“Love is the only gift we receive abundantly. Let it overflow.”
I spent most of last night tossing and turning because lets face it…I feel like a beached whale. My body does not feel like my own. A little more than half way through the third trimester and my baby is running out of room. She decides my lungs, bladder, kidneys, ribs, and hips are perfect places to jab, squeeze, nudge, or bump at 2:37 am. I don’t mind being woken up by my baby for two main reasons: 1. It’s my body’s way of preparing me for when she is actually born and will need my undivided attention for a while. 2. It means she’s alive.
7 am rolls around and my other precious girl is awake and ready for the day. “Moorning” I hear over the monitor. Time to be a mama. My mom once told me that I am her air. She needs everything from me. Even though she is becoming more independent and testing her boundaries at 18 months old, she still looks to me for every one of her needs to be met. She trusts me.
As I type this she is asking for more ceer – translation Cereal. As I type this she is dumping said bowl of cereal on the carpet floor…and that’s why she doesn’t get cereal and milk for breakfast. But honestly, how could you be upset with that face.
Before you become a parent you have certain expectations of what its going to be like. Well it is all of those things and none of those things at the same time. You can read every parenting book you’d like leading up to the birth of your baby, but nothing will prepare you for a screaming newborn at 2 am and you have no idea how to remedy the situation…but you learn. Nothing prepares you or makes you learn faster or makes you a better parent than trial by fire. You decide what works best for your family in that moment and you stick with it. If it stops working, you try something new and so on and so forth.
To be a mom takes a completely unselfish act of abundant love. You give your body to grow this perfect little human and you realize that stretch marks or a couple extra pounds don’t really matter that much because you grew a human being. Let that sink in just a little.
You. A woman. Grew another human being inside of your body. Your body protected your baby. Your body sustained your baby’s life. You are so crafty, by nature, you make people.
You give up sleep even before the baby gets here because you cannot get comfortable in your own bed. You have a moat of pillows around you and God forbid one of them is out of place your entire night of sleep is shot. Or you’re woken up by your bladder screaming at you and you have no idea if you’re going to make it to the bathroom in time because your bladder has never felt this full.
You give up your favorite meals, foods, drinks, desserts and snacks when you’re pregnant because something that used to be worth every bite is no longer worth the indigestion or heart burn that comes along with it. It’s better to eat food that is easier to digest than it is to only remedy stomach aches, heartburn or indigestion with TUMS.
You give up buying the things you want because let’s face it…these little boogers are expensive and money doesn’t grow on trees. And even if it did, your baby would probably grow faster than the money tree.
When you become a mom though, you gain so much more than you lose. You’re probably thinking “Right..” You just said I’ll have to give up my body, my sleep, my money and my favorite foods if I want to have a baby…and you’re right I did say that. But I also said that motherhood was an act of selfless abundant love.
It’s not about you anymore. It’s about this perfect little person that you, your husband, and God created.
“When we engage in the act of creation, the natural result is human life.”
You gain smiles that melt your heart. You gain unconditional love because they know nothing else in life. You gain a sense of innocence about the world and yet you want to protect them from the world as well.
You realize that you don’t care that it’s not about you anymore because there is someone or a few someones who matter and mean more to you than your body, or your sleep, or your favorite food.
You realize that waking up early is better than sleeping in if it means you get to hear moorning right when you walk into her bedroom. You realize that a few stretchmarks are nothing compared to this beautiful child.
You realize that even though you may not be rich by the worlds standards, you don’t care because the world is not rich by your standards.
love faithfully and abundantly 