Skip to main content

Motherhood

 I am currently sitting on our living room couch, with a cold beverage that I opened for myself a few minutes ago, with one eye on the daycare handbook and the other on the monitor. Baby monitor specifically. I am watching as Ike tries to coax this precious 1.5 year old girl, who recently joined our family through foster care, to sleep. She goes to daycare for the first day tomorrow at 7:30am and girlfriend likes to sleep in past 9 and had to be woken up for 8:30 church today so I am unsure how tomorrow will go. 

My Mom and I 

Today - Mother's Day - is an odd holiday for the women who have not lived a cookie cutter life or been dealt an easy hand. My own journey of motherhood isn't typical - often not relatable - and so it feels like a holiday with an asterisk. As I toted a small child around today I was told "Oh! Happy Mother's Day!" like it is a surprise to see me with a kid or "Well Happy Mothers day to you too now" as if I was not very pregnant at Mother's Day last year. Some don't know the history, our story, the hurt, and some just don't realize that what they say cuts a little bit more on a day like today. But also, so so many have reached out to say "Happy Mother's Day" or "Thinking of your sweet boy that made you a mama" and those words make me weapy. What a blessing that we have friends who do remember. Who know that it means so much to me to hear Jack's name and who also remember how cute and tiny and tough he was and how much we loved him. To have friends that realize even though our day today was planned around a tiny human's nap and snack schedule, it looks absolutely nothing like I thought it would if you had asked me last year.  

Motherhood for me looks like back aches because I am not used to carrying around a heavy toddler. It looks like hard nights when I sob to Ike that I just want to be a mom again already. It looks like wondering "what do I wear to go pick up a toddler I've never met at midnight?" and then thinking "why am I thinking that?" For a while, it looked like ultrasound after ultrasound with little encouraging news. And then a while later, many nights of being truly fearful of waking up in the night because of the shear terror of  replaying the agonizing last minutes with Jack. Sometimes motherhood is wrangling the dog out the door away from the toddler all while not breaking the 3 chicken eggs I just gathered from the coop. It is occasionally allowing yourself to peruse the children's clothing section and grab a few things you don't really 'need' right now.  It is often now remembering what it felt like to hold our sweet boy in the NICU. The last 1.5 weeks it has been a whole lot of trial and error with a toddler that is totally new to us. 

Motherhood is a lot of things. And none of them are easy. But the people I find myself desiring to emulate most are often those that don't shy away from tough stuff. And often the ones that walk straight into the crossfire, God refines and shapes and grows them far beyond what they originally imagined or desired. The image of heating up metal to be refined comes to mind - being worked into a new and beautiful creation. That is the pain and joy of motherhood. 

Happy Mother's Day to all those who have mothered babies on this Earth and in heaven, babies they didn't carry in their womb but they physically carry now, and babies they have yet to concieve. 

Plant Shopping - the most mother's day thing to do. 




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day 18 - prayer

 A few housekeeping things - I often write in the evenings and I think I ramble on sometimes from tiredness and poor focus. Second, I want to tell a cohesive story about Jack’s life but I tend to intertwine it with our current everyday life. Sorry if that means it comes out in choppy or scattered story telling.  I have struggled to feel encouraged by the Lord lately to be frank. I’m busy with work and school and a toddler and husband and social life - all blessings. But things that take up my time and leave little to sit with Jesus and ask him to work in my heart.  I was deeply encouraged by the sermon on a short and simple passage in Romans (15:30-33) at church today. Paul is preparing to take a gift to a Jewish church that was given by a gentile church. He’s asking for prayer that the gift would be received well, that it would build bridges, that it would bring the Jewish people to Jesus’s word. And then he asks for prayer that he would safely reach Rome with joy and be...
Post a Comment
Read more

Day 3 - Remembering

There is no right or wrong way to remember the baby or child you no longer get to hold or spoil or soothe or snuggle. There is no right or wrong way to grieve either.  The best advice I was given was “everything is optional except breathing.” That amount of freedom I have needed to remember - if that means I can’t go to a baby shower, I have the freedom to not go. Or to step out of church during an infant baptism, I have the freedom to do that. A wonderful podcast called The Joyful Mourning talks about milestones (#125 I think) and celebrating them (or not) - go give it a listen if you desire.  Tonight we chose to celebrate the week of Jacks birth with a date night. A bunch of friend gifted us a generous gift card to a local restaurant last year on Jacks first birthday so we used that finally and celebrated Jack.  Milestones are weird for me. Some parts of Jack’s story I am so proud of and others make me cringe that we (him and us) had to experience that. I am realizing t...
Post a Comment
Read more

Day 16 - Surgery day #2

I have already shared that Jack had heart surgery on his fifth day of life, then was unable to come off of ECMO (heart and lung machine) a few days later, then palliative care was offered to us. In the days that followed that we were mostly just waiting. Waiting to see what the doctors were going to decide and do, waiting for Jack’s heart to show any signs of improvement that could mean he would tolerate coming off ECMO. At this point he was still fluid overloaded and making plenty of urine so he was losing fluid everyday, looking more and more like a baby and less like a sumo wrestler.   The surgeons didn’t really have an answer as to why his heart couldn’t pump on its own. They never said the words “we should have done the other surgery” because all of the measurements of his heart told them they should not have done the full blown HLHS surgery. But essentially that’s what we assume should have been done. They discussed Jack’s case in grand rounds at length. They decided to take ...
Post a Comment
Read more