Loving vs. Liking Motherhood

Wow.  Sometimes this motherhood thing is so hard.  Some days, like today, I wonder if I'm doing ANYTHING right because you sure wouldn't be able to tell by seeing my child.  The "Terrible Two's" began way earlier than I was prepared for and, sometimes, I look at my sweet, precious baby boy---and feel like I have no idea who this demanding little tyrant is standing before me.  Some days I put him to bed and just weep, exhausted and wondering how I will survive the toddler years.  I knew motherhood was going to be hard, but I didn't know it was going to be like this.

As you may have guessed, I'm having a bad day.  Like, a seriously bad day.  And, I'll be honest, I very rarely read the weekly MOPS emails sent out from the international organization.  But today, of all days, I decided to open it.  And I was moved to tears (not only was it a bad day, but also an emotional one, too) but this oh-so-pertinent message.

Loving versus Liking Motherhood

Robin Kramer, mom of three

It doesn’t matter how a child enters your family – whether he’s adopted or born into it, whether she’s a complete surprise or yearned for month after month with dare-I-even-hope?pregnancy tests. They’re yours, and you love them.

Without even saying it, you know that you’d die for them.

At some point, though, you’ll look at this child and be confronted with the unsettling realization that you don’t like them very much. At least, not at that particular moment. Not when they’re throwing a tantrum and kicking the air in angry protest. Not when they’re hitting a sibling, defying your instructions, refusing to eat dinner or rolling their eyes. During those moments, theemotions of love – so powerful and heartrending during infancy – wane.

Yet, it’s love that covers patches when there’s not much liking. During days when I find myself and the kids clunking around in a vaguely irritated state where nothing specifically is wrong but everything is off, that’s when I most need to love them. When they’re triggering fights and setting off land mines with volatile words and actions, that’s when they need my arms to wrap around them, buffering them until they can change their destructive course.

When tears, arguments, food, and toys merge into one unsightly and exhausting mess, it’s not unusual for me to pause, collect myself, and make a declaration: Girls, I love you.

At these moments, I rarely feel it. I’m speaking into the void, reminding myself as much as I’m reminding them of this truth. I love them. Whether I feel it or not, I love them.

We love our children enough that on many days we do die for them – unnoticed and miniscule deaths-to-self when we place their needs and interests before our own, when we hold our tongues, when we give them the last bite of the chocolate cake that we wanted to eat, when we drag our weary body out of our warm beds to comfort them when they’re frightened in the middle of the night.

Because this is what mothers do. We love our kids, even in our imperfection. Even in their imperfection. We always will.

Dear God, give me daily grace and strength to love my kids as You love them.

Robin Kramer is a mother of three, college instructor, and author of Then I Became a Mother, from which this post is excerpted with permission. She blogs regularly at Pink Dryer Lint to encourage moms to find humor and pleasure in the ordinary moments of motherhood and life.

Wow . . . did I need to hear this.  And I just wanted to share in case anyone reading this blog needed to hear it, too.  Chins up, Moms.  We can't do it alone, but we can do all things through Him who gives us strength.

Inspiration for Mothers

I've been having a rough few days lately.  I think it's because I know this TDY is almost over, and I'm getting anxious for my husband to be home.  This makes every little irritant seemed magnified.  Pair this with a STILL teething baby who is refusing naps, refusing meals, refusing toys, flat-out refusing to want anything that doesn't involve being carried around by mommy.  Then you factor in the constant spit-up, the poopy diapers, and the never-ending pile of laundry. . . and I'm tired just writing about it.

Anyways, I found this article on the internet and, with all I've been going through, it really felt like it was speaking to me.  So I share it now for all the other "mothers with only one child" who may be needing a bit of encouragement today:

"To The Mother With Only One Child"
by Simcha Fisher

Dear Mother of Only One Child,

Don’t say it.  Before the words can even pass your lips, let me beg you:  don’t say, “Wow, you have nine kids?  I thought it was hard with just my one!”

