It's been a little more than 7 months since I became a mother of two. And I can honestly say these have been some of the hardest months of my life. Is it bad to say I've struggled learning how to be a mother to two? I was fine at first, but the summer was not awesome, and though I'm feeling more qualified for the task at hand, I still struggle a lot.
I've been meaning to write this post for a long time. And a lot of versions were written--in my head and in draft posts--but I kept putting off posting because I didn't want to come off as a whiner. Or as a bad mother. I didn't want it to sound like I wasn't happy with my children or my choice to be a mother. Because nothing is further from the truth. I have two of the cutest boys around. But that doesn't mean that the past few months haven't been hard for me. And, really, that's the biggest point of all: It's been hard for ME. Maybe someone else looks at my life and wonders why it is so hard. Or they think about how much harder their situation is. And all I can say is, thank goodness Heavenly Father decided not to test me further, because there have been moments where I felt like I was to my extreme.
But Heavenly Father answered my prayers and helped my through my frustrations.
One night while Rich was away and I
was staying up way too late watching quality television on Netflix, a
character said, "Everyone has a secret life that no one else knows
about." And the heavens parted. Did Heavenly Father answer my prayer
through TV? I don't know, but this statement flipped the switch I'd been
praying about. Sure, my secret life wasn't horrible or maybe even
"hard" to someone else, but what I "heard" in this line was: "Everyone
has a secret heartache," "Everyone has a hard time," "Everyone is sad
sometimes." And it made me feel better. Because maybe, just maybe, I'm
not the only mother who feels this way. And if so, then maybe I'll be
okay.
And I was
okay. But then I worried. Because worrying is my forte. I'm always
worried I'm not a good enough mother. That I'm not helping my kids become the
people they need to be. Obviously most of the worrying was about Devin
because he's like a teenaged two-year-old, but Landon's crappy napping
worried me too. And as this quote from a mom who understands says, "Feeding the baby and helping [him] sleep are my two biggest jobs in the
world right now, and when they don’t go smoothly, I feel (rationally or
not) like a colossal failure." (Whole post
here.) So there was constant worrying.
But then, just
last week while at Devin's dentist appointment I was talking to another
mother. She had a 2-month-old, which was her third child. I asked how
the transition to three had gone, and she said that it was actually
going well. She told me that it was a lot easier for her than going from one to two children. And I silently thanked her for sharing this information. I'm sure adding a third child to the mix is hard(er than two), and just makes things that much crazier, but bless this woman for admitting that simply going from one to two was the hardest for her. I needed a complete stranger to say that to me. She was an answer to my prayers.
I don't want to be all dramatic or negative, and I know I'm too hard on myself a lot of the time, yet I can't help it. Rich is always telling me I'm a great mother. But my first thought after hearing this is, "But there is SO MUCH more I could/should be doing!" I read a lot of parenting books. And while I've learned a great deal from some of these books and have discovered new or better ways to doing things, sometimes those books make me feel worse. Or, rather, more stressed. Because if I do the things those books say not to then clearly my child will become a juvenile delinquent. Or a failure. And on and on.
So, then I worry some more. And it seems as if the list of things to do gets too long and too much.
Yet,
it may be easy to say that though today is hard it matters not, because
shouldn't I be optimistic always? But the truth is, it does matter. It
matters to me. It matters very much to me that I feel like I'm failing
as a mother because it's been 7 months and I still don't feel like I
have this mothering thing down and I've only vacuumed the floor 6 times
since Landon was born. And though I really know that the most important
things are moments like rocking my overtired-and-recently-immunized boy
to sleep (especially since I'm a firm believer in self-soothing) and not
getting angry when Devin flips flour all over
while we're baking cookies, which will then prompt him to ask, "Are you
the best Mama?" It still matters to me that sometimes I'm just
overwhelmed and tired and stressed.
But even amidst the worrying and stressing I try to remind myself that just because I don't love the moments
where Landon has woken up screaming after a solid 30 minute nap and
Devin is begging me to play with him because I haven't really had the
time to fill his love-tank in that 30 minutes, this moment is not the
sum of all the moments. A more exact sum of all the moments is when I
held Landon in my arms and watched him sleep and kissed every feature on
his round
little face and thanked God for the gift of being a mother.
And in closing, to my own mother, I'm sorry for all those times I knocked on the door while you were taking a shower. Because I realize now all you really wanted at that moment in time was to have 20 minutes all to yourself. And I promise I will vacuum my floor more once Landon learns to crawl. But probably not until then.
