Life is radically different from 3 years ago.
If you would’ve told me then that by this time, I will have experienced pregnancy, completely natural labor and delivery – TWICE, started, lived through and mostly finished another whole house renovation with Hubby (while raising a baby), lost and helped find a new pastor for our church, I either would’ve laughed in your face or cried.
And even though it’s only been three years, it feels like a lifetime. I believe that is due to the fact that there is no single way in the world for life to remain even close to the same after a baby.
And that’s ok.
You’re going to experience things you never knew existed. Watching your mama friends with their little ones is only a tiny glimpse of the incredible extremes of emotion you’re going to feel with your own. There’s something about making a baby that changes the world. Like literally, the WORLD.
I want to give you a couple examples of what your new life is going to look like, Future Mama.
Exercise – It’s not going to be you with your ear buds, fancy workout gear, pink barbells and your cute figure in a snazzy, $50/mo gym anymore. It’s going to be you in your nursing tank (that’s what you live in these days – they’re comfy!), $15 JCP workout capris (that you found during a sale after being MIA from the store for the last two years), before your shower (insert unique mama smell), on the living room carpet that needs to be vacuumed (there are still organic o’s there from your toddler’s snack). Oh, and since it got way too hard to get up at 6 with Hubby to workout before the babies awoke, you also have an almost two year old sprawled all over your back and legs as you do the ‘lamppost pee’, pouncing on your belly (that he helped create) as you do the bridge, and giggling as he speed crawls under you attempting the swan stretch. And it’s going to ignite your heart and cause laughter like you’ve never laughed before as his little face lights up, he lays on his back, puts his other little rubber ball between his knees, and actually squeezes that stinking ball, with his knees. You can’t get this awesomeness in a gym. 😉
Bathroom – This room isn’t quite as relaxing as it might’ve once been. You don’t use it alone anymore. That’s not just a FB meme going around. This one is actual truth. There’s no time to loiter anymore either, cause if you do, someone isn’t going to be happy about it. But one of these days, you’re going to put that almost two year old someplace super safe, totally baby-proof, happy and content and relaxed watching Big Hero 6 on TV, laying in his bouncer with his fuzzy blanket. Heck, you even gave him the pacifier you’re trying to break him of. You’re going to make sure Baby Girl has nursed and been changed right after you waited for her morning explosion and is now happily fast asleep and cozy in her swing. You’re going to put them in God’s hands knowing He loves them even more than you and can protect them probably as well.
And then you’re going to go in to the bathroom and you’re going to do it. You’re going to CLOSE THE DOOR. No cracking it open, no peering out every two seconds, no straining to hear anything. It’s CLOSED. And you’re going to let your hair down and take a deep breath and try to get your shoulders to relax and look in the mirror and maybe even pluck a couple eyebrows. Then you’re going to turn the shower on hot, step in and savor that water hitting your skin, washing off all the spit up and relaxing your muscles a little more. (Remember they’ve been tense for 300 years, it’ll take a little while to loosen up.) 😉
Then, before you even get the soap through all of your hair, you’re going to look down and see said almost-two-year-old, in his sleeper, holding his dump truck, standing in the shower with you. You realize that, even though you haven’t closed this door in the last two years, somehow your little genius has figured out that if he jiggles the handle both ways long enough, the door opens. And because he loves being around you, and nakedness means nothing to him yet, and he’s figured out that the water coming out of the shower head is indeed “wawa”, there’s no reason in the world, to him, why he shouldn’t be standing in there with you.
And instead of getting annoyed because his only clean sleeper is wet now or crying for your lost moments of quiet and alone-ness, you’re going to laugh and laugh and laugh some more when your initial laughter causes this amazing, infectious giggle to come out of this little human you helped create. Then you’re going to usher him out, wrap him in his towel that’s still hanging on the linen cabinet door and sit him on the rug while you rush through the rest of your shower so you can get back to mothering.
Future mama, this is the life. It’s taken me a little while to see and appreciate it, and I still have hard days longing for certain things (like sleep), but this is truly the life. Savor these days. Savor these mishaps. Try to live in the moment of them. I’m here trying, too.
Smile at these thoughts. Don’t dread them. You’re going to have days you feel like a failure, and that’s ok. Like yesterday for me – my eyes hadn’t been open for the day even 5 minutes when I found Baby Boy splashing in the toilet water then licking the water off his hand. *Insert emergency shower*. Then after brushing his teeth last night, I let him ‘brush’ while I did mine. Turning my back for literally 1.25 seconds to spit in the sink, Baby Boy snuck the lid up and started brushing his teeth with toilet water. Every mama germ-sensor in my body was going haywire. No, I didn’t laugh, but I should have. We mamas need to have a sense of humor. If you don’t laugh, you’ll cry, right? 😉
Rock on, Mama. Rock on. 🙂
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