It will have been thirteen years ago this coming April, on a lovely spring day, when my husband and I brought home our beautiful baby girl. Forty weeks of pregnancy, MAJOR stretch marks, preeclampsia, and thirty-seven plus hours of labor and she was finally here! I remember the tears that had so effortlessly streamed down my face the second she was born. I had never just loved someone so much whom I had just met. It was truly an unfathomable, emotionally-dense experience.
Sadie loved the nightlife... like so many other babies. She was seriously tongue-tied and couldn’t nurse at all. Every feeding was a nightmare of her screaming and me crying. They had sent me home with a baby who couldn’t nurse, and I didn’t even know how to change a diaper. I remember being flabbergasted that they had trusted me to take her home... without adult supervision. I remember one night sitting up with her feeling so sleep deprived I felt like I wouldn’t be able to draw another breath. She was crying. I was crying. I felt like a total failure, because of this one, scary realization. I didn’t like being a mom. I didn’t like my baby. I loved her more than my own life, but I didn’t like her. Rather, I liked myself too much. I liked me, my body, my hobbies, my job, my routine, my peace-and-quiet, my solitude, and my “life”. She had taken all of those things and turned them upside down. The realization hit me hard: that I would never have another day, another hour, another minute when someone else’s well-being was not in the forefront of my mind and overtaking my sense of responsibility. Mom-guilt was threatening to drown me, and it was certainly stealing any joy I had in the experience of motherhood.
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| Sadie at 9 months |
I had no other friends who were mothers. I had just turned 23, and the only advice I received was from a very few seasoned moms. Most of what I heard was from elderly women who looked fondly at my baby and told me how blessed I was... to “cherish those years, because they pass so quickly”. GOOD, I thought. Then maybe she’ll be able to talk and tell me what’s wrong with her! Then the next moment all I could wonder is what was wrong with me? What kind of awful mother was I that I couldn’t wait until other people offered to hold her... feed her... soothe her? The conflicting emotions made me feel like a crazed lunatic of a mother. I didn’t realize until later that I was experiencing what many would call “postpartum depression”. Part of my problem was likely hormonal. Most of my problem was selfishness.
I grew up a quiet child who mostly liked playing by myself. I could play with other children for awhile, but then I liked to withdraw to my own make believe worlds. I liked to read. I liked school. I liked adults. I was not in the least socially awkward. I had a lot of friends that I liked and who liked me, but I didn’t like younger children, and I didn’t like being expected to entertain younger children. Babysitting was something I did for money and out of obligation, but it was not something I ever enjoyed or at which I felt easy. I maintained well into my high school years that I would be a happy spinster who (despite the obvious impracticalities) would have a high-rise city apartment, lots of dogs, and a high-paying job. I didn’t ever imagine wanting children. However...things rarely turn out the way we anticipate.
Claire was born in August two years after Sadie. An experienced mother had wisely told me whilst I was pregnant with Claire that, since Sadie had insisted on being walked around the hallways all.night.long, that I should try rocking in a rocking chair while I was pregnant with Claire... hoping that it would cause Claire to enjoy the rocking motion and make it easier to transition to being rocked when she was born. It worked... too well. Claire was an easier baby... she was in a good mood almost all of the time - under one condition: that she was being rocked. Whether it was her swing or our rocking chair, she had to be rocking to be happy. I felt so terribly guilty that first night putting her in the baby swing so that I could stop rocking her and try to get a couple hours of sleep in an acutal bed. The home visit nurse came over a few days later and scolded me for putting her in the swing at her young age, but I just tearfully said, “I don’t know what else to do. If she stops moving, she cries.” It reminded me of a Twilight Zone episode I had watched years previous in which the lead character had contracted some type of illness in which he had to be in motion at a certain speed at all times or his head would explode. It didn’t end well for Twilight Zone guy. Only I felt like it was my head that would explode if I didn’t keep her in constant motion. She slept in her electric swing every night - for a year. Let’s just say I wasn’t winning any “mother of the year” awards that year. (On a somewhat amusing side note, Claire fell asleep every time I put her in a swing at the park until she was well past 4 years old.)
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| Claire at 2 minutes old |
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| Claire's first Christmas |
Like it or not, by Claire’s arrival, I had at least become a little more confident that I might know some answers to some basic baby issues. I didn’t feel quite as inadequate to the task as I had with Sadie. I was in the midst of serious postpartum depression once again though when my first husband decided he’d had enough of our admittedly-difficult marriage. That threw me into what I can only describe as more extreme selfishness than ever... as I could only think about how I was feeling. I could only consider my daughter’s pain in relation to my own and how it affected me. I spent several of the next few years making more poor choices than good ones. I think people often think that self-loathing has one cure: SELF ESTEEM. Feel bad about yourself? You need self-esteem. Lonely and isolated? You need self-esteem. Suicidal? You need self-esteem. I submit to you that my self-loathing was just the flip side of the SELF coin that I was holding onto so tightly. Self loathing is something one only experiences when he or she values self too much. When we think constantly about what people are thinking/saying about us... When we consider ourselves in our almost every thought - even to self-deprecate... When we are feeling down and depressed and like nobody likes us or needs us, we are merely wondering why the rest of the world doesn’t recognize and acknowledge how very valuable we know we are.
