Tuesday, November 27, 2012

It's Worth It

Why?  Why in the world would you put your body through those unmentionable atrocities of the previous post?  This whole blog is dedicated to how hard it is being a mom.  Is it worth it?  Absolutely. 

I’ve been a mom for 10 months now.  What’s it like being a mother?
You dream.  You wonder.  You visualize what that first quiet moment with your child is going to be like.  In one word?  Love.  You know in ‘How the Grinch Stole Christmas’ the Grinch’s heart grows?  It’s exactly like that.  In one breath your capacity to love has tripled.  This is one of my favorite pictures when I was in the hospital.  It was just me and Teddy and he was really snuggled up.  I couldn’t see him so I was using my phone to just stare at him.  Love at first sight is real.

I was amazingly blessed to get to stay at home for eight and a half months.  It wasn’t easy by any stretch of the imagination, but it was worth it.  For the first three months they are pretty much a ball of goo and don’t do much.  I spent hours and hours and hours just staring at Teddy.  I’d prop him up on my knees and just stare at him.  I never got tired of it.  If someone told me that before I had a child I would make fun of them.  Now I totally get it. 

Speaking of staring at them while they are awake, just wait until they are sleeping.  Especially when they start crossing their legs and picking their favorite position to sleep.  It will melt your heart that’s three sizes bigger now.  Seriously.

 
Then, one day magically they wake up and have moved from the newborn phase to the baby phase.  The baby phase is super fun.  They giggle, they sit up, they are learning so fast.  In my staring at Teddy at all the time I would look for changes each day and find them.  Being a mother makes you deal with change in a way that you never considered before.

 

You start dreaming about what you want for your kid.  I absolutely want him to grow up playing in the woods like I did.  I want him to know his way around the land.  I want him to grow up going hunting with his dad, Papa, Uncle Richy, Nolan, and Mason.  I want family to be important to him.


Then, one day you’ll walk in after his nap and your heart will drop to your feet.  He’s figured out how to sit up and it’s time to lower the mattress.  On one hand, you are super proud of him and how happy he is with himself.  On the other hand, he’s growing up so fast and in a blink of eye he won’t be a baby anymore.



Adventures mean so much more to you after you have a kid.  There’s the excitement that you have for yourself, but more than that there’s the excitement of seeing things through your child’s eyes.  You catch a glimpse of the future.  His first time at the ranch, his first time seeing wind mills, his first time to go exploring on the land with his daddy.  Once again, your heart just melts.

 

You learn to find joy in the saddest of places.  When inevitabley the great plans you have for the weekend go up in smoke (or in a stomach bug as the case may be), you put your guns up and just enjoy the Tech win and the cute jersey.  It teaches you find the one piece of good news in your day and hold on to it with both hands, because some days are just plain hard.  Harder than you ever imagined, but in the end you pull yourself up by the bootstraps because you have to, you are a parent now.

 

Then, there’s the day that you go back to work (or leave them for a significant portion of the day).  Your heart will literally break in two.  No one will ever know how to take care of your child as well as you can.  No one.  Not his father, not his grandparents, not the nanny, or the daycare, but that’s okay.  You will adjust.  You will get frustrated when things aren’t done your way, but in the end the kid will be fine, and you will have new perspective.  Being a parent is so hard.
 


You will cry more than you ever though imaginable, but you will also laugh.  You will have a good laugh that goes down all the way to your soul.  So, is it worth yet?  Yes.  Am I ready to be pregnant again?  Sweet Lord, no.  No.  No.  No.

1 comment:

  1. oh, how i've missed your posts! thanks for the laughs and sharing all these pics. he is precious and blessed to call you momma!

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