The Meaning of Motherhood

Motherhood did not come easily to me.

It’s not something that came quickly.

I had the expectation when I tried to get pregnant, sure it might take a few months but it would happen for me. Why wouldn’t it?

Months went by and each time I started my period, I sunk lower and lower into despair.

It took my husband and I two years to get pregnant.

Once my son was born, I struggled again to get him to sleep and with postpartum depression.

This thing (motherhood) I had hoped and prayed for was now bringing me so much unhappiness. And it is really hard to say that and be open about it.

It’s because I know the blood, sweat and tears it took to get pregnant that by acknowledging now this thing was making me unhappy seems like I was looking a gift horse in the mouth.

And it also seems disrespectful to those who still are facing infertility.

But one person’s pain doesn’t dismiss another person’s pain.

Woman who struggle with infertility often criticize other woman who struggle with motherhood for not being appreciative of what they have (a baby.)

I know this because I was one of those people. What I now know on the other side of that is what I said above, one person’s pain does not diminish another’s.

There is a commonality in my journey through motherhood and it’s that struggles are part of it.

Those struggles don’t define you.

Each time you take a pregnancy stick and it is negative, it does not make you less of a mother or a woman. Although – it can feel that way.

If you struggle with getting your baby to latch, take a bottle, produce milk, get your little one to sleep – those struggles don’t define you as a mother, a woman or a partner.

Those struggles are not burdens you have to carry alone.

Each night I go to bed I pray for the mothers in waiting, the mothers who so badly want to breast feed or get their baby to sleep.

I pray for those struggling moms that realize they are better and greater than the problems and challenges they are facing.

Motherhood to me is not about having a baby.

It is about overcoming challenges, struggles, failures and finding a way to not let what you don’t have define you as a parent.

It is very easy to focus on the “have-not.” But if you can find the beauty in those things that is where the true magic lies. If you can find a way to work through those things and come out the other side – you will be a better person for it.

If you can find a way to raise your hand and say, “I struggle with those things too.” Then you are sharing the burden and helping out a fellow mother. There is comfort in numbers.

So here is to the mothers in our life – may we know them, may we raise them and may we be them.

Moore Sleep Soon,

Maggie