MOTHERHOOD

I can hardly believe that my second Mothers Day has already been and gone.  My SECOND one!!  It's the oddest feeling.  I looked back on photos of myself as a young teenager recently with my braces and my frizzy hair (thanks for nothing puberty) and my painful insecurities, and I found myself whispering 'You're a mother and a wife now'.  I somehow wasn't really certain that motherhood would be in my future, I just couldn't picture it.  But I felt certain (naively so I now see) that if I was ever to have children, then motherhood would come naturally to me.  Of course I quickly learned that there's quite a difference between being the oldest of five siblings and changing the odd nappy, to being entirely responsible for the well being of a perfectly helpless little person.  And so while I found my pregnancy, and to some extent the birth to be a breeze, motherhood shocked the hell out of me.

From the moment my slippery, sweet little daughter was placed into my arms my heart began to pound at triple the speed.  My anxiety levels went through the roof, although exhausted I couldn't sleep and I stressed about the smallest of details.  I think looking back I was terrified.   Once I was back on my feet I fretted over the house not being clean enough, the garden looking overgrown, dinner not being up to scratch.  All this with a crying baby on my arm that never wanted to be put down.  Of course I was in a constant state of tears.
"Be kind to yourself", my mum kept saying to me gently.
That's easy for her to say, I thought.  She's nothing short of bloody superwoman!
Anyway over a year on and I think I have only just started to relax.  Only just realised that the only thing that matters at this time in my life is that I'm the best mother I can be, and sometimes that means saying to hell with the housework, the cooking, the washing... today I'm going to chase seagulls down at the beach with my little girl, we'll have an omelette for dinner and maybe our clean socks just won't be a matching pair tomorrow.  I feel like for the first time in a year I am taking a breath,  I'm stopping to enjoy and simply observe this amazing person we created.  And do you know what?  The house isn't actually messier than it was before and nobody's complaining that dinners a little overcooked.

Life is funny the way it's always testing and pushing us, but in the end the rewards usually far outweigh the struggles.
xx