As a little girl I imagined motherhood as an experience filled with constant joy and satisfaction. The thought of being the mother to a beautiful baby who loved me unconditionally and whose face lit up every time I entered the room was something I had been fantasizing about for years. This picture of motherhood left no room for discomfort during pregnancy, sleep deprivation, and survival mode during the newborn stage of my child's life. In my mind, motherhood was all giggles and happiness.
The first several months of my pregnancy with Liam were easy. I didn't start showing until somewhere around five or six months. I was spared the unbearable morning sickness that so many women complain about and the worst symptom at that point was occasional swelling of my ankles after walking around campus all day. So far motherhood was shaping up to be just what I expected.
Cue months seven and eight...
Waddling around is not fun. Having to pee every five minutes is inconvenient. Not being able to stand up from a sitting position without great exertion is annoying. Swollen feet and ankles that prevent you from wearing anything but flip flops and slippers ruins even the cutest outfit. Not being able to squeeze into tight spaces or even maneuver between the pews at church starts to wear on your nerves.
This is the part of pregnancy when everyone tells you how cute your baby bump is while you're just counting down the days until your due date, hoping that your little bun decides to exit the oven a few days early. This is also the time when I started to realize that Jace and I were running out of time as just "Jace and Sheila." Soon there would no longer be exclusive alone time. I started to mourn the loss of our non-parent coupleness before Liam was even born. In fact, the week leading up to Liam's induction found me in a nostalgic mood more often than not.
Jace chose to propose to me and I chose to say yes. We chose each other as lifelong partners to journey through life together as one. This pregnancy, on the other hand, was a surprise. Jace and I hadn't been planning on getting pregnant for another year! And yet God had other plans. During the final days of my pregnancy, instead of rejoicing in the gift that God was about to bless us with, I was reminiscing and mourning the loss of my life before Liam. Words cannot describe the guilt I have experienced regarding these feelings. Even as I type this I feel the sting of regret and guilt.
During the first weeks and months after giving birth you are in complete survival mode. There is no routine, no schedule, no "To-Do List." You do whatever it takes just to stay alive. You run on little to no sleep, you do your best to fit in a shower while baby is sleeping, you are in pain, discomfort, and a barely sane state of mind. Your emotions are all over the place and you lose sight on several occasions of the light at the end of the tunnel. Everyone keeps telling you that this is just temporary. One day your child will learn to sleep through the night. One day he won't need to eat every hour of the day. One day you will sleep again. But its hard to believe these truths when you feel like nothing more than a human milk machine who spends most of her day bouncing around the apartment because the baby won't sleep without constant motion.
For me the newborn stage was full of tears and wishing that I could push the rewind button on my life and go back to being a newlywed college student who left the confines of her apartment more than once a week to go to church on Sundays. During my darkest hours of newborn motherhood I actually thought about walking out of the apartment and never going back.
Now deep down I know that I'm not the first mom to ever experience such feelings. I know I'm not the first mom to fight a losing battle with breastfeeding. I know I'm not the first mom to cut short her pursuit of a college degree to stay home with her baby. I know I'm not the first mom to experience the gut-wrenching guilt of hearing that her baby has dropped to the third percentile in weight after being exclusively breastfed. However, in those moments when sleep deprivation and hormonal imbalance take control of your emotions, you feel like you're the only first time mom to set foot on the face of the earth. In those moments you feel completely alone in your struggles and you find yourself wishing that your life had never changed from its pre-motherhood blissfulness.
But praise God for his divine understanding of my heart! During my pain and, yes, depression during early motherhood God showed me his faithfulness in so many ways. He sent me exactly what I needed in every difficult situation. I continually thanked God for his provision during this time.
First, I thanked God for the amazing man he has blessed me with for a husband. Jace is an imperfect man who is absolutely perfect for me. I felt safe sharing the undesirable feelings I faced during those dark times. Jace held me as I cried and told me that things would get better. He reminded me that I was a good mom and that someday soon I would be more to Liam than his source of food and transportation. Without Jace I don't know what I would have done. We survived the newborn stage together and I depended on Jace for so much. Jace helped when I felt overwhelmed. He got up to help me in the middle of the night by changing diapers and making bottles when breastfeeding got the better of me. He supported me in my decision to exclusively breastfeed and supported me still when I threw in the breastfeeding towel. I know that Jace was one of God's greatest blessings to me as a first time mom.
I have also thanked God on numerous occasions for giving babies short-term memory. I am not proud of many of my reactions to Liam and his needs while I was sleep deprived and grouchy. I am so glad that Liam will never remember the times when I lost my temper with his innocent yet incessant newborn demands. I'm thankful that he won't hold against me the hunger pains I'm sure he suffered from while he struggled to nurse and finally gave up from exhaustion. I pray that as Liam grows, his memories of me will be of how much I love him and the joy that he brings to my life.
I thank God that he designed it so that babies learn to smile when they do. When Liam learned to smile in response to external stimuli I was at the end of my physical and emotional ropes. I did something that either brought him pleasure or that he found funny and a grin spread across his little face. Instantly my mommy batteries were recharged! Not that they stayed that way for long, but I now knew that I was someone special to Liam. I knew that he recognized me as something more than food. The fact that Liam was starting to recognize me as his mom reassured me that I must be doing something right. Now when I walk into a room, Liam immediately keys in on my presence and is excited to see me. More than one person has remarked on how intently he watches me and how obvious it is that he knows I'm his mom.
Another of God's greatest provisions to me as a first time mom was the community of other moms. Its comforting to know that you're not alone in the trenches of motherhood. There is always someone else who is fighting the same battle. One friend of mine in particular whose daughter was born the day before Liam was a great source of encouragement to me during the tough times of the newborn motherhood stage. Like me, she is a first time mom and, like me, she fought hard to be able to breastfeed but ultimately weaned her daughter earlier than she would have liked. Every time I saw her after having a rough day or week with Liam I'd learn that she had been experiencing something similar if not the same thing with her own baby. It was such a relief to know that Liam's issues were normal and that at least one other mom was struggling with the same thing.
While I still think back sometimes to the days before I had Liam, I no longer wish that I could go back to them. I love my son and I love the relationship I have with him as his mom. God has taught me so many valuable lessons through Liam and his little (but very strong-willed) personality. I may not be the "World's Greatest Mommy" but I am Liam's mommy and that's just about the greatest job there is.
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