When I announced that Sandeep and I were planning to have a baby, my mother jumped into excitement and happiness.
Her happiness had no bounds. After a month, when I confirmed my pregnancy news to her, she gave me a quick crash course on pregnancy and motherhood.
She mentioned what precautions I need to take, what medicines I need to keep handy and what questions I need to ask my doctors during my regular check-ups.
And, when I met my Gynae, she gave me my second crash course on the motherhood. She mentioned about everything under the sun that I needed to know.
It felt I was all ready to play the role of mother.
But now being a mother for 2 years, I would like to share what motherhood has taught me about itself. While there are a lot of things that friends, family or your doctor must have told you, this is what they haven’t:
Motherhood is not as easy as our mom made it look like. It is a very difficult journey.
As they say marriage transforms a girl into a woman, the motherhood transforms a woman into a saint.
It’s soul-crushingly and mountain-movingly difficult. It is something that cuts deep into the soul and leaves the marks for eternity.
You will never again be the same woman you were before motherhood. Say goodbye to her. Her successes and defeats stand no-where close to yours as a mother.
Every bad news, natural disaster or act of terror will push you into the paranoid thought of “what if this happens to my kid”.
There will always be this voice at the back of your mind that would speak volumes about the danger that your child would be in – if he goes to kindergarten or if plays in the compound. You would always be scared of everything – big or small.
There would be moments when you read a news article about a missing child on Facebook, and imagine how painful would it be for her/his mother. After a few moments, you would have replaced her mother with yourself and her child with yours.
You need to bid goodbye to your carefree self. You will suddenly find yourself searching the internet about the health effects of every single thing that you ever thought of buying in your life.
God forbid if your child falls sick or faces some health concerns, you will spend millions of hours in begging God to pick you for the ailment, instead of the kid.
You will always keep praying that your child doesn’t face any defeat or disappointment in his/her life. And be ready for the extremely sad day that will follow the night when you had a bad dream of your child getting injured or going missing.
No one tells you about how difficult the nights are going to be.
There would be some nights when you will wake up in pain and on the other nights, your heart will swell with pride for your child. And, when your logical self would try hard to find the answer to such feelings – the closest answer would be the love you have for your little soul.
There would be tough moments – when you would find yourself in the middle of a screaming session. You would try yourself best to calm your kid down but nothing will work. In those moments, you will doubt your own readiness to be a mother. You might curse yourself on why did you enter motherhood.
But, after a while, when the kid would calm down, you would know this was the best decision of your life.
And, then there would be the toughest moment. The moment when you would be so tired and frustrated that you would like to walk away from being a mother. You would be so much under pressure that you wouldn’t be able to think of anything else other than to just leaving everything and going away.
But within a few minutes and a coffee/tea later you would have composed yourself enough to look at the beautiful side of motherhood.
Be ready to feel the guilt for every decision that you take from now on. Doesn’t matter if you continue working while being a mother or decide to stay at home to take care of your kid, you would feel the burden of guilt all the time. After suffering from this guilt for a few years, you will learn to kick it out of your life and become confident that what you’re doing for your child is the best for him/her.
For you personally, the bathroom would turn into your recreation room as that would be the only place when you can catch a breath and think your thoughts.
You’ll see yourself spending quite a long time for bathroom breaks which earlier used to be way lesser.
On one hand you might bear the loss of your friendship with your close buddies (as you’ll not be able to meet them frequently) but on the other hand, you will discover a new bond that you would share with other mothers – even those whom you don’t know.
And, this bond would be so strong that you will cry if they would cry, and smile when they smile.
For the first time in your life, you would realize that you can love someone so much that it hurts physically and emotionally. You would develop a new basic human instinct that is so typical of mothers – protecting their baby before themselves.
And, do you remember the question that you always had in your life: “What’s the greatest calling on earth”. Well, it’ll get answered during the beautiful journey of motherhood.
You might also like:
- Every Mom Needs Her Mom & I Need Mine More Than Ever
- Her Honest Confession About The Pressure of Being A Mom
- Dear Husband, I Lost Myself In Being Your Wife
- Stay At Home Mom Writes To Her Husband On What To Expect Living With Her
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