to look a little yellow. 

Blow Out

When I was in high school, I thought a blow out was what happened to my car tire when I ran up on the curb in the church parking lot. When I got to college, a blow out was something I paid a stylist to do to turn my crazy curls into a more sleek and sophisticated hairdo. Turns out, neither one of those was quite right. The true meaning of blow out is the loudest, messiest, stinkiest diaper you can imagine. Like a tire, it always happens at the worst time possible, and like my hair, it’s all about volume.

Diaper Genie

This is one of those things everyone said I needed to register for during my first pregnancy. I was hoping it would allow me to put my baby on the changing table, cross my arms, nod my head, and poof! The dirty diaper would magically change itself. While that’s not quite how it works, and while the contraption hasn’t granted me a wish in over six years, it has easily been the most used item from my registry.

Hand, Foot, & Mouth

I never will forget the first time the preschool director called to tell me I needed to come pick up my oldest son because they thought he had hand, foot, and mouth. As a first-time mom, my initial thought was, “Well, duh! Of course he has hands, feet, and mouth. Why are you calling to tell me this?” Little did I know, it’s also a common viral infection that causes painful sores on, you guessed it, the hands, feet, and mouth. Not only did my son have the painful infection, but I got it as well, ensuring I’d never forget the true definition. 

Onsie, Longall, Jon-Jon, Bubble, & Bishop

Baby fashion comes with its own unique vocabulary. Shirts, pants, and dresses are replaced with onsies, longalls, Jon-Jons, bubbles, and bishops. For someone like me who struggles with fashion and who can only buy outfits straight off the mannequin, all of this new terminology was a little intimidating. Luckily, all of these clothing items are outfits in and of themselves, so I never have to worry about matching tops and bottoms.

Cradle Cap

Oddly enough, cradle cap doesn’t belong in the above list of things babies wear. While it may sound like an article of clothing, cradle cap is really a skin condition babies get on their heads. I’m just glad I learned this one before I asked the sales associate at Belk where I could find the cradle caps!

Sleep Training

When I became a mom, I already knew a lot about weight training. And I had heard about dog training too. In both of those instances, the person or the dog practices a specific behavior until it’s mastered. Based on that information, sleep training sounded great to me. What new mom doesn’t want to practice sleeping? Unfortunately, I was a tad confused about who was getting to do all of the sleeping. The baby is the one who gets most of the practice, while mom and dad stay up stressing over which method is the best one.

Swaddle

I had always heard the phrase “sleep like a baby,” but before I became a mom, I didn’t realize how babies actually sleep. As it turns out, they’re not peaceful at all. Thanks to their startle reflex (another term I didn’t know), babies jerk around a lot when they sleep, so a good swaddle is key. Not only did I learn how important swaddling is, but I quickly learned how hard it is to do. No mere mortal can swaddle like the nurses in the hospital, but velcro sleep sacks do make it easier.

Privacy

My husband suggested this word for the list. I thought it was a good idea at first, but then I realized the definition of privacy doesn’t change when you become a mom; in reality, the meaning of the word disappears altogether. After weekly checks at the OB, the delivery itself, and meetings with the lactation consultant during the hospital stay, a mom’s privacy no longer exists. Forgetting what privacy means is probably a good thing, since being in the bathroom alone seems to be a thing of the past.

Love

Of all the words I thought I knew, this is the one that’s changed the most. I’ve loved a lot of things in my life: strawberry cake, reading good books, and the Clemson Tigers, to name a few. But nothing compares to the love I have for my boys, my husband included. The second the labor and delivery nurse put my first baby on my chest, my heart changed. I wasn’t expecting it, and I can’t explain it, but it’s true. As a mom, I’ve reached a new level of vulnerability as I watch my heart walk around outside of my body.  This new love makes me feel every emotion more deeply. I worry more, I wonder more, I wish more . . . all because I love more than I ever thought possible.

I’m sure I could think of more words, especially crazy medical terms, but these are my favorites. What words and phrases have you learned since becoming a mom?

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Katherine Bryant
Originally from Rock Hill, Katherine now lives with her husband of eight years and their two boys in Columbia, where they are anxiously awaiting the arrival of boy number 3 in September. As a high school English teacher for the past 17 years, Katherine encourages her students to be life-long learners, modeling this concept herself by earning degrees in English, mass communications, literacy, and floral design. When she’s not in the classroom, Katherine enjoys cooking new recipes for her family, exercising with friends, reading a wide variety of books, writing her blog Laughs at Funerals, and trying to convince the men in her life to cheer for the Tigers instead of the Gamecocks.

