My path to motherhood, though not unlike some women, was not exactly what I would call typical. I was never a huge “kid person”. Some people grow up around younger siblings, cousins, and neighbors, so care giving becomes second nature to them. In my case, my sister and I were only 19 months apart. We didn’t really have any little neighbors or cousins running around either. So kids were always kind of foreign to me.
PLAY
Don’t get me wrong, I have always loved babies! I remember begging my Mom for a baby brother when I was around 8 years old! I even had three very lifelike {and anatomically correct} baby dolls that I would cart around with me as a girl. I used to imagine that people actually believed them to be real and thought I was really their mother. I even remember draping a blanket over my shoulder to “feed my baby”! The most amusing part of that was what I was feeding my baby with…a toy baby bottle because I had no clue what was really going on underneath that blanket! #normalizebreastfeeding
Anyway, despite my toy baby dolls, I was not that girl who dreamt of growing up, marrying a prince and having a house full of babies. Anytime I imagined my future I did envision a nice house with some random guy and kids in the background because that’s what you were “supposed” to do. It wasn’t an exciting fantasy for me, though. In fact, the older I grew, the more awkward I found it to communicate and interact with younger kids. Needless to say, kids were in no way on my radar in my twenties. Other than preventing them, of course!
CHANGE
So I thoroughly enjoyed my twenties, made a lot of life choices…some good, some bad. And I began to feel uninspired and ready for something new. I was longing for something that would shake my life up a bit and give me something new & exciting to wake up for. I felt like something was on the horizon, but what it was I did not know.
At this point, I should probably mention that I had been dating someone on and off for about 2.5 years. We were in an “off” period when Christmas 2008 rolled around and he was going to be alone for Christmas. Of course, I didn’t have the heart to allow that so I invited him to spend the holiday with my family & friends. One thing led to another and we flipped back to “on”. Little did I know how flipping that switch would change the course of my life forever. For nine months later the love of my life entered the world. And the love I have known since first laying eyes on him is unlike anything I ever knew existed until that instant. That love grows every second of every day and recently doubled with the birth of his baby brother.
I can now say without hesitation that I was placed on this earth to be a mother. Nothing else fills me with such passion, purpose and joy. I am so blessed to have been given the gift of mothering these two beautiful souls and I am thankful for every moment. Adulting has been interesting over the past seven years, but I do it all for my lovely babies.
Leave a Reply