The past three months have been challenging. However, I can finally say I'm at the point where I'm loving being a mom. It took a while for me to get here though. I guess I'm just not a fan of the newborn phase. Someone told me the first 12 weeks are the hardest and I can now say "tell me about it".
When Lucy hit about a month or two I had a lot of people ask me "Do you just love being a mom?!". I honestly didn't know how to answer that question. I guess the real answer was no. My feelings were: I love HER. But I do not love sleep deprivation, the sound of her crying, my breastfeeding troubles, not being able to go places easily...and the list goes on. It surprised me and scared me a little when people asked me that question and I couldn't just answer "yes!". I felt like that's how I was "suppose" to feel. It's also how I expected to feel.
I also found myself getting frustrated on social media. I follow a lot of people on Instagram that have babies and young children. I kept seeing all these posts saying "oh my house is so messy and I have a million things to be doing, but there's NOTHING I would rather be doing than sitting here with my babies!" Even people with newborns raving about how they just LOVE it all! It made me a little upset and I just wanted to grab them and yell, "stop lying!!" I started to feel like I was on the inside of something and I knew the truth.
It made me sad that I wasn't LOVING it. I always wanted to be a mom and kind of assumed I'd love it.
Fast forward to 12 weeks. Something magical happened. I didn't notice until a couple weeks later, but I realized I was loving it. By 12 weeks she became more predictable. She wasn't so crazy gassy and screaming in pain, I was starting to understand what her different cries meant, and what she preferred. My breastfeeding problems resolved. I felt like Lucy was a happier baby. She was smiling at me and I was feeling a love between us I hadn't felt before.
So I'm here to give people hope (and remind myself in the future) it gets better! I know it can only go up from here. I feel lucky to have this little chicken nugget. I know there are still gonna be lots of ups and downs, but the love is all worth it! Her sweet smiles and giggles make me smile everyday.
I love you Lucy Joy!
Hi Mickelle,
ReplyDeleteI just wanted to say that I definitely relate to this post. I really hated the newborn phase. I loved my son, but didn't really enjoy motherhood properly until he was 6 months old and more interactive!
aw you made me all teary. good work getting through it <3 and i totally agree. I loved some of the newborn part but it was definitely up and down. I used to joke (but also serious) that I would start crying almost on cue around 7 every night for the first little while cause I was so exhausted and overwhelmed haha.
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