My dear, it is hard.  You’re not being a wuss or a whiner when you feel like your life is hard.  I know, because I remember having “only one child.”  You may not even believe how many times I stop and reflect on how much easier my life is, now that I have nine children.

All right, so there is a lot more laundry.  Keeping up with each child’s needs, and making sure they all get enough attention, is a constant worry.  And a stomach bug is pretty much the end of the world, when nine digestive tracts are afflicted.

But I remember having only one child, and it was hard—so very hard.  Some of the difficulties were just practical:  I didn’t know what I was doing, had to learn everything.  People pushed me around because I was young and inexperienced.  But even worse were the emotional struggles of learning to be a mother.

When I had only one child, I truly suffered during those long, long, long days in our little apartment, no one but the two of us, baby and me, dealing with each other all day long.  I invented errands and dawdled and took the long way home, but still had hours and hours to fill before I would hear my husband’s key in the door.

I cared so much what other people thought about her—they had to notice how beautiful she was, they had to be impressed at my natural mothering skills.  I obsessed over childhood development charts, tense with fear that my mothering was lacking—that I hadn’t stimulated her enough,  or maybe had just passed on the wrong kind of genes.  I cringe when I remember how I pushed her—a little baby!—to achieve milestones she wasn’t ready for.

I lived in terror for her physical safety (I once brought her to Urgent Care, where the doctor somewhat irritably diagnosed a case of moderate sniffles) fearing every imaginable disease and injury.  In my sleep-deprived state, I would have sudden insane hallucinations that her head had fallen off, her knees had suddenly broken themselves in the night, and so on.

My husband didn’t know how to help me.  I didn’t know how to ask for help.  My husband had become a father, and I adored him for it.  My husband got to leave the house every day, and sleep every night.  He got to go to the bathroom alone.  I hated him for it.

When I had only one child, I told myself over and over that motherhood was fulfilling and sanctifying and was filling my heart to the brim with peace and satisfaction.  And so I felt horribly guilty for being so bored, so resentful, so exhausted.  This is a joyful time, dammit!  I should enjoy being suddenly transformed into the Doyenne of Anything that Smells Bad.

I loved my baby, I loved pushing her on the swing, watching squirrels at the park together, introducing her to apple sauce, and watching her lips move in joyful dreams of milk.  But it was hard, hard, hard.  All this work:  is this who I am now?  I remember!

So now?  Yes, the practical parts are a thousand times easier:  I’m a virtuoso.  I worry, but then I move along.  Nobody pushes me around, and I have helpers galore.  Someone fetches clean diapers and gets rid of the dirty ones.  When the baby wakes up in the middle of the night for the ten thousandth time, I sigh and roll my eyes, maybe even cry a little bit for sheer tiredness—but I know it will pass, it will pass. 

It’s becoming easier, and it will be easier still.  They are passing me by.

I’m broken in.  There’s no collision of worlds.  We’re so darn busy that it’s a sheer delight to take some time to wash some small child’s small limbs in a quiet bath, or to read The Story of Ferdinand one more time.  Taking care of them is easy.  It’s tiring, it’s frustrating, but when I stop and take a breath, I see that it’s almost like a charade of work.  All these things, the dishes, the diapers, the spills—they must be taken care of, but they don’t matter. They aren’t who I am.

To become a mother, I had to learn how to care about someone more than I did about myself, and that was terrible.  But who I am now is something more terrible:  the protector who can’t always protect; the one with arms that are designed to hold, always having to let go.

Dear mother of only one child, don’t blame yourself for thinking that your life is hard.  You’re suffering now because you’re turning into a new woman, a woman who is never allowed to be alone.  For what?  Only so that you can become strong enough to be a woman who will be left.

When I had only one child, she was so heavy.  Now I can see that children are as light as air.  They float past you, nudging against you like balloons as they ascend.

Dear mother, don’t worry about enjoying your life.  Your life is hard; your life will be hard.  That doesn’t mean you’re doing something wrong—it means you’re doing it right.

Source: NC Register