Our bodies
What is the most obvious difficulty that we mothers face? Our bodies. They are not our own in ANY way, and honestly hardly look like our own anymore. Between pregnancy, nursing, hugs, kisses, lifting, holding, clinging, and sex with our husbands, there is nothing left to call our own except maybe our knees, which tend to ache from all the lifting, carrying, holding, swinging around, etc. My hair has to be tied back so that my son doesn’t rip it out. My lips constantly whisper reassuring phrases. My nose is assaulted with the odor of things that need to be changed. My ears are on high alert to whispers, sniffles, and sneezes, not to mention ringing from the screeches. My arms are for lifting, my hands are for holding, my stomach is for growing life, my legs are for carrying, my breasts are for feeding… You get the point. The best thing is to accept this fact and move on! I heard someone say once that the healthiest thing you can do concerning your newfound identity is to go ahead and grieve for the freedom you once had, and that applies to your body too! Oh wow, isn’t that a statement that would beat any lecture on abstinence!
This may not be an issue for some mothers. I personally, however, have never been a manual labor type of girl. I’m very artsy, and use my fingers more than any other part of my body. What’s that verse again? “3 Because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. 4Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.” Yeah, that. In other words, I don’t really like to exercise.
I’m going to share a moment of TMI. I took a shower five minutes ago. I was noticing my little stretch marks, my flabby belly, and the effects of nursing. I have two choices when tempted to despair: either exercise and diet, or accept it. To be truthful, I have to do a combination of both. I know I never wanted to be the frumpy mama on the playground. I know I want the energy to run after my kids without turning beat red and my heart pounding out of my chest. I know I don’t want to jiggle when I walk! I am 5’3 and weigh 154 pounds. I didn’t gain much weight during my pregnancies, I just ate too much before and after!
So far I’ve only talked about weight, but there’s so MUCH that changes physically, and none are too easy to accept. For now, though, the rest of this blog will have to wait. Energy fading…
Sons and Daughters
Hey friends! I’m sitting here watching my son Phoenix rock in his swing. He still hates sleep. Lilly is ripping apart a book while we watch Disney’s The Kid. “Somebody call the Waaahmbulance!”
Watching this really sums up what I have been trying to get across in my book that I haven’t written yet because I can’t find the words… If you were able to build a time machine when you were little and travel across time to the year 2009, would you be impressed with the future you? Would you be proud of yourself, or ashamed?
Apply that concept to your life now. If you could build a time machine and travel to the year 2029, who do you think you will meet? Work NOW to secure the future that you want and become who you want to be. Get what I mean?
On another note, we had grilled turkey skewers for dinner last night. After I ate the first skewer, Paul told me that he dropped ONE of the skewers on the ground. Did he know which one? No, but I’m pretty sure the extra crunch in mine was dirt. Yum yum.
Hello world!
Right now, my four month old son is laying on my bed, crying, because he has an aversion to sleep. My 20 month old daughter is watching Sesame Street and eating cheerios and raisins. ( I always swore my kids would not watch TV. Hey, you do what you gotta do! At least it’s PBS. Well, ok, it’s usually Shrek. ) The little rituals that we have as moms are pretty funny to me, and the fact that we do them with such firm belief that they will work: hold the baby, feed the baby, sing that particular lullaby, give him the last drops of milk while he’s laying in bed, rub his belly, sing the lullaby again, kiss his head, whisper “sh-sh-sh” like an incantation, and voila! Baby is asleep. You know it rarely works! But, we do it anyway. It’s the mother’s version of baseball players’ superstitions.
Life with babies is a blast. At what other point in your life can you dance like a maniac, twirl another human in the air, color, and have smiley face pancakes? You have an opportunity to see the world again, fresh, through their eyes. My daughter’s favorite phrase right now is, “What’s this?” ( It sounds more like “wassiss” and only her daddy and I know what she means.) I get to show her what a leaf is, and teach her that it is not cool to pick up slugs and give them to mommy. She thinks that rocks are in the world so that she can put them in buckets. To her, an airplane is just a noise because she can’t figure out how to look up and find the speck flying by. All animals are doggies. And already she is aware of her beauty; as soon as she has on a new outfit, she runs to the full length mirror and checks herself out. She carries around my purse, puts on my necklace and asks, “Pwetty?”
I don’t have to tell you that it is not always a blast. There are days that I could literally pull my hair out and just scream. Colicky babies are just not fun. Neither is being puked on. Neither are the tantrums. For a couple of weeks, my daughter would have melt downs whenever she didn’t get her way. I’m talking lay on the floor kicking and screaming, hitting, screeching, blood pressure rising through the roof tantrums. Nobody wanted to be around her. And my son, OH my goodness. He’s tongue-tied, which means the little stretchy thing at the bottom of his tongue is connected to the tip of his tongue. So for eight weeks, he was hungry because he couldn’t get enough milk. And a hungry baby SCREAMS!!! Constantly, 24/7, high-pitched and angry screams. Week 3 of his little life his big sister got a stomach bug and threw up all over everything multiple times. So I was juggling a screeching baby and scrubbing up puke and throwing everything in the wash and hugging my daughter and lysoling everything in sight. When we went to the doctor and he hadn’t gained any weight, I put two and two together and nursed him around the clock. Because of his tongue, he couldn’t take a bottle until he was eight weeks old. I thought I was going to lose my mind.
I didn’t. But I did have a full blown panic attack and ended up in the ER thinking I was going to die. But it was just nerves. Silly me. So maybe I did kind of lose my mind just a little bit. Point being: life with babies is HARD but wonderful. I’ll tell you the worst part: losing yourself. Every mother loses herself. It is absolutely essential that we pinpoint exactly what part of ourselves we lost, and whether it is worth finding again. And it’s not just being a mother that does it. It’s meeting the needs of our husbands, the change in roles on every level, the change in dreams and goals, the physical work and emotional energy we spend on everyone that wear on our souls.
In the next few chapters we will explore our souls. Doesn’t that sound like fun? We’ll go down some well worn paths and a few less traveled. We’ll talk about our needs, our dreams, our kids, our husbands and our parents. I think that we are given this time in our life for a number of reasons: to eliminate selfishness, to stretch and grow us, and to give us confidence that through Christ we can handle anything! James chapter one begins with, “Consider it pure joy, my brothers (and sisters and mothers and fathers), whenever you face trials of many kinds, 3because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. 4Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.” How exciting! A chance to grow strong emotionally, physically, and spiritually. I hope that the following chapters will inspire you to make it through this challenging time with grace, love, and energy. You are not alone. Let’s figure out how to do this thing called being a mommy, wife, sister, daughter, and individual. Right now, I will drop my hat that says “writer” and don the one that says “mommy” because my son thinks 18 minutes was a long enough nap. I disagree.
