2024: A Year in Review

with a lot of pictures and a lot of thoughts

I can hardly believe I’m sitting here writing what will be my last letter of 2024. This year was a Hallmark year for me and my little family, that much is obvious, but it was also a mind fuck in regard to the element of time. The fact that I was pregnant, we went through a summer-long home renovation, and now that pregnancy is in the form of a living, breathing human named Ziggy who is snoozing in his crib right now is just mind boggling.

Paying members got a front row seat to all things pregnancy (and my thoughts on it), birth, and the initial days of postpartum. I even wrote them from my hospital bed on the day of my surprise induction. I also took them along for our renovation, so they could see the transformation from soup to nuts. Needless to say, this year was full of transformations in all forms and that I have a safe space behind a paywall to share them all is such a gift.

Out of 3,100+ subscribers, nearly 20% of you are paying subscribers, and I really can’t put into words what that means to me. You not only helped keep me somewhat afloat during my very short-lived 4-week maternity leave, but there are really no words to describe how great of a feeling it is that you guys support my words. Not my words for clients or other businesses, but my words about me and my life. It’s truly my biggest dream come true.

On that note, I’m offering a 25% off year-long subscription to my Substack for $37.50 (typically $50) through 1/1/25. In 2024, I sent 61 paid letters (110 in total) and at $50 a year, that means each letter was only 82¢! With a 25% off discount, it would make 61 paid letters roughly 61¢ each. This year, with each passing month, I’ll naturally delve deeper into this new role of mine (“mom”) and the huge lifestyle adjustment that comes with it. All that said, now’s the time to upgrade to paid for 2025 if you want to be included in the good, the bad, and the WTF.

Now, let’s all gather around the proverbial fireplace and take a quick month-by-month peek at 2024, otherwise known as the year that felt like 10 years and 1 week all at once.

January

I started the year in a very dark place. After experiencing infertility issues all of 2023, I was mildly broken by year’s end and took a much needed month away from Instagram. I also had done what every depressed, lost woman does and chopped her hair off, so I was rocking a very short bob to kick off 2024.

I then spent the majority of the year regretting this decision and vowing to never chop my hair again (and I won’t. I STG, I won’t). It’s not that it wasn’t cute; it’s just that having SHORT curly hair is so much more high maintenance than you’d think. You can never just wash and go — it has to be styled. And for someone who wears their hair back off their face more often than not and depends on throwing it up to get it out of their way most days, it just didn’t work for me.

I also was using Noom at the beginning of the year in an attempt to lose some of the depression weight I had put on the last six months of 2023, and while it was helpful, it was hard. So many of these weight loss programs claim to not be restrictive, and yet you’re starving all the time and the only “green-lit” foods are whole foods. I definitely lost some weight because I was basically only eating fruits and vegetables, but I’m relieved I got pregnant in February because I don’t think I could’ve done Noom much longer. It’s just not sustainable IMO.

Zac and I were also toying with the idea of house hunting at the beginning of the year. We decided a big change of scenery was in order, so we spent a few weekends in January seeing what Dallas had to offer.

February

I was tentatively back on the ‘gram come February and gearing up for our third round of a medicated ovulation cycle but, this time, with an IUI involved. On February 13, Zac and I held hands as a catheter shot what is now our son, Ziggy, into my cervix and 10 days later, I got a positive pregnancy test.

The faintest of faint, but there he is. Our boy.

Best day ever.

After finding out I was pregnant on February 23, I spent the rest of the month obsessively taking pregnancy tests to study the line and see if it was darker, and also immediately started Lovenox shots per my fertility specialist’s orders.

March

I didn’t really feel many symptoms until week 7ish and once they hit, they hit like a freight train. The exhaustion was unlike anything I’d ever experienced, and if I didn’t eat a small something every hour on the hour, I felt sick to my stomach.

Finally, on March 20, we got to see Ziggy for the first time. I’ve never been more nervous for a doctor’s appointment in my life. While we sat in the waiting room, my heart rate skyrocketed to 106, but as soon as the doctor inserted the wand, she said “We have a baby with a heartbeat!” and I broke down in happy tears.

ZIGGY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Zac and I went out to lunch afterwards to celebrate, and he was so distracted that he backed into a brand new Beamer. We left a note and the woman reached out but it never went anywhere? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

April

To celebrate my birthday, we hopped off the plane at Chicago Midway (not LAX) to spend the weekend with my sister, her wife, and the twins. I was 9 weeks at this point, and my nausea was ruling the roost. It was very touch and go for me that entire trip, but Zac got to go to a Cubs game and we stayed at the Four Seasons as a birthday treat so that was really special. My pregnancy insomnia actually hit during this trip, and it was miserable. We actually ended up pushing our flight home back because I literally didn’t sleep the night before at all.

Best birthday cake ever c/o Zac’s brain and Allie’s order

Family!

Waking up from one of my twice daily pregnancy naps :)

April is also when our raccoon friend, Barry, tried to move in with us. He was posting up in our backyard, and Zac was able to trap him and release him into the wild, but I loved that raccoon and wanted to keep him. I got way too close to him for being pregnant, but the general public didn’t know I was, so I posted stories anyway and my friends yelled at me back stage for being a dumb shit for trying to pet a trash panda.

I wonder where he is now…

Lastly, April is when I made Butternut Bakery’s homemade strawberry pop tart bars and my life was forever changed.

