For as long as I can remember I’ve wanted to be a mom. I’ve always wanted four kids and set out this elaborate plan of how my life would go. I wanted to have my first child around 25 years old and then have a baby every three years after that until my family was complete. But even the best laid plans, right? At the ripe age of 21 years old, while still religiously taking my birth control pill, my husband Joseph and I got this tremendous surprise and we never looked back.
At 21 and 20 years old we were shocked to get the news that I indeed, was pregnant with our first little bundle of joy. I always anticipated pregnancy to be this absolutely magical experience where you immediately get this beautiful glow and have perfect skin, hair, and just look amazing. I really shouldn’t have watched so many movies and believed everyone’s Instagram perfect pregnancies. From even before I got that positive test, I was sick. I distinctly remember being in Atlantic City for my mom’s birthday and barely functioning thinking “I must have the flu or something”. It was not the flu.
I’ll be blatantly honest, my first pregnancy was miserable. Mark did not give me a single break. I couldn’t gain weight because I couldn’t keep anything down. I woke up, went to work, came home, and immediately got into bed for the rest of the night. It was not at all what I was led to believe. I had been tricked, bamboozled. Why did no one tell me about this? To make matters worse I was doing it all by myself because, in true military fashion, my husband was gone my entire pregnancy. He got home right in time for my due date though because like the independent woman I still wanted to be, I broke my toe putting together a rocking chair.
Then when I hit my due date I tried every trick in the book. I did everything that family and friends with experience suggested. I walked countless miles around our apartment complex. I shoveled spicy food and pineapple down my throat every single day in hopes that something would happen. Nothing. He stayed put. Finally, we had scheduled an induction for the night that I reached 41 weeks and 5 days. And again, not at all what I thought my first pregnancy would end with, but at least it was consistently miserable.
My induction process was actually almost exactly what everyone had told me to expect. (Thanks guys for waiting this long into the game to be honest.) I got the meds at 8:30PM the night of August 30th and there was no turning back. I had hoped that I could do the “natural” (medicine free) birth that everyone always talks about. Spoiler: I could not. I tried to push through the pain and to this day Joseph tells me “I thought I was going to lose you”. I was pale and nauseous, having almost constant contractions but not dilating AT ALL. I got a shot in my butt cheek trying to avoid the epidural *cue spooky music*, because already I was worried about getting judged as a mother for “taking the easy way out”. Finally I gave in and got the epidural, and then my parents showed up. Mind you, it’s like, very late at this point. We told my parents “it’s going to be a while you should get some sleep”, but Boston didn’t let them get to a hotel before baby boy decided to try and make his entrance.
I remember the nurse saying “ok we’re just going to do some practice pushes while we wait for the doctor”, and then all of a sudden I was full on in the shit (literally), with my husband holding my leg and a mirror to watch. At 41 weeks and 6 days pregnant, after 11.5 hours of labor and an hour of pushing, at 0940AM our first precious little miracle entered the world at a whopping 7 pounds 15 ounces and 19 inches long. At that exact moment our entire world changed. We were a family.
A measly few hours after he was born all the grandparents were at the hospital and Mark gave us quite the scare. Little man had fluid still in his lungs and while I was looking away he had stopped breathing and turned blue. Within a few hours of becoming a mother, I already felt like a terrible one.
I tried for weeks to breastfeed to no avail. (More on that another time because boy do I have a lot to say.) I just continued to get so overwhelmed and felt like the worst mom in the world. No one ever talked to me about postpartum depression and anxiety, but here I was feeling like I was just completely failing this child. I was not the mom he deserved and I could not connect with him. This tiny little thing I had wanted so bad for so long and I couldn’t connect with him. What kind of horrible human being feels this way? But it’s so very common and all I needed to do was open up and ask Joseph for some help. I just had to loosen my grip, stop being so hard on myself, and ask for help.
My entrance into motherhood was not this picture perfect story that I always envisioned. It was far from the plan I had set out my whole life. I didn’t just become this spectacular superhero of a mother from the first moment like I wanted to be. But I was me, and I gave that little boy all my love, and became the kind of mother that works for me and my kids. I was enough, just like all mothers are enough in their own way. You love those babies and hug them tight, and that’s all they need.
Motherhood is not always perfect. Sometimes it’s really really hard, but I wouldn’t change a single thing about my journey into motherhood. I’m forever grateful that Mark chose me to be his mommy, and he was the best surprise I could have asked for.
