{my sister snapped these one day after i had finished feeding rowan. obviously, i didn't know we would be having
a little photo-shoot, or i would have changed. but i love these pictures- cause that was the type of outfit i lived
in for those first weeks, the chair i lived in while i fed her, and the times i cherish the most..
bonding with my sweet newborn baby. just me & her.}
i saw this article yesterday, and it made me cry. and explains my life so perfectly. and i'm just gonna put it out there, this is one of those lets be honest posts. please dont be offended if this doesn't apply to you, its just something i saw and applies perfectly to me- so i wanted to write some of my thoughts down.
click here for the full article.
"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." (um, hello! did she write this paragraph about me and rowan?)
i first want to say that i am not complaining about being a mom- that is the last thing i would ever want to do. (i just have a hunch that someone will take it that way..) and i dont sit around thinking my life is hard. i really dont. because rowan is not a hard baby- she's actually "one of the easy ones" as people tell me. but adjusting to motherhood has been harder for me than i want to admit. i really didn't blog about the first couple weeks after having rowan, cause to be honest, i dont want to remember them. i cried all day long. and yes, some of it was being overcome with joy and gratitude. but alot of it was just being overcome. overcome with pain, with the responsibility of this perfect little life, with being severely sleep-deprived (which totally makes everything worse!), and everything else that involves being a new mom. i felt like my mom and sisters prepared me pretty well for the pain, but what i wasn't prepared for was the emotional part of the whole adjustment.
i was a student, and an employee for 6 years after moving out of my parents house. i did the same thing for 6 years. and all of a sudden, i dropped all the roles i've ever had, to take on the most important role i will ever have in my whole life, to be a mom. and although its been the most rewarding 10 months i've ever had, its also been the hardest. people have said to me "i cant believe i ever thought having one child was hard..." or "JUST WAIT til you have more than one.." yadda yadda. i dont doubt that having more than one child is hard. my mom had 8 kids, and i'm wondering how the heck she did it?!? however, i have truly gained a testimony over the last 2 years of our Heavenly Father's love for each of us. that just because someone might be going through something hard, doesn't mean that your struggles mean less to Him than theirs. and right now, my struggle is to find out who i am in this new role of my life of being home at 11:00 am on a monday morning. and to not beat myself over the head thinking i must be doing something wrong because rowan isn't crawling yet or should she be saying words? or the 100 other worry's that go through my head all day.
so yes, i loved this article. i absolutely love my role as a mom, especially rowan's mom. but i loved hearing that its okay that being a new mom is an adjustment. and realizing that every new phase you face in your life will be hard, because its new to you.
-alright, i'm off my soapbox. over and out. ;)
