11 Months and Counting…

It took me nearly 9 months of pregnancy before I blogged about that so are you really surprised that it’s taken me almost an entire year to blog about the whole motherhood thing? I’ve decided to dust off the blog this week to finally attempt to put into words the whirlwind that was the last year or so.

Perhaps at some point I’ll hit publish on some more specific posts about Leo’s birth, those first few hazy weeks (ok, months) and other bits that have crept in and out of my mind this past year, but this post is more of a quick checkin, as well as a way to hopefully clear my head and deal with the heart wrenching emotions of dropping my little guy off at daycare the past few weeks. Writing can be cathartic, right?

I’ve been trying to put into words the way it feels to have a child, and also how it’s changed my life so significantly, but also in a million little ways too.  The best way that I’ve been able to sum up my emotions since being called mama is this: It feels like I am walking around with my heart outside my body all the time. I have never felt so deeply every emotion there is to feel until motherhood. Love. Happiness. Fear. Admiration. Hope. Loneliness (100% honesty here). Trepidation (aka more fear). Excitement. The list goes on.  One day it’s just you and then there’s this crazy – not possible to be prepared for – birthing experience and then you return home and your entire world has changed and you are now responsible for another life (one that did NOT come with an instruction manual btw). Maybe this was part of my struggle, because I’m actually obsessed with instruction manuals, just ask my husband. I save them all in a binder and feel the need to refer back to them when operating everything from a dust buster to our coffee maker to confirm I’m “doing it right.” No one can really tell you exactly what to do every minute of the day and how to handle every situation that parenthood throws you into and because of this, I really struggled at first. But what they say is true. The days are long but the years are short. And also, it DOES get easier. And you get better at it. You learn what each little cry and sound means. You change diapers like a pro. You rock them and swaddle them and nurse them. You obsess about their bowel movements, their sleep habits, their milestones. Your heart nearly explodes when they smile for the first time. Then laugh. Then say mama. and dada. And become this tiny perfect little human that you created who also has their own unique personality and learns things on their own and amazes you every single day.  Yeah, its kinda like that.

And then nearly a year passes and you can’t believe how quickly it went by. And then your sitting in a coffee shop trying to do some work when you overhear two adorable parents next to you giving their even more adorable son a pep talk on what to expect for his first day of kindergarten. “They’ll be a lot of laughing and there might be some crying… And mom might be a little sad…”And your heart nearly explodes again because it’s just about the sweetest thing you’ve ever witnessed. And you can’t believe you’ll be doing the same thing in the blink of an eye…