When I was pregnant with my first child at the ripe ole age of 20, it was then that I knew that I wanted to be a stay-at-home mom. Maybe it was even before then. Maybe it was when I was 6 and playing house and caring for my lovies. Funny how “mothering” is something that seems to be deeply embedded in us. I’m not sure if it’s genetic or if it’s learned or maybe like most traits and a combination of the two. People speak of that momentous occasion when baby is delivered and this deep love is found, rainbows and sunshine appear, showtunes erupt and all the world is right. I’m not so sure I felt all of that in that moment. I remember delivering my 9 pound, 4.5 ounce baby and being so sore afterwards and wanting to kill all of womankind because nobody…not one.single.woman ever bothered to tell me that carrying that load and then pushing it from your loins would cause your bones to actually shift and never be the same. Nobody told me that I wouldn’t be able to walk from my bed to the toilet without feeling like I had been riding a horse across the wild west for a month. Why all the secrets, ladies??? I could have been preparing myself for that. Doing some sort of conditioning for the blessed event.
I was exhausted after giving birth. Completely drained. Yes, I had this beautiful baby boy with a cone
head (thank.you.vacuum.sucker.outer.thingy), golden-jaundiced skin & a
wailing cry and OH..DEAR.GAWD. LOOK WHAT IT DID TO MY BODY! I was stretched, swollen, and pretty much
looked like roadkill. This is soooo not
that pretty picture I saw of Demi Moore in the magazine not so long before. Liar, liar, pants on fire. And oh sweet Jebus, my boobs. I was just about positive they were going to
explode and truthfully, after the first couple of days of breastfeeding, I was
praying that they would. And then just
fall off.
Where was I? Oh yes…the
joys of being a mother. Ahem.
It’s not all sunshine and rainbows. It’s not all Fit Pregnancy and Parenting
magazine cover material. Sometimes it’s
so brutally real and honest that it hurts.
Physically, mentally, & emotionally.
I finally made it out of that hospital cell with my
half-grown baby boy and then it got real.
I had to figure out how to snap that carseat carrier in the car without
dumping him upside down in the floorboard on his head. I rode in the backseat with him all the way
home, his sweet little head falling over as he slumbered. My swollen, fat head watching him. I was in love. While I was reeling from the agony of
delivering a baby, I was falling in love with those chubby cheeks and those big
blue eyes.
Days lasted forever, nights were way too short…well at least
the part of the night where I was actually asleep. He spit up like the exorcist and I was his
human burp cloth. I smelled of baby poop
and vomit. How my husband could even
stand the sight and smell of me causes me to question his sanity. Baby and I did everything together. I held him on my lap in the porch swing, I
strolled him through the neighborhood, I stamped his little feet in fingerpaint
and made sweet little crafts with him.
We made cookies and sang and danced and played. I was just a mom.
Just a mom. Two more
children would come along and I was “just a mom” to them too…just falling in
love with each of them, teaching them their ABC’s and nursery rhymes, bedtime
prayers and how to shoot a jump shot. I
was just teaching them to be kind to others and treat people right and to love
music and art and be passionate about life.
Just a mom.
That’s what I would embarrassingly say when somebody asked
me what I did.
“I’m just a mom.”
Now that my kids are getting a little older and I’ve
ventured out and started to do a little more than “just a mom,” I have really
begun to realize THE ENORMITY of being "just a mom."
I now realize that I should’ve stood tall with my puked-on shoulders held
high and looked them square in the eye and said with complete and total
confidence…”Amanda Renee Stover Griffith, human burp cloth, killer of monsters under the bed, tickle monster captain, cookie-baking chef, birthday party planning,
hazardous waste managing, lost things finder, broken things fixer,
boo-boo kissing, song-singing, kitchen dancing, craft-making, carpooling, sideline cheering, always there,
MOM.”
So let me be a lesson to you if you are finding yourself “just
being a mom.”
There is no more important
job to be found.
Rock it out,
superwomen.
~arg
