If you are a thirty something like me with kids then you probably fall into that range where your mom is in her late fifties/early sixties. So you can understand why they don’t know how to understand video monitors, or why a swaddle sack is necessary on your registry, or why anyone would want to add a sound machine to a babies room while they sleep. However, all in all, mommying is the same. Feeding, crying, sleeping, teething…it’s all the same. And this makes a mom a valuable resource when you first have a baby. I found my mom to be a judgement free support system and she could understand everything when I had my baby.
Well, almost everything.
I started struggling once Easy E went back to work. The days got longer and when Easy E is away my imagination will play. I started feeling down about who I was. Or really who I wasn’t anymore, and for the first time in pretty much forever, I was struggling with something my mom couldn’t relate to.
We have kids so much later now. There is so much MORE before babies. When Mama G had me she was younger and was a wife for about 20 seconds and then she was a mom. And she’s been a mom ever since. That’s her role. She’s good at it and it’s been a lifelong identity.
Not me. I already had an identity. I was a wife. I put so much work into Easy E and our relationship that it defined so much of who I was. We had goals, and habits, and laughs, and when we went to bars and got drunk we would use napkins and write lists of all the place we wanted to travel. We would travel to them and dream big and none of those dreams included strollers, sippy cups, or breast pumps.
I was a teacher. I had a career. I made a paycheck in a career I worked hard to get a degree in by busting my butt for five years of college. I worked for my students and created a reputation, and a curriculum, and a workplace that I loved. People acknowledged what I did daily. Sometimes they noticed the things I did wrong. Many times they noticed the things I did right. But at least, for better or for worse, someone noticed what I was doing.
And somehow, by becoming a mom, I felt like I was stripped of those titles. Because when you are a new mom it’s the only role that you have time for. As those first few weeks home alone went by and my life was wash, rinse, and repeat I felt more and more like I was a shell of who I used to be. I never thought the hardest thing I’d be doing was nothing. And by nothing I mean that after writing lesson plans, grading 24 essays, emailing parents, and teaching geometry in a 45 minute window, it seems that 6 round of nursing, tummy time, and attempting a nap was literally like training my brain to slow down.
I think it’s harder for us ladies who had so many major roles in our own lives before baby. Mom isn’t our first major role, it’s the second or third one we’ve played. And that’s really hard to walk away from. Especially at the beginning. You are being rewired for those first three months. You are working the hardest you have ever worked with no one there to witness it at times. You are failing totally alone. You are accomplishing alone. And at moments, even with relatives and friends visiting daily for a few hours a day and a husband that totally supports you, you feel completely alone. Where was this strong, successful, confident women? What happened to her?
I didn’t wake up one day reborn as super mom. Just like my sleep I slowly found my way back. I started working out, getting out, having more to contribute to conversations, running, cooking, keeping in touch at my school, writing, and having true date nights with Easy E. It had nothing to do with loving my baby, it had to do with learning to love my new role as a mom.
When Mags was born I found myself saying “I used to be a teacher”. ” I used to be a good runner” “I used to be…”
Now the first thing I say proudly is.
I’m a mom.
but
I’m also a teacher. A friend. A wife. A runner. A director. A daughter.
I didn’t lose those roles. I just had to focus on the most important one I’d ever play first. And it doesn’t happen overnight, and for awhile some things had to go on the back burner. And I’m so grateful that I had those other roles first because so much of the mother I am to Mags is who I worked to become before her. And now because of her, I get to play the greatest role of all.