A word or two on motherhood - Part 1
Pregnancy
With Mother’s Day approaching I feel called to sit down and put some thought into my adventures in motherhood thus far. Opening a fresh blog page, I thought it would come pretty easily. I figured my little bleeding heart would just pour out onto the page and I would reminisce on sweet baby toes and toddler hugs and so many fantastic things. Because those things all fill a substantial part of my heart and mind and are very much a major part of motherhood. The highest of highs.
But I’m also tired. My eyes are darting to a half full coffee pot from this morning wondering if 6pm is too late for me to fill another cup that will inevitably sit until it’s cold, or at least until after bedtime. And after bedtime I get to decide between the household tasks I couldn’t complete during the day, working on my business, or sitting and enjoying time with my husband.
Or an early bedtime myself.
I’m that kind of tired. But I want to get at least part of this out of my head and onto (virtual) paper.
Motherhood was always in my heart.
I knew from a very early age that I wanted kids. There was always a space in my heart ready for that chapter and a knowing that there would be a piece of me unfulfilled without that role in life. I always pictured myself being a wife and a mother above all else. It was more important to me than a career or a wealth status. As I headed into my early twenties and beyond with no significant relationship worth writing home about, I watched girlfriends tie the knot and begin (and add) to their families. I sat quietly at get togethers as they bonded over their experiences, whether good or bad. They shared their birth stories and what their little one had destroyed most recently and laughed together. They all seemed to be cloaked in this invisible armor that united them as a force to be reckoned with: mothers. It all felt like this special club that I lingered outside of, always in the midst of the discussions, nodding along wondering when it would be my turn.
Not marrying until I was 30, I did sense that slight pressure cooker feeling inside of me….the “better get it done before you won’t be able to anymore” kind of sentiment that most women interested in having children have felt as they age. My husband was all set to wait a few years into marriage before heading into parenthood. But life had other plans for us. Turns out we would be welcoming our first child before celebrating our first anniversary.
I was unprepared for the loneliness of the first trimester.
I feel like that’s a weighty sentence to kick off with. So I’ll add an unnecessary note here that I am extremely grateful for the healthy pregnancy I was blessed with and the blessing that is our son.
As deemed most acceptable by society, we kept the news to ourselves at the beginning. We found out we were expecting when I was six weeks along. I tend to be an anxious person. I make a lot of lists in my head, carry out full conversations just to be prepared with things I might say in any given scenario, and I Google a lot of things throughout any 24 hour time period. Pregnancy amplified this. I didn’t know that I would begin sobbing uncontrollably when the test read pregnant (all six times). I wasn’t ready to be filled with fear instead of the euphoria and excitement I had imagined when the day came. This is what I had always wanted, but there I was absolutely terrified. And even as the excitement and realization of what was to come began to grow, the whole sentiment of being quiet and secretive about this incredible chapter we were beginning to write was so hard. The feeling of needing to hide things just in case rather than lean on a support system was something I had never really reflected on in relation to pregnancy. I knew I had my husband, the most incredible person I know with a heart of gold, there beside me to ride this all out with, but there just wasn’t any way he could possibly understand the confusion and fear and constant worry I felt carrying this helpless baby. I mean every decision I made throughout the day suddenly felt very big. The first trimester was incredibly lonely for that reason. I’m incredibly grateful that I did end up reaching out to a few individuals I confided in and leaned on during that time. And I hope every woman has that option of support and relief if they choose to not share their pregnancy news initially. No woman can do this alone!
There was a lot of dry heaving. And crying.
And I’m no longer talking solely about that first trimester. Because it lasted clear into the third trimester. It was all day nausea with bouts of dry heaving. Great that I wasn’t actually getting sick for the most part, but super embarrassing to just walk down a public hallway dry heaving. Makes you feel like a real lady. My only food interest for a good while was “cup foods". My loving husband stocked up a drawer in the fridge for me of jell-o cups, fruit cups, pudding cups, and any other food he could find in cup form. Later I transitioned to an uncontrollable need for french toast and tangerines.
And I cried a lot over everything. Sometimes I cried because I didn’t know why I was crying. Other times I cried because I was tired. Or there was a commercial about back to school shopping. There was a time I cried because I thought it was so nice that people reported accidents and police traffic surveillance to Google maps and it just felt like such a wonderful piece of humanity. And my most sincerest apologies to the Burger King drive-through staff member that had to listen to me sob when they said I was too late to order french toast sticks.
But believe me, there is magic in pregnancy.
As my bump grew and our appointments continued, I really was in awe of this incredible thing that my body instinctively knew how to do. My mind may have been all over the place with questions and worries, but my body knew.
I was growing a baby. I was becoming a mother.
And I never got tired of feeling those kicks and rolls and stretches. It blew my mind every time I would see a little elbow or knee roll across my belly or feel a series of hiccups start up. I cherish the videos I captured of that movement and it still leaves me mesmerized thinking about how incredible the entire process is. I used every app out there to track baby development and looked at all the charts of size comparison and imagined what this little one was going to look like and be like. The dry heaving and insomnia and other less flattering attributes of pregnancy were nothing in comparison to the growing joy and love in my heart.
It’s an incredible bond that builds for nine months. For 40 weeks it was baby and I, 24/7. I so often would rest my hand on that bump and just be in the moment. Or I would sit in the rocker in the nursery and talk to baby about my hopes for him, about how wonderful his dad is and all the things he will learn from him, and about all the people that were ready to love him. On my commutes to and from work I sang “Rainbow Connection” and “Stay Awake,” wondering if he really would recognize those melodies once in our arms. There were many 5am wakeups when he was dancing in my belly, unaware of how much I treasured my sleep. But those were some of the first nights where I sat awake, feeling like the only person awake in the world, just me and my baby.
I now get a little starry eyed when I see expecting mothers and hold myself back from running up to them to congratulate them or tell them that they are so strong and amazing or ask them a million questions about their pregnancy journey. I am rooting for every single one of them. Women and womanhood are amazing. So amazing.
And I remained awestruck in the beauty and magic of our own pregnancy straight through our due date. And with zero signs that babe was on the way, we set our induction date…
