The second trimester of my pregnancy has been a rollercoaster of emotions. I have been filled with lots of hope and worry. Early on, the angst and nerves I felt during this pregnancy were overpowering at times. I knew the real emotion I was experiencing was fear. We all have fear and are afraid of something…
Being pregnant and being a mom to a 3-year-old and an almost-two-year-old, in general, can be emotional and challenging. Add this to the chaos of a global pandemic and you may find yourself in crazy town. I read once that anxiety is one of the most common pregnancy symptoms.
As a mom, I feel like a huge part of my job is to worry. It’s just a big part of motherhood. Some days I long for when I didn’t have to worry so much!
I worry about so many things. Am I being present enough with my family? Am I focused enough on the girls learning? Are they watching too much TV? Am I consuming too many unhealthy foods and coffee during this pregnancy? What will the COVID-19 protocols be when it comes time to give birth? Will I, my family, or my newborn be exposed to the virus while giving birth in the hospital? Will I be exposed to the virus for my routine check-ups? Etc.
Mothers are among the strongest people I know but we are not invincible, we have our limits and it’s ok to acknowledge when you reach yours. I'm always reminding myself: Don’t dwell on the hard days, don’t burden yourself with guilt, instead give yourself a break and acknowledge this is hard sometimes, you give motherhood your all and your feelings of “fed up” are valid. You are NOT a bad mom, you are HUMAN and it’s impossible to live up to the expectation of never falling apart or never falling apart in front of your kids. You feed them, clean them, entertain them, tend to them, calm them, reassure them, teach them... you do EVERYTHING for them. It’s cruel that we put this guilt upon ourselves simply because we had a bad day and during that bad day lost our patience or didn’t parent in the way you had hoped to that day when we still spent the day devoting our all to them. I may not always be the fun mom, I may lose my cool and be totally out of ideas, there is probably SO much more I could do in a day for them but I am a great mom, I really am even if at times I don’t feel it & so are you
After a tragedy like 911 or even a pandemic, our culture becomes filled with fear.
We experience joy and then, suddenly, the joy we feel is accompanied by fear. An example is going into your child’s room and watching them sleep peacefully. You feel joy and happiness and then, all of a sudden, you have a terrible intrusive thought. It is almost as though we are too afraid to allow ourselves to be truly happy because we are afraid that whatever is causing us this happiness could be taken away from us in an instant. So we find ourselves either withdrawing or being somewhere in the middle on the emotional scale. It is a really crippling way to live life and being pregnant during the Covid-19 pandemic definitely doesn’t help a pregnant Moms’ emotional state. As if we didn’t have enough hormones causing us to be extra emotional already!
In general, I don’t feel crippled by worrisome thoughts, but during this pregnancy, I have found myself somewhere in the middle of the emotional scale. It has gotten better as I get farther along. As each week passes I become more confident and allow myself to be more excited. Don’t get me wrong, I’m thrilled to be having a little boy. As soon as we found out we were having a boy we were ecstatic, but there has still been this lingering fear within me. The fear of this pandemic and the future.
When I got to see him on the ultrasound, and the doctor said there is his penis! LOL, I was thrilled and even asked for a picture to take home to my husband. I had to go alone as no one was allowed to come with me during this pandemic. I was wearing my mask and gloves and had hand sanitizer in my bag. I was told that they are keeping the ultrasound appointments “brief” in hopes of getting patients in and out of the office quickly. I know the entire pregnancy and birth experience will be different this time around.
There are a few things that really matter in life. In the end the things we value are not the things you probably spend a lot of time worrying about or wasting time on. The last few months for us have proved just that, our wealth and overall happiness is determined by how we spend our time and who we spend it with.
Through struggle and hardship comes a beautiful side to humanity that helps with being able to move forward with grateful hearts despite what you may have lost.
Spending this time together as a family, even in the most difficult of circumstances has given us time to reflect and be even more appreciative of our life together, our children, our friends, and our family.
I do have faith that life will feel normal again, I'm just unsure of when. I do my best to remember that it is not my job to have all of the answers and I try to make peace with the fact that this is all out of my control. I try my best to take things one day at a time and remember to be gentle with myself along the way. I still remember looking at my first daughter on our first morning together when it was just us in the room, saying “Hi baby girl, I have no idea what I'm doing, but I do know I love you”. I then proceeded to try and put a diaper on her, I lifted her up and it slid right off, I laughed and knew at that moment we had a million things to learn together, in that moment a new life really began for me. I thought by now things would have changed, but the truth is I still don’t know what I’m doing, (2 toddlers and 6 months pregnant later). I don’t know how the decisions I make for my children will impact their future, I don’t know if the lessons I’m trying to teach will eventually mold them into the best kind of people.
When my second daughter was born, whilst I had the fundamentals down, she has needed a totally different style of parenting. If I allow myself to think too much about the way I parent, I can almost guarantee it ends in me doubting almost everything I’ve done so instead I go back to that very first day of being a mother and tell myself exactly what I told my little Hailey, I love them. I do everything with love and even if things end up being the wrong choice, everything I do comes from a place of the deepest love. I always try to remind myself: Don’t overthink your parenting, don’t break it down into what you need to do more, what you need to do less. If you love your children, I can guarantee it’s enough. Enough to make them thrive, enough to make them learn, enough to feel loved, enough to give love and enough to grow into people that you will always be proud of.
“The greatest thing you'll ever learn, is just to love and be loved in return”
XoXo, Leah