During the last weekend of April, we were still casually touring homes in Dallas for what we thought would be an imminent move, and the very last house we saw made us realize we wanted to stay put. We loved the house so much, but it needed XYZ to be perfect and, not only was it smaller than ours, but it had the exact same vibe? We realized we didn’t need to move; we needed to renovate.

May

May is when we announced our pregnancy to the world and found out we were having a boy. It was such a fun, exciting, special moment in time. Being able to “be out” to my audience was such a fucking weight off, let me tell you. Meanwhile, I was gaining weight rapidly, starting to show, and my boobs started to morph into what they are to this day — massive fucking jugs. Ugh. It’s not fun, guys. And it’s not cute. Cannot wait for them to go back down, and if they don’t… well… there are solves for that.

I spent the rest of the month really leaning into “everyone” knowing, and it was a delight.

June

I got a really bad head cold at the beginning of June (summer colds are Satan’s illness) and let me just say that being sick while being pregnant is not for the weak. You basically can’t take any good medicine while you’re with child, so you’re raw dogging any illness you may come across and it’s terrible. I essentially stayed locked in the guest room with water, snacks, and the dogs for a week straight. The only good thing to come out it was how into Top Chef I got.

Around the same time in June, I developed trigger finger in both of my pinkies and carpal tunnel in my hands. These are both very common (albeit weird) pregnancy symptoms, but my God did it suck ass. I got cortisone shots in my hands to solve the issue and while getting shots in your hand is one of the most uncomfortable feelings I’ve ever felt, my pinkies and hands went back to normal almost immediately so it was worth it.

We also started playing around with names for Ziggy, and I have this sheet of paper with our top three contenders on it for proof. 🥹

We closed out June with a combination babymoon + Zac’s birthday at an all-inclusive resort in Mexico that paid subscribers got to read about in my brutally honest review. The week after we got back, renovations began.

July-August

I’m grouping the worst two months of the year together because it seems fitting. We were officially in the midst of renovating our entire kitchen + Ziggy’s room + replacing all our flooring, which forced us to turn our bedroom into a studio apartment complete with kitchen appliances, office desks, dog crates, and our full-size refrigerator. To be completely honest, I’ve blocked out SO much of July and August because I was beyond miserable. By the end of July, I was in my third trimester and getting bigger and more exhausted by the day. Every single day, a team of contract employees were here tearing our house apart for hours on end, it was 100º+ outside, and I was sequestered in the back of the house with the dogs day in and day out. There was no better time to do it, and the final product was more than worth it, but would I ever do that again? No. We ate out every night for two months straight, and I missed cooking and baking so much.

I did get a few breaks from our setup with a trip to Tulsa to visit my best friend and her daughter, a trip to the beach in Florida (but I got COVID and had to quarantine in my room the entire time until the very last day 🙃), a best friends trip to Broken Bow, and staying with my parents when they were painting here as to avoid the fumes. All in all, though, it was straight up not a good time and I couldn’t wait for it to be come September.

SEPTEMBER

September brought the most incredible baby shower that my mom threw for me and us slowly moving back into our house (from our bedroom). I recapped the baby shower with loads of pictures for paid subscribers, but here’s a picture I’ve never shared until now because we all know his name!

September was really all about trying to get the house back in order before Ziggy’s arrival. We spent the majority of our free time putting our home back together, with Zac doing most of everything because I was extremely large, extremely exhausted, and extremely ready to not be pregnant anymore. But it all turned out so beautifully, and we are so beyond happy that we spent time and money to make this home we already own even more of our own.

You can see the kitchen reveal here, Ziggy’s nursery here, and our bedroom reveal here!

October and beyond

Two weeks before my due date, I got really sick with some sort of stomach bug. I was on the toilet all day for five days in a row — nothing would stay in me. At first, I thought maybe it was pre labor diarrhea (a common thing), but when it didn’t let up for days and I didn’t go into labor, I was like “Mmmm… maybe not.”

After suffering through the weekend and realizing that Ziggy had stopped moving as much as he usually did, I was freaked out enough to go to triage in Labor and Delivery to make sure all was okay. That morning, my best friend who’s an ER nurse suggested I take my hospital bag just in case. I thought that was overkill, but I listened to her anyway and it’s a good thing I did, because after three hours of monitoring, we were told it was time for the baby to come out, and the hospital was my home for the foreseeable future. Ironically, I had just decided a week earlier that I didn’t want to induce and was willing to let Ziggy come on his own. Make plans, God laughs.

On October 29 at exactly 10:29pm (OMG), I pushed Ziggy out into the world (a brutal journey that involved back labor and essentially a natural birth. Wrote all about it here), and months of growing and groaning came to an abrupt end. He was here. We did it.

… and every day since has been exhausting, exciting, confusing, hard, exhilarating, beautiful, ugly, and full of so many tears, long nights, milk-stained clothes, and the journey of getting to know our son more and more with each passing day. It’s been a literal blur. They say you forget the newborn stage completely, and I can see why. I can hardly believe we’re 60 days in — it seems fast and slow all at once, just depends on the day.

Ziggy’s had his first Thanksgiving and Christmas with a new year on the horizon. It’s a pretty magical time to have a baby even if you’re dead tired and would give anything for a solid 8 hours of hard sleep.

I’m now going to share a handful of Ziggy pics with paid subscribers to recap the first few months. If you aren’t paid, I love you and we’ll talk in the new year. If you are, keep scrolling.