Ohhhh, so large and moany! 38.5 weeks pregnant and gave birth the next day!
I remember thinking "I'm huge, uncomfortable, and not sleeping anyway. Might as well have the baby here, because at least then I could breathe!" Ha! Apparently being physically ready to have pregnancy over with has NOTHING to do with whether or not you are EMOTIONALLY ready to have a baby. And here's the scary part:
You. Can. Never. Be. Emotionally. Ready. To. Have. A. Child.
You can read till the cows come home (and in Caledon, sometimes they do), you can paint a nursery, you can talk to other mums who are "keeping it real" with you, but NOTHING and I mean NOTHING can prepare you for the SHOCK of motherhood.
It's just SHOCKING. TERRIFYING AND SHOCKING AND WONDERFUL ALL IN ONE.
This is what love, terror, and shock look like all crammed into one exhausted, 10 second old Mama!
Here is this little person, only a few hours old, and they boot you out of the hospital and basically tell you to go forth and take care of this precious, helpless baby on your own. If you are breastfeeding, it is a skill you learnt a mere 24 hours ago, and this skill that you are fumbling with HAS TO SUSTAIN YOUR CHILD and keep him or her ALIVE. I had more instructions, and more paperwork when we brought Wyatt home from the breeders. And she called every few days to check up on us!
Wyatt, the day we came home with him from the breeders. With instuctions. And follow up calls from the breeder.
Ella the day we came home from the hospital. With no instructions. And no follow up (despite them saying there would be within 24 hours).
Who cares if you can't sit yet, because the 33 hours of labour have left your body ravaged like you've been attacked by a bear. Or the fact that it's Monday night and you haven't slept since sometime on Friday afternoon? But that doesn't matter! Time ceased to exist 24 hours ago! Who cares if you've only held a newborn once, and it was your niece 5 years ago and you can't remember how to do it, because when you were doing it then there were people to tell you if you were doing it right.
Hello, exhaustion. Nice to meet you. For the first time.
I remember thinking "WHY DIDN'T I ENJOY THOSE LAST FEW DAYS OF BABY FREE LIFE?" "CAN I PUT THIS BABY BACK IN AND HAVE A DO OVER?" and the reality of it is, you will never appreciate your baby free life until you have kids, and then its too late because that life is never coming back. Ha! Thank you cosmos! You trickster! How dare you!
These are things you can see in retrospect. :)
What I didn't expect or 'prepare' for was the overwhelming wave of emotions I would feel on a daily basis. At the beginning, this wave of emotion is ten times bigger because the 9 months of hormones you have been gradually building come CRASHING to a halt on the day your child is born. Love, sadness, happiness, despair, anxiety. They are all there. At ten times the volume and magnitude then they were before you had a baby.
And if you are the lucky mother of a baby with colic, who screams the house down most hours of the day and night when they were awake, be prepared for the biggest hit to your self esteem you can imagine. The non-stop crying will tear you apart on the inside, make you fight with your husband, yell at the dog, and shake your fist at life. And the worst part? There is NO CURE. There is NO EXPLANATION. There is nothing you can do, but wait it out, and hope that you all get through it in the end.
This is the face of colic. Screaming. Non-stop. For hours and hours at a time.
Emotions at the beginning of motherhood look somewhat like this: "OMG! Ella OPENED HER EYES!" Pure love rushing in. I am MOTHER OF THE YEAR! My baby is a GENIUS! Two hours later, "WHY IS SHE CRYING?! DOES SHE HATE ME?" I am the WORST MOTHER TO EVER WALK THE FACE OF THE EARTH. THERE WAS NEVER A WORSE MOTHER IN THE WORLD THEN ME. There is no in-between. There are only the highest highs, followed by the lowest lows. Eventually these calm down (a bit) and you can start to see the forest through the trees.
I remember my husband telling me one day that I was doing a great job, despite the fact "I wasn't one of those natural mothers". Thanks Steve! And maybe he was right. I wasn't a natural mother. But you know what? I learned. Day by day, things got easier, and my love of this little helpless person grew and grew. As I got to know her, I became more and more comfortable with taking care of a baby, and what's even better, more and more confident in my role as a mother.
At the beginning, with any new baby, there is a lot of giving and not a lot of receiving. But that changes over time. A year later, I still have these feelings but I can definitely put them in perspective now. "Ella said MAMA!" This baby is a genius! Probably because of her GENIUS MOTHER! Ella is eating play doh like its going out of style? NOT GOING TO WIN MOTHER OF THE YEAR THIS WEEK. MAYBE NEXT WEEK, COSMOS.
:)
That's life though. So to all the preggos out there, enjoy your pregnancy. The time will come when you will wish them back in and that you enjoyed those last few weeks of solitude (or being a mama of one, or mama of nineteen as the case may be in the Duggar family). A friend once told me that "Pregnancy is like a 90 minute massage compared to motherhood". And its true.
So to answer that age old question: "Are you READY to be a mother?" I can say with absolute certainty that I wasn't then. But I am now. And I think I'm pretty damn good at it. All it took was a year of crying, laughing, learning, and trying to not take myself too seriously.
And that is why, one year later, I can say I'm ready to be a mother. Maybe I was ready the whole time and maybe I wasn't. But I figured it out.
This is the story of one Mama's candid journey through motherhood. Doing my best, crying a little, loving a lot, and flying by the seat of my pants. Ella and I will figure it out together. And that's what motherhood is all about.
:)
:)