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| Claire, me, and Sadie during singleness |
Fast forward, and by God’s grace, I met and married a man who loved his own son with the most selfless love I had ever witnessed from a dad to his child. Sadie was now kindergarten age, and my husband’s son was 9. We put them in a local private school for a year, and I realized that they were gone... a lot. Claire was home with me, and I was pregnant again, and I really liked my days - starting to feel like they were a little more my own. I liked the solitude I got during Claire’s nap time. I liked getting a couple of hours in a quiet house to use the restroom without interruption. I liked it - maybe too much. A year in school had Sadie loving her teacher. I remember going to our first parent-teacher conference, and feeling this strange, “How does she know more about my own child than I do?” feeling. There it was again - that “mom guilt”.
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| Mark and our kids one month after our wedding |
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| Our Beloved Austin |
Mom guilt happened to me every single time an older woman would tell me how lucky or blessed I was to have such a sweet family - only I didn’t feel so lucky many days. I felt overwhelmed and inadequate, which had become a way of life for me.
I’m not sure when the idea of homeschooling came up between my husband and me, but it did. I felt God was leading me to it, and I dreaded it. I think that is often the way I know most certainly that an idea is not from my flesh. If I begin to consider and contemplate a course of action that is totally outside my comfort zone and about which I feel the most dreadful sickness in the pit of my stomach, I know it didn’t originate with me. Remember that self-coin I’m holding onto so tightly?
It became clear to me that unless I forced myself to spend time with my children, one-on-one, I wouldn’t choose to do it. As I said before, I loved my children and, by God’s grace, was most often able to act in their best interest. However, if love is a choice to act in another’s best interest I knew I would have to force myself to make a choice to spend time and energy with my children on purpose - a choice that I couldn’t cut out on when I felt too tired or too overwhelmed or too selfish. So we dove head-long into the intimidating world of homeschooling.
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| On our first anniversary - Levi's birthday |
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| My all-time favorite of Mark and Levi |
Two more children and six years of homeschooling later, and the result has been one I never expected - I have learned to not just love my children but to like my children. Much like every other choice a human might make to create a better life - choices like working out, going to church, eating healthier, or volunteering more time to worthy causes, the choice to be an involved parent was not easy. It was not fun. It was hard work that has paid off in dividends that will have immeasurable value to me forever. Often I have been approached by a person at a store who comments on the 5-6 children crowded around my grocery cart or trailing behind me. For years people would say to me things like, “Wow! You have your hands full with all of those kids.” I remember once uttering - by faith alone - a phrase that God has brought to my mind and mouth at that most difficult of times, “Maybe my hands are full now, but my Thanksgiving table will never be empty.”
Labor doesn’t end at 37 hours or 26 hours or 3 hours... it goes on for a lifetime. By God’s grace, I have learned to choose to love my children with my actions, my time, my efforts, and my whole being, and I have come to like them more than anyone else on the planet. These days, when I say I’m heading to the grocery store, although most of my children are old enough to stay home if they want, they offer to come, and I welcome the company and the help. They carry bags and boxes. They load and empty the van. They are a joy and a help. They have blessed me beyond my wildest expectations. We laugh. We play. We talk. We enjoy one another, and I am lost when they aren’t with me. Much like people who exercise feel sluggish when they don’t get their exercise in, I feel lonely when I haven’t connected with my kids.
Most people would not have to force themselves to homeschool in order to achieve a goal of spending more time with and learning to like their children, but it was what I needed to do, and I’m so glad we made that choice. Anyone can choose engagement or disengagement with their children on a daily basis, but I had to force myself to, in a way, “buy the membership”. If you buy the membership to a gym, you are obligated to go. You can’t skip out on it easily. Through everyday interactions, I’m met with dozens more reasons to like each one of my children - to spend that self coin I have held so tightly on someone(s) better than me.
Psalms 127:3-5 says, “Behold, children are a heritage from the LORD, the fruit of the womb a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one’s youth. Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them! He shall not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies in the gate.”
Arrows they are, and I need God’s grace every day to help me like and love my children and, by directing them (as I would an arrow), they are not only my greatest earthly asset but my most treasured companions. Liking my children did not come naturally to this failing mom, but I am so thankful that God is more than sufficient to love my children through me, and that He lets me reap the benefits.
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| Violet - the last biological addition to our family |
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| Our complete family |
