Honest Reflections on My First Year of Motherhood

then...

Mama.  Mother.  Ma.  Mommy.  Whichever way I call it, I am one.  The responsibility and privilege of all that it means still astounds me, and sometimes I look at my daughter and think, “I can’t believe that she’s mine, and I am hers.”  A year ago I was feeling (and seeing!) her wriggle inside of me, and in a week, she will turn one years old.  I can’t help but reflect on this past year.  The day she was born; the day I became a mama.  There were a few things that first entered my mind in those days right after she was born.  One was:

“I’m really glad that’s over!” (the birth)

And another was:

“I don’t ever want this to end.”

That is, life.  Seeing new life for the first time.  Being a partner in creating life.

I have to be honest, after I had her, amidst all the reeling emotions, physical and mental responsibility and of course, hormones, I really didn’t want to go through all of that again for a long time, but at the same time I could think of nothing more sad than the day when my childbearing years would be over.

We rarely talk about what happens after the birth.  I found myself in a strange new land called postpartum.  A land where tears flowed, sometimes for good reason, most of the time for no reason at all, sometimes just because they had to.  A land where nothing is as it was before and everything had yet to be.  It is a strange land of in between.  It was like a roller coaster that you didn’t want to get on in the first place and you wouldn’t know when or where it would stop.  During that time, fears had never been more real and life had never felt so unstable.  I wondered if I would ever feel normal again.  Maybe not all women had this same experience as me, but I truly felt as if hanging on was all I could do until it (hopefully) subsided and a sense of normal life could begin again.

It did.

But it wasn’t at all “normal” in the way our lives had been before.  It was better.  And harder.  And more amazing, all at the same time.  It’s amazing how one little life can change so many people.  I’ve heard the saying before “Marriage is our last best chance to grow up.”  As true as that may be, I think that children are our last best chance to grow up.  I didn’t know it before, but I had a lot of growing up to do.  And with a baby, I had to do it quickly.

I realized raising a child is a difficult task not because babies are unpredictable and challenging (which they are) but because it requires so much sacrifice on the part of the parent.  I realized very quickly that it required me to be disciplined in a million different ways, ways in which I was not accustomed to be disciplined.  It required energy of me when I didn’t have it.  Patience when I had none.  Love when I didn’t feel loving.  Basically it required a supernatural amount of sacrifice and selflessness.  I couldn’t do it.  I needed God in ways I had never needed Him before.

I’m convinced now that Marlee had some degree of colic and reflux.  I became all too used to spit down my shirt, all our clothes constantly in the wash, stains on the couch.  There were times she cried after she ate, before and during.  Sleep did not come very easily.  It’s hard to understand how stressful reflux can be unless you’ve had a baby that’s had it.  Some days we both cried.  But there was a great turning point in my walk with God, my relationship with Jesus and my attitude as a parent when Marlee was a few months old.   At times all I wanted to do was get some sleep and ignore the fact that I had an incredible responsibility on my shoulders.  But God showed me that I needed to change my perspective, my attitude and desires.  Even though I knew this already, I had to know it- that children are a blessed gift, and part of that gift God gives is the opportunity to let go of our selfishness and instead to become selfless as He became.  Children are so often not the difficult ones, but it is us who have yet to be made into the likeness of Christ.

There are three things God put on my heart this year and am still learning the importance of as time goes by.  They are simple and hard and for that reason not many people do them.

1)  Don’t complain about your children to others or yourself.

2) Speak well of your children, to them and others (even if they are not around and even if you have every reason to complain).

3)  Children are a gift, and an eternal inheritance.  Don’t view having children as the world does- a burden, but instead be open to it.

During that turning point, I realized (God helped me realize) that leisure and comfort and even sleep are gifts directly from His hand.  They are not my rights.  I had to surrender to being uncomfortable, to sleeplessness, to doing what I often didn’t feel like doing and simply wait on Him to give me what I needed- day in and day out.  This is a lesson I’m still learning.

As Marlee got older, I’d hear words of warning from so many people:

“Enjoy this time, it goes by so quickly.”

“Enjoy it now while she can’t walk!”

“Just wait until she’s older!”

…With a look they’d say, and I’d wonder if having an older baby and toddler was as bad as everyone kept saying it was.  Oh, I know they loved their children, but it wasn’t very comforting.  But as she got older, everything just kept getting better.  I had a good friend finally give me words of comfort when she agreed.  She said it only gets more fun!  Yes I know it will be challenging in brand news ways when she is running around and I’m literally chasing after her, and when she’s talking and asking me a million questions I don’t know the answers to, but then that is life isn’t it?  New challenges and new joys often go hand in hand.

As a mother, every day can be an adventure or routine.  Everyday can bring surprises and challenges.  But everyday brings another day with her.  As I approach her second year of life, it is this I want to remember, day in and day out, through new challenges and old ones, through milestones and hardships.  My privilege, my joy- I get to be with her.

now