A Better Mom
My first baby made me a mom. He initiated me into sleepless nights. The endless list of what is needed to keep a baby safe, healthy, and cared for, and the concept of being on demand for another being. This was the first time in my 30 years that I was needed by someone day in and day out and it was overwhelming. I had to immediately adjust to being the one for everything. That was not how I pictured it to be when my husband and I decided we were ready for kids. It was a choice we were both making so it was going to be a shared experience, right? Well it was shared but not equally. I can not comment on if my pre-mom beliefs are even achievable but from all of the moms that I talked to then and now, I have not heard of it being much different for them. When the mom is healthy and able, it is all about mommy for the baby.
My son brought me so much joy with his smiles and cuteness but it was a lot of work. Don’t get me wrong, I had always been a hard worker. I subscribed to the work hard and play hard rule. But this was exhausting with no opportunity for mommy to play. That was hard. I remember being grateful that I had my baby in my 30s because I had many fun memories from my 20s. It was like I closed the chapter on fun and now this next chapter did not include it. My fun became seeing my baby have fun. Swings, touching the sand for the first time, dipping his toes in the cold water of a river for the first time, Sesame Place, throwing a ball. All the pride my husband and I had when we brought our baby to see family in Spain for the first time and the celebrations around him for just being a new member of the family. I smile writing about them because they are joy filled memories that will stay in my heart forever.
Each stage was new and exciting but also required learning how to handle something new. The day care germs he would pick up and the crazy sounding illnesses like Hoof and Mouth. There were lots of scary high fevers, ear infections, an ear tube operation, and rearranged child care plans. I handled it, with anxiety, but he did ok.
My son made me a mom. Once my daughter was born, I was able to become better mom. I already had adjusted to the sleeplessness nights and being the one for everything. It was less stressful because I had experience. I even knew enough to plan a job change before she was born so that I could have some flexibility. I have a dear friend who had her first baby the same week I did and we had a joke about the soundtrack of our early days of motherhood being music from the band Thrasher. When my second was born, the soundtrack included cute, easy songs from the 50s like “Buttercup” and “Life Would Be A Dream”.
I started to feel like I knew what I was doing, or at least I could handle whatever was coming next. I knew that I needed more help and found babysitters. I ordered more things online and had back up of items that would cause stress if they ran out. I spent a lot of time just watching my two babies and seeing them grow. It was two kids under 3 years old plus a dog that I was responsible for... and my heart was full. I felt more love than I ever experienced before. It was still a wild time. It was my circus and at times the best I could do was to make sure all 3 were alive by the time I went to sleep.
This post is by no means meant to say that I nailed the mommy thing. I just became better at it...more confident...less anxious as time went on. I had to release the idea that there was a “right way” to do it and be okay with the way I was able to do it. My circus...my rules. Such as, anyone we visited needed to be at least 40 minutes away and I would time it with naps in the car. Friday night was dance party. We were done for the night by 7pm because that was my daughters naturally selected bedtime. Sometimes they would fall asleep before they had PJs on and that would be how they would sleep. I stopped comparing myself to and started supporting other moms. Community became so important. If you showed love to my kids, I loved you. Because my kids were my everything. It was love that made me a better mom. And ultimately, a better person.