1 COMMENT

  1. Hi Katherine. Interesting post. You mean to say you were raised in Rock Hill, South Carolina and didn’t know what a longall or jon jon was? My mouth is gaping wide open with shock. You live in South Carolina and the longall idea is pretty common in that neck of the woods. I am from San Jose, California. I am 42 years old and I have higher functioning Classic Autism (which is a developmental disability), and ADHD, and OCD. I collect a whole bunch of different things – 45 rpm records (I love oldies music), street maps (I have 1,700 maps and I also have a BA degree in Geography, so no surprise), lapel pins from different places, and baseball caps from cities, counties, airport, colleges, and golf courses (mostly from South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, and California). But I also have been collecting vintage 1970s to mid 1990s children’s strap shoes for the past 24 years (I started when I was 18). By the term “strap shoes”, I mean Mary Janes, T-strap shoes, and English sandals (the double buckle T-strap shoes with the scuff proof covered toes). These shoes are getting very hard to find nowadays. I have about 300 shoes in my shoe collection. One day on EBay in summer of 2002 when I was 25 or 26 (at that point I had collecting shoes for 7+ years), I wrote this Ebay note to a seller about a pair of T-strap shoes she was selling. Somehow, she thought my letter was so nice, friendly, and wonderful, she resent my note to her daughter (also an EBay member) who was then in her 30s, that was a kindergarten teacher in the northern Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. She writes me back and I write to her, we kind of hit it off because of our interest in T-strap shoes / English sandals. She told me her 2 year old son (in 2002) was wearing T-strap shoes. She sent me EBay messages as well as emails to my personal Yahoo email account. She kept sending me links to auctions with longalls and jon jons. Being from California, I had never seen such children’s clothes before ever. I thought they were very cute. I asked her what were these clothes – and she told me it was a longall and her son wore longalls with his T-strap shoes. I thought it was sort of cute, but I put it out of my mind for a while. Then one day, 1 1/2 years later, in April 2004, I was on EBay surfing and I was looking for something totally unrelated and I came across a longall made by Kelly’s Kids. I thought it was cute, and thought I’d see how much I really liked it. Then I bought another longall by Fast Friends, then another from another brand, etc. So by 2005, I had 5 longalls. Then I went back to university away from home (the college where I got my BA degree). I think in the year 2005-06, I only bought 1 longall. However, when I moved back home in 2006, I started buying maybe about 20 or 30 longalls a year until 2009. Sometime around 2009 or 2010, I started really going nuts and being addicted to longalls – from 2010 onward, it wasn’t unusual to buy 80-100 longalls or jon jons in a year. I now have something along the lines of 750+ longalls and jon jons in my collection. I especially love smocked longalls and jon jons. I want to actually donate my collection of historical longalls and jon jons to the Smithsonian Institution For American History in Washington DC. Some parents have suggested the Metropolitan Museum Of Art in New York City as they have a good costume museum. A mom I know from North Carolina suggested the Cotton Museum in Bishopville, South Carolina. Or if I could find a museum on Southern culture. I want to donate my vintage children’s shoe collection to a museum too.

    I am getting so good at identifying longalls, that I can identify what brand it is without even seeing the label!! I know of all the high end boutique longall brands (and some of them no longer exist anymore) – Chocolate Soup, Bailey Boys, Petit Ami, Anavini, Vive La Fete, Funtasia Too! of Dallas, Lavender Blue, Just Ducky Originals, Secret Wishes, Beaux et Belles, Kelly’s Kids / Ashton Connor, Florence Eiseman, Zuccini, and much more…I could go on and on and on about this!! One of my favorite companies that makes longalls and jon jons is Shrimp And Grits Kids, of Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, just across from Charleston. The main character from AMC series “Mad Men” (played by Jon Hamm) has children, and his youngest son on the show, the little boy, is wearing longalls from Shrimp and Grits Kids. LOL. That gave them a boost in promoting Shrimp and Grits, with exposure on a popular show. Longalls and jon jons are very traditional and old fashioned. Classy clothes. I tend to get longalls and jon jons that are bigger sizes (like size 2T, 3T, 4T, 5, 6, or even 7) especially if smocked, because the details of the smocking are so much better and more detailed with the larger longalls. Over here in California, literally no children wear these things. It’s almost unheard of where I am from. I am an assistant volunteer at my local library at Preschooler Storytime for 3-5 year olds, for 14 years. Every Thursday, I co-host Preschooler Storytime with my friend who is a children’s librarian. I have never seen any little boys wearing longalls at my Storytime. I would guess about 99.5% of parents of even small children here in California have no idea what a longall is and never saw one.

    I am so addicted to these things, longalls are very addicting. I don’t even have children and I love this stuff. Somewhere there has to be a 12 step group for addictions to smocked clothing and longalls, haha. I just got back from a 1 week trip to South Carolina (Greenville / Spartanburg area, Columbia, Charleston) and one of the biggest things I did there was looking for longalls and jon jons in children’s consignment stores! I visited several friends and I was at Clemson for one whole day. I have several friends who are professors at Clemson. And yes, I’m a big Clemson Tigers fan, and I happen to also be a big USC Gamecocks fan. LOL. I hope maybe Clemson will win the College Football championship this year!!

    Very interesting reading what you wrote

    Take care,
    Codi Preston D(unn) from California

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