Motherhood.
The joy. The immeasurable pride. The insurmountable love.
It is impossible to believe, as I gaze into my newborns beautiful baby blues, that mere weeks ago I was carrying her around in my belly. It is equally impossible to believe that I pushed the equivalent of a watermelon out of my who-haa.
As a first time mom, I thought I was prepared to bring this little being into our lives. I had read all of the books. Taken the classes. I knew what to expect out of labor, delivery, and newborn care. That is… until labor actually started.
Over the last few weeks of my pregnancy we had a few false alarms. After one trip to the hospital, I was sent home with a pat on the head and a “Come back when you’re in labor, hunny”. I called my mom friends late at night asking them, “My belly is hard… are these contractions?” Each and every one of them said, “You will know.”
Yeah. They were right. And if you are a first time mom, wondering if you’re in labor, I’ll tell you the same thing. You. Will. Know. Those contractions I felt… those were just little belly hugs. They were tickles compared to the real deal. Trust me. You. Will. Know.
There is so much more that the books and my mom friends did not tell me. Why is that? I mean… we’re all women, walking blindly through one of the most amazing, life changing, traumatizing experiences of our lives. Is it because we are too modest to talk about the bleeding, the cramping, and the tearing? I don’t know about you all, but I lost all sense of modesty the moment the contractions started. You want me to spread my legs so you can check my catheter, while the cute young anesthesiologist walks in to explain the process of an epidural? Sure. No problem. How about when the nurse helps you go to the bathroom for the first time? A complete stranger is going to take a spray bottle to my nether regions, pat me dry, and then cleanup the blood bath afterwards? Okey – doke! Or even moments after my child is born, the nurse grabs my breast and helps me properly shove it into my newborn’s mouth? Why not, we all have boobs, right?!
I’m here to be straight about motherhood. Because if we can’t stick together and be honest about the insanity, terror, and love we experience on a daily basis, we just may go crazy.
Speaking of going crazy, sleep deprivation is an evil, terrible beast. Now I know why my mom friends told me to sleep while I could before the baby arrived. I thought they were crazy. I was so uncomfortable, I could hardly catch a full night sleep at the end of my pregnancy. Now I can hardly grab two hours of sleep. Which leads me to another thing no one told me about breastfeeding. My baby needs to eat every 2-3 hours. That means I need to be awake every 2-3 hours. By the time I nurse, burp, change and soothe my newborn, I have approximately 1-2 hours before she is ready to eat again, and there are three loads of laundry that have to be done because she’s either peed or spit up on every outfit that currently fits her.
After all of that, I snuggle up on the couch with her sleeping on my chest and all I can think is, “What a perfect little angel.” That’s what motherhood is, isn’t it? The indescribable love. A love so deep and so powerful that it penetrates the sleepless fog and the most intense physical pain. A love that has no end, no boundaries, no limit. The love a mother has for her child is a beautiful thing; it makes everything else in the world seem so small.
