Wednesday, September 9, 2015

My First Year as a Mommy


Let me start by saying, I have no idea how this year happened. Wait, yes I do. The grace of God. That’s how.

Being a mom is weird. In the fewest of words, I’d like to equate the first year of motherhood to a car wreck - sans violence. If that could even be a thing. See, no one can prepare you for a car wreck, sure you can wear your seat belt, drive safely and have a car with airbags. But really, no one knows how this wreck is going to turn out, or how you’re going to handle it. Being a mom is so much like that.
First you get pregnant. It’s so fun, you get to have all these parties, let yourself eat whatever foods you want, lay around the house asking your husband to do things for you because, duh, you’re pregnant. (Just me?) People tell you you’re glowing and how great you look, even though you feel like a blimp with flip flops on, and you start to convince yourself that you can do this whole mom thing. Then – in all its magical weirdness you birth a child.

Can we pause here for a second and just slow clap for every woman who has ever birthed a baby? Seriously. I don’t care if you had an epidural, c-section, a midwife, or pulled your own baby out in the woods. You’re awesome. You let another human take over your body for nine months, and then come out of it. That’s nuts, and you’re wonder woman. Way to go.

After your baby is born, there is this brief honeymoon period. Your baby is a day or two old, and is sleeping the majority of the day. You feel SO skinny because you no longer have a rock hard watermelon in your belly making it impossible for you to do normal things like shave your legs and get up off the couch. Then… The other shoe drops. This child decides that it is STARVING and super mad about it. Just mad in general really. This is where the motherhood journey gets real, fast. You start to learn so much about yourself at 3am while pacing around your house. You start to feel TERRIBLE about your teenage years and all the crap you put your parents through. You learn how well you operate as a human on little to no sleep. You learn what’s really important, and what isn’t. You learn. Every second of every day. You learn. 

Some days lessons are simple: don’t eat cereal while holding a baby. Cool. Some days are hard, like, I’m a terrible human when I don’t get sleep or, learning how to speak kindly to your husband when you’re exhausted, covered in vomit, and can’t think straight because a tiny human is screaming at you. But all of it – even the vomit situations – it’s all good. It’s good for me to learn to be a better wife. It’s good for me to learn to say no to people so that I can go to bed at 8pm. It’s good for me to learn what is really important in life, and what isn’t. To me, the first year of motherhood is some of the most rapid growth and change you’ll ever go through. There are times where it hurts, it isn’t fun, and it makes you wonder why you decided to put yourself through this. But – there are also times where your joy is so un-containable, and overflowing that you can’t fathom your life being any other way.


These tiny creatures called children are gifts – and are the best gifts God could ever give us. Being a mom is the MOST sanctifying thing that has ever happened to me, and I’ll forever be grateful that the Lord allowed me to experience it.