My role in "house" as a child was always the mom. Brittany was the baby. Ben was our pet.
I was excellent at being in charge. I told Brittany what to do and she made pretend baby noises and did what I said--always, always, always.
Playing the role of "mother" in reality is nothing like playing house. Your baby does not do what you say. Also, your pets do not talk.
The transition to a mother is surely smooth for some. It has not been for me. If you are one of those people who has never struggled with being a parent, don't tell me about it because I'll probably want to punch you in the face.
Here are a few things that people probably tried to tell me about being a mother, but I surely ignored.
You become a crazy person after giving birth.
I'm already pretty emotional about life. Truly, I'm a handful. But the two weeks after giving birth, I reached a whole new level of crazy and I couldn't even do anything about it other than cry, which I did plenty of.
You have no idea what to do.
There was no motherly instinct for me, except an instinctive love and instinctive protection. When my baby cries, I still think "WHERE THE HELL IS THIS KID'S MOM?" And then I realize I'm her mom. And then I realize I don't know what to do. But the love I feel for her gives me the patience to keep trying and trying and trying in a way that no one else ever will.
You feel guilty about everything, all the time.
No one agrees on how to raise a baby, and everyone tells you what they did to raise their baby that you should probably do. I constantly am conflicted about everything: pacifier, sleep, feeding times, crying, schedule, baby wraps, holding baby, setting baby down, taking baby in public, keeping baby alive. I am doing my best, but, it turns out, I have no idea what to do.
Your ability to be selfish is gone, and you will probably miss it.
It turns out that I am naturally pretty selfish, and I occasionally miss being in control of my life, and doing much other than love and feed and change a baby.
You cannot do it by yourself. It takes a freaking village.
The day after my mom left, Charlotte squirted poop at me. Literally squirted it, all over me, all over herself, all over the floor. Then she rolled around in it, screaming. Naturally, I took my poopy pants off and ran around looking for carpet cleaner and a fresh diaper while she continued to roll around, both of us pantless. Shortly following the poop incident, my bladder decided not to work and I peed myself. Never done that before. As I tried to change my unshowered and nasty self for the third time, she started screaming and didn't stop for 5 hours. We just looked at each other and cried all day.
It was awesome.
Without people helping me, every day would have looked like this.
It is lonely.
I am constantly surrounded by people: friends, family, colleagues, professors. But I have never felt so lonely in my life.
No one will ever love my daughter the way that I love her. I am her food source. I am her mother. I am her caretaker. I am the one who daily keeps her alive. I am the one who will listen to her problems her whole life. I am the one who will take care of things she can't. I am the one who will truly, unconditionally love her more than any human being for every moment of every day for the rest of her life. I am the one who will feel every emotion she feels, deeper even. Other people may love her, but no one will ever feel the same kind of responsibility I do. I can't compartmentalize this. It hangs over everything that I do, and I am the only one. It is a lonely, anxious, amazing place. It has been the greatest blessing of my life. The heaviness of the burden exhausts me.
Sometimes you don't like your kid.
Charlotte is not an easy baby. My nicknames for her include "turd" and "grumpy grumps." Don't be deceived by the cute pictures. They account for the 1% of her life she isn't crying. The other day, I set her down to go to the bathroom. Nothing was wrong, but she started screaming. (She truly is a diva. She's the mini version of me. Sometimes we fight about it.) I literally rolled my eyes and walked away for a second.
WORST MOM. She is going to blame me for everything in counseling some day anyways.
But, you always, always love her so much it hurts.
This is the one that people told me, but I didn't understand until 8 weeks ago. When Charlotte was about 3 weeks old, I started singing songs about Jesus to her. She stared at me with her giant, beautiful, dark eyes and smiled, and smiled, and smiled. I started crying, and it wasn't the hormones this time.
I have never loved anything more in my life. There is nothing in this world I wouldn't do for my daughter. When she cries and something is wrong, I die a little. I feel everything that she feels, happiness and pain.
I have never felt love so deeply. She is everything to me. She is precious beyond what I can describe. She is straight from heaven, and by a miracle, she is mine. I don't know what I did to deserve her.
Despite the struggle of motherhood, the messiness and the exhaustion, the loneliness and the fear, the guilt and the tears and the sleepless night and shower-less days, it is the most wonderful, beautiful, incredible experience of my life.