Mom Truths (That Might Just Be Regular Truths--Who Knows?!)

Dear New Mom,

I hear you had a rough night last night with your baby--I've been there. You may be wondering when it gets better. You may be worrying that it won't. You may worry, and perhaps rightly so, that you are going to be sleep deprived, overwhelmed, and drowning in someone else's body fluids for the rest of your life.

Even body fluids from super cute babies like
this can be wearing.

You may make the mistake of telling a mom of teenagers your misguided hopes that things will get easier one day--and they will then shoot you down by telling you that you're doing the easy part now, that it only gets harder as you go along. They are dealing with teenagers. To them, toddlers are mere child's play.

Personally, I think these non-teenagers are pretty terrifying.

May I take a few minutes just to tell you a couple truthful encouragements? That mom of teenagers may be right (but she should've just nodded sympathetically and given you a cup of coffee). It doesn't necessarily get easier. Parenting, just like most relationships, will present you with one challenge after another. This is called dealing with people.

But the challenges are different challenges. You are not forever in a season of sleepless nights (says the woman whose twins didn't sleep through the night until they were a year and a half old). Potty training does, indeed, come to an end (says the woman whose twins took close to a full year to stop peeing gleefully all over the house). And the days of leaking breastmilk and having a very cute parasite constantly latched to your chest will one day draw to an end (says the woman with five kids who thought she was done after two).

There are children hanging off all your appendages:
ARE YOU HAVING FUN YET?!

I think you know these things and may just need a reminder because sometimes it's hard to think straight when you are very tired.

Also, when you are tired,
you might decide to sit in the backyard
and let your next door neighbor parent your kids.
This is legit.

Here's something you may not know: it doesn't necessarily get easier, but you will get stronger. It's true. I promise. I remember when I had my first, and I was tired and overwhelmed, and there may or may not have been one night early on when my mom brought Littles to me and I told her I'd just nursed him and I wasn't ready to do it again. She gently refrained from laughing in my face--and I manned up and nursed that poor baby. But last month, I drove two days with four sick kids who had excess fluid coming out both ends and a baby who wanted to stop and nurse every 2.5 hours (and never timed her meals for when we were already pulled over to clean up barf), and while it wasn't fun, I handled it. Because...it didn't necessarily get easier, but I got stronger. And you will too.

This picture goes with a comment in the paragraph below about
Twinkle being a ridiculously happy baby.
Also, she's rocking those eyebrows.

You get stronger because there is such a thing as muscle memory, and it's not just for exercise. This is one of the reasons why breast feeding moms are encouraged to get through the first six weeks if they can. Because at some point, your muscle memory kicks in and your brain tells itself, "Hey, I've done this before, and it stunk, but I got through it, so I'll probably get through it again." This is also the reason adding kid number five hasn't been as hard as some of you might be imagining it would be (that and Twinkle is a ridiculously happy baby). My body is used to nights of interrupted sleep. It remembers how to nurse, how to change a diaper in the dark, how to unfold a stroller with one hand while grasping a wiggling baby and the diaper bag in the other.

Side note: you don't have to have five children to get to this point.

These were the test run children. Now I know what's up.

Every day that you make the choice to get out of bed and Mom like a Boss, your body and brain (and heart!) are filing away information, telling themselves "Oh, so this is what it means to be a mom." And later, when you need it, the muscle memory will kick in, and you will be able to handle without blinking things that would've pushed you over the edge in the early days. You will grow because you are adaptable and strong and resilient. And because God gives us incredible amounts of grace in these days.

Sometimes the biggest measure of
God's grace is a happy 5th child.

The last thing I want to remind you of is something I think I've said before (and flagrantly stole from a friend): this is hard, but you can do it. Say it to yourself as many times a day as you need. Because each time that you acknowledge that it's hard (which is true) while simultaneously rising to the occasion, you are training those muscles up in the way they should go...which will hopefully help you as you're trying to train up your children in the way they should go.

Naturally, you hope they will go the way
of the books. They will.

If it's hard, say so. There's nothing wrong with that. It doesn't mean that you don't love your kid. It also doesn't mean that you can't do it. You are made by God, in his image, and He doesn't make mistakes. This doesn't mean you will get everything right the first time, but that you have the capacity to do incredibly challenging things with His help.

So, new mom, it may not get easier, but you will get stronger. And while this is hard, you can do it. Hang in there.

Yours,
Another Mom in the Trenches