Melissa's Place

Antithesis Mom

My sister has a friend named Kate. Kate is fantastic. I know Kate personally but also through my sister's accounts of their friendship. Kate is an avid quilter and crafter and dumpster-diver and canner of foods and I am convinced that if I lived in Ottawa, Kate and I would be bff.

When Kate became pregnant, I thought of my transition to motherhood. I thought of how I loved to do all those crafty things and to exercise my creativity in my spare time and how I felt, to a degree, that my freedom to hobby had been torn from me. In many ways, with the birth of my children, I've mourned my independence. And even though I love them and now I couldn't imagine life without them, it is limiting having a child. In the first few months, my children seem to cry a lot. I carry them a lot. I wake many times in the night and spend a lot of time bouncing them, swaddling them, shushing them and soothing them. My back often aches and sometimes I think that motherhood is not for the faint of heart. And I am not afraid to tell any mother-to-be that life with a newborn is not my favourite part.

Kate, on the other hand, is the antithesis of me. It would seem she loves being a mom at every single junction. She loves dressing Kate in cute outfits each morning. (My children wear PJ's around the clock for the first few months until the puking subsides.) I post facebook comments like "Someone save me from the eternal sleeplessness that is motherhood" and Kate posts comments like "I love making baby food". I once said to my sister, "I wonder if anyone can stand sitting and rocking their baby in their arms for hours and hours on end?" and she said, "Kate loves it."

Well, my baby is crying (14 minute nap), thus cutting short this blog. I hope I can put on my Kate-kind-of-mother attitude today and see all the wonderfulness of motherhood.