The year 2022 was a life-changing one for me to say that least. After 5 long years of trying to have a baby, I finally became a mother to a beautiful (Of course I’d say that as he looks just like me) baby boy in November. There’s just something about becoming a mother after so many years of infertility struggles that makes it that much more special and meaningful. Each time I look at and hold my son , I just can’t believe he’s mine. I keep thinking to myself that maybe he’s someone else’s; that maybe this whole year and the time I spent being pregnant and then giving birth was all just a dream.
I’m extremely happy. Becoming a mother was something I’d always wanted. I never wanted to get married, and neither did my husband, Something happened in our relationship that had him change his mind about the idea of marriage and what it meant. I was still hesitant to get married, though, for my own reasons. I obviously believed in love and long lasting relationships, but I didn’t think marriage was for me. Why fix something that’s not broken?
Having kids was never anything I’d ever toss away, not by choice anyway. That was something I communicated with my husband from the very beginning. It wouldn’t have made him a bad person if he didn’t want to have kids, but it wouldn’t have been the right person for me to end up with. It’s never fair to force someone to have children with you, or do anything for you that they don’t want to do themselves, just to be with you, and vice versa.
Me getting pregnant and having my rainbow baby would’ve been a happy ending if this ‘storyline’ were a movie. But it’s not a storyline and it’s not a movie. It’s life. The fact of the matter is, me having my baby was just the beginning. There was so much happening after the baby was born that it all seems to be a blur now more than a month later. Thank goodness I have previous blog posts and my Instagram page to remind me of all the good moments that I experienced and got share with my newborn. The good and precocious moments of becoming a new mother came with the more difficult day to day life of taking care of my newborn as a disabled woman.
I had to learn how to take care of my baby and do the regular things that, for me, are physically harder and draining than for the average person; that a regular person would take for granted and wouldn’t realize how easy and naturally it came to them. I had to learn how to feed, , clothe, bathe and change my baby’s diapers just like any other mother would. There was one difference, though, which is that I had to learn to do all that in a way that would be comfortable for me with the fact that I have cerebral palsy that causes physical difficulties; and I had to learn how to do all that in ways that wouldn’t hurt my baby in any way.
With a lot of time, effort, determination, and an enormous amount of help, I got through my difficulties and insecurities of having to do the daily typical tasks that are necessary with a newborn. My husband is now back to work full time, and I stay with my son alone without any trouble. The times I’d go to my parents’ or have relatives over at my place would be when I’m bored and need someone to talk to that’s not a newborn.
I’m very proud of myself. I managed to do what most people would say is impossible. I obviously do everything differently than the ‘regular’ ways of doing things, but the jobs get done nonetheless. Everything takes me longer than usual, but everything gets done nonetheless. I’m also very fortunate that I have a child who’s so patient with me. No matter how long it takes me to feed him, change his diaper, clothe him, and repeat, he just stays calm and smiles at me from ear to ear. At times, I feel impatient with my own self, but then I look at my son, and I tell myself that I’m doing a good job no matter how I do it or how long it takes. At the end of the day, the result is the same. The most important thing is that my son is loved, happy and healthy, and I give him exactly what he needs. I compare taking care of my son as a math equation – how you get the answer to the question doesn’t matter as long as you get the right answer.
Motherhood isn’t an easy job. In fact, I read somewhere that motherhood is equivalent to having 2.5 jobs, and that’s not even counting the job a woman already has if she has a 9-5 job or has her own business. Long before I even thought of having my own children, I was that ignorant person who thought there was really nothing hard about being a mother. You change diapers. You feed the baby. You change the baby’s clothes. You bathe the baby. You put the baby down to sleep. And then you repeat. How hard could it possibly be?
I’ve only been a mother for over a month, and I realize that my past thought process of motherhood was so immensely immature and ignorant. Motherhood is anything but easy no matter how much help comes your way on a daily basis. That’s why, as a mother, it’s important to constantly look out for your mental health. I recently watched Kim Kardashian talk abut her life as mother of four on a podcast episode of ‘IRL’. She actually talked about a lot of things, but there was one thing that she said about motherhood that stood out for me. She said that being a good mother wasn’t the most important thing to her. Instead, it was HER that was the most important thing to her, and part of that had to do with the energy she’d bring into her home.
It was very interesting for me to hear because now that I’m a mother myself, I understand her sentiment more than ever. Now that I got my sh*t together when it comes to taking care of my son on a physical level as I stated above, I make sure I check in with myself and my mental health consistently on a daily basis. As a mother, my goal is to be the best parent that I can be and him the best environment that I can to make sure the one thing he feels is happiness when he’s in his own home. In order to do that, my husband and I, who are the closest people to him, have to make sure that we bring the most positive energy we possibly can into our home.
Bringing a positive energy into my home means a lot of things to me personally. If someone or something in my life doesn’t bring me happiness, it’s out of my life for good. It can be my friends, my family, my work, my clients, etc. It makes no difference to me. It’s not just about me anymore. I have ant’s just another person in my home that is dependent on me; that looks up to me; that will see right through me; and whose future relies on me. There’s no way that I will ever allow anything or anyone in my life f*ck with my son or his health, happiness, and well-being.
I treat the essence of bring a positive energy to my home just as the same as taking care of my chronic and mental health. If we were to really look at it and analyze it further, positive energy IS health. If I surround myself in a positive environment that makes me happy and content, I’m calm, collected, happy and seizure free. Therefore, I’m bringing in a positive energy into my home and my son sees that. Children aren’t stupid. I actually think they’re the smartest creatures in the world. They analyze literally anything and everything around them. Therefore, they, from a young age, need to see that their parents are happy. And they need to see that whenever there’s a problem, their parents don’t just sit and mop about it. They do everything in their powers to solve them.
That’s all I want for my own child to see.
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