Thoughts on the Eve of My First Mother's Day
I am excited for tomorrow. My first Mother's Day as an actual mom! I was pregnant this time last year, but it's totally not the same. My husband has already started pampering me. I got french toast for breakfast this morning, and he knew I was close to serious business happening in A Storm of Swords so I got dedicated reading time. I even went to a local herb sale this morning to stock up on new plants for this summer's garden.
Motherhood is not at all how I imagined it. All I could compare it to beforehand was owning cats. I love my cats so much. DS and I have always called them our children. "How are the kids, are they behaving?" I would think about how much I love Winston and try to extrapolate that. Honestly, it kind of scared me. I thought I might bust if I felt that much.
So it was a bit disappointing when I didn't feel like I would explode at the seams with love. Maybe some of that was how long I had to wait to see them after they were born. But my love for them has been more of a work in progress. I'm not sure this is a bad thing. Maybe I did love them oh so much, but I have to say that my emotions were strange in general after I had them. So many hormones and physical trauma to recover from. And then there was the NICU stay, and the reflux, and the learning to breastfeed, and the doing it all with no one around to help us. Life was hard, and I was tired, and sometimes I wanted to punt my children off the balcony.
But imagine if I'd felt this huge swell of love at first, and then felt all that stuff afterwards. Would I have thought I was falling out of love with them? That would have been so horrible. This way seems better now that I've lived it. Even while experiencing all the extremely trying moments two tiny babies bring in the early months, I knew I would not give them up for anything. And that one certain feeling has blossomed into something joyful that is kind of amazing.
I can't even describe to you the fierce pride I feel when one of them accomplishes a new thing. Little things that prior to being a mother I would have thought it was silly to even notice. Monkey's foot reached the ground in the Jumper today and he pushed. It was the smallest gesture, and I was insanely proud of him. Then later Monkey is bawling and puking and I'm rocking him, and Bear is just sitting in his little seat entertaining himself, and we lock eyes and it's like he says, "Don't worry Mom, I've got this, do what you need to do." Heart melt.
It's not always sunshine and rainbows (see above puke reference), but I am really enjoying finding all of those rainbows. I'm even laughing that this came out of my mouth today: "It's okay, it's the pre-curdled kind. That's the type of puke we like!" I mean really, if love isn't why I said that happily, I don't want to know.
DS has told me that he will try to manage the babies on his own as much as possible tomorrow. I realized today that I wouldn't want to go a whole day without them. I know I used to think it would be heavenly, and I still think breaks are good (like right now), but a whole day? It would seem I look forward to those little turds.
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| This is what happens when you have one baby that cries when you put him down (hence the carrier) and then the other one cries too. It's cool, I've got this. |
