Tristan will be two in a little less than a month and that also means that I’ll have been a mother for two years. God is good and he has been faithful during this time, so I just wanted to take a moment to reflect on the journey to and in motherhood.
The journey to motherhood started for me back in the fall of 2019 after Mitchell and I got married (March 29, 2019). Prior to embarking on that journey I had been on birth control since 2011, so when we got to October of 2019 I decided that I was ready to stop taking it so we could at least start “practicing” to have a baby. The year swiftly came to a close and we were entering into 2020 ready to start conceiving and wow was it a full-on JOURNEY. You see when you desire something so much, for some, there comes a point when it turns into something you’re constantly thinking about, it’s all you talk about and for me, it was all I prayed about. Can I also note that for me since I had been on birth control for a lengthy amount of time, I didn’t realize that I needed to give my body time to reset and regulate. Therefore, most of 2020 came with irregular cycles and disappointments, negative pregnancy tests, and even … some jealousy of others that I knew or saw who were pregnant and God had to deal with me on that. The feeling stemmed from a sense of being “left out”, it was a cry to God of “Well what about me? We want a baby too.” But I soon learned that I had to ultimately surrender everything to God regarding my womb, regarding the desire to be a mother, and the timeline we created for when we wanted it to happen. I left it all at his feet because if not I would continue to be consumed by this desire and nothing else would matter.
We now fast forward a bit to October of 2020 and that was when I found out I was pregnant with Tristan! When I was previously blogging in Indiana I wrote a blog post on restoration and renewal not only alluding to finding out I was pregnant but also with us moving back home to North Carolina and just for the renewed headspace I was in. When I said at the beginning that God is good and he has been faithful, he is faithful, I truly mean it!
Even before finding out we were pregnant and then afterward (even to this day), Mitchell and I are constantly having conversations about parenting styles, the things we would and would not do as parents, how we would raise our children, etc. For me, I emphasized the fact that I didn’t want to be a parent who constantly yelled at their kids, I didn’t want to be a parent who whooped their kids either. When I was a child, I experienced these very things and I promised Mitchell and I promised myself that I would do things differently. Now I feel like I’ve become hypersensitive to these very things. I honestly didn’t realize the residual effects I’d feel from when I was a kid, and that was over 20 years ago. It has not been an easy feat, because I have yelled at my son more times than I can count and have also resorted to popping him in certain instances, and even in those instances I feel guilty. That’s another thing motherhood has taught me, that mom guilt is a real thing. I didn’t realize that after disciplining Tristan in certain instances or even getting frustrated enough that I don’t say a word to him that it would leave me feeling so guilty because I knew he could tell that I was upset. Mom guilt is something that plagues all of us moms at some point for whatever reason. I honestly wonder even now as I’m typing this who came up with the phrase “mom guilt” and why does it hold so much weight?! It doesn’t take much for this feeling to consume and overwhelm you either, it doesn’t even have to show up from disciplining your kids. It could be simply because you decided to let your baby cry it out while you shower or because you just need a moment to yourself. It could be because rather you breastfed your baby this one time, you decide to let your spouse, friend, or family member bottle feed instead because you need a break. Mom guilt is chaos, it is confusion and that is not something that God created and called us to be. God is not the author of confusion and I truly believe it is a tactic of the enemy and even society to make us believe in our minds that we have to be everything at once. That we don’t deserve a break or a moment to ourselves, that we have to be on all the time and honestly, it’s exhausting. We cannot expect to be able to effectively care for and raise a tiny human being if we can’t take the time to care for ourselves too. When we’re depleted, we can’t give of ourselves until we are replenished.
From this very thing, motherhood has also taught me that a support system is vital. Unfortunately, some mothers don’t even have a support system and I can only imagine what that is like for them. For those of us that do have a support system, again, it is vital for us to lean on that system. I remember when I first had Tristan, Mitchell and I just knew we could do it all on our own with minimal help, but we were quickly humbled that we IN FACT needed support from our family and friends. Listen lol, these days, I am SO QUICK to call on our support system, our family, for help because I finally realized what a necessity it was. I didn’t realize there would be moments where I felt depleted and tired, and that’s where our support system was able to step in and take some of the weight off. I also appreciated the village that has formed from other people I know who are our age that are parents. This was honestly a game changer for me, especially being a millennial parent. Sometimes it’s hard for our parents to understand what we are experiencing because times have changed so much. A lot of the things some of us moms experience today, our moms didn’t have to experience. So I truly appreciate having other millennial parents, fellow moms, to talk to and confide in that are tracking on this similar path. It’s so important and again so vital. Community is everything and God never meant for us to do this thing called life alone ❤️.
Being a mother two years in has been such a beautiful and rewarding journey. Every day isn’t perfect, and every day I’m constantly learning new things about myself, but I wouldn’t trade it for the world. Shoot, Tristan has even taught me so much about myself and this motherhood journey. He’s taught me patience (still actively working on that, lol), he’s taught me another form of love, and he’s taught me to give grace- to him and myself too. I have full confidence that as this journey continues there will be countless other things he will teach me and I wait in excitement for it.
You know, sometimes I just sit and watch Tristan play, sleep, talk, and sometimes I even go back in my phone and look at videos and photos of him when he was first born and it brings me so much joy. That God had the desire and a plan for me to become a mother all along, but it was hard for me to believe it at first because I was standing in the way. And now, I’m sitting here and I’m so grateful 🥹.
Psalm 127:3 (NIV) says, “Children are a gift from the Lord. They are a reward from him.”
コメント