Ever since I was little I had one main ambition in life: To be a wife and a mother. As a child I loved to play house with my dolls. I remember my mother only letting me keep a few dolls and stuffed animals in bed with me; probably because she worried that I wouldn't have enough room to sleep. I felt so sad for the lonely bears and dolls sitting on the top of my toybox. After she left the room and went downstairs, I can remember sneaking out of bed and getting all of my "babies" and putting them right into bed with me. You could say I was a co-sleeping mama from the get go!
I loved taking care of children when I got older. I took care of my little cousins during summers in high school. I baby sat for children in our apartment complex during the school year. I also worked as a nanny here and there over the years. It was wonderful to care for little children and I have precious memories of the little ones, but at the end of the day, I was not their Mama. It was not my home.
As I reached my twenties, my mid-twenties, and then my early thirties I watched so many women I knew start committed relationships, their families, their lives, their homes. At times it became unbearably painful because here I was struggling to make it past 6 months in a relationship, struggling with major depression disorder and emotional regulation issues, and there they were in their wedding dresses, giving birth, baking birthday cakes.
My pain morphed into jealousy and despair. I ended a friendship with someone I still love and miss to this day because I couldn't handle that she too was leaving me behind to get married. It was not one of my greatest moments as a person. I wanted to meet the man that would love me, only me, and want to marry me. I wanted a baby. When would it be my turn? It was the defining question of my life for all of my twenties and most of my early thirties.
And then it wasn't anymore.
I was single, I was working, I had a fantastic charming little apartment near downtown, I was thin, I had pretty clothes. I had resigned myself to my single childless state. I could nanny in the daytime and have a life of sorts in the evening. I convinced myself that I would never have a child of my own, a committed relationship.
Then in the summer of 2008, I met John. We hit it off instantly. We were officially engaged two months after our first date, just after we moved into together. It was that fast. And then we found out I was six weeks pregnant. It all happened so fast. It was as if I woke up in another life.
We spent the getting to know you stage of a serious relationship getting ready to have a baby. That supposedly blissful time of pregnancy was filled with uncertainity, anxiety, and the stress of a very new relationship under an enormous amount of pressure. Just as I relaxed into the idea of it all...I started having pre-term labor, pre-clampsia, and a premature birth by C section. Trying to get to know my baby was hampered by a serious bout of post partum anxiety and depression. Once that was stabilized, the day to day caring and feeding of the baby demanded all of my energy.
In spite of all my nanny experience I was not prepared in anyway for motherhood. Motherhood is all consuming. It is at once wonderful and absolutely terrifying. It is the most awesome responsibilty of your life.
Imagine you are given something wonderful that you always yearned for. It is a precious gift, a holy gift from God. You have been entrusted with a tiny fragile baby. A baby is who entirely defenseless and entirely dependent on you for all of its needs, for its very survival. Add to that sleeplessness, and it is amazing that any new parent survives the first year.
We waited to marry until after Gabriel turned one. I think it was the best decision for us to wait until we recovered a bit. They say the first year of marriage is the hardest. It is definitely different being married, it is nothing like just living together. So much more is at stake. Marriage/Commitment seems to be the thread that weaves people together into a family.
We both struggle with anxiety, misunderstandings, frustrations. We both walk on eggshells around each other a lot of the time We are both moody and prone to dramatics.( I tend to think in terms of worst case scenerio a lot.) I often do not fight "fairly."
But I think the biggest struggle is this: We were both single for a long time.We both lived alone and led fairly quiet lives. We both got used to handling things on our own, our way. We both never expected to find someone so quickly and start a family right away after that. I think in a lot a ways we are reeling from the sudden and enormous changes that life sent our way.
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