Growing Into Mommy #NakedMoms

I still remember the anxiety I felt when I first laid eyes on my first child. So many women had gushed over how they immediately fell in love with their children, that the day their child was born their heart grew two sizes bigger. Chica was a somewhat unplanned pregnancy (we'd only been married a few months before we found out I was pregnant), so becoming a parent came with a lot of fear and trepidation.

So when, after several days of labor and two hours of pushing, I was handed my first-born child, I expected everything to fall into place. I birthed a child. I became a mother. Yet…I didn't feel like a mother. And this unabashed love that so many other mothers had talked about seemed absent. I began to worry about my own heart and the future of my parenting abilities.

The first few months were a rough season for me. I struggled with this new life I was living as well as this little life I was caring for. I learned I knew very little about newborns. I cried. A lot. And for the first few weeks, I admittedly struggled with loving my own daughter. I felt terrible for these feelings!  But in time, I learned some very important truths about motherhood.

I learned that love grows. While it may be instantaneous for some, for many others love grows over time. That one day you wake up, and you look upon this baby, your baby, and there it is.

I learned how to comfort my child, to help her sleep, to feed and nourish her. I encountered experiences that shaped me as a mother, as a person. I dealt with blow out diapers on long car trips, feverish babies in the middle of the night and how to balance being a mother and being a wife.

I embraced the meaning of loving a child you created. I relished the way I felt when she smiled at me, her sweet expression while I breastfed, and the joy of having her nap warmly upon my chest. 

I let go of fear: fear of failure, fear of loving, fear of the enormous responsibility of raising a child. 

And in all of these things, I grew.

I grew in my knowledge, in my confidence, in my stature. While I was thrust into motherhood at noon on a hot Thursday in August more than five years ago, I grew into being Mommy over time. In the deep dark quiet, without even knowing it, my heart grew into itself. My love changed, and I changed with it.

Mommy's are made, like the jagged rocks that are tumbled into smooth pebbles from the wind and waves. We grow through our experiences and shaped over time into exactly the women our children need.

On the 14th of every month, I’ll be revealing the truth about motherhood with 12 other writers. Follow the hashtag #NakedMoms to read our stories.  Here all the posts from March: