7 Useful Things No One Tells You About Being A Mom
Having a baby is life changing. The science behind growing a whole person inside your body is phenomenal. I mean a whole new life comes out of you! But let’s skip that part, and jump to motherhood and the things no one tells you about being a mom.
No matter how your baby arrived in your home, you are a mom now and you are probably realizing that there are some things people left out of the joy of motherhood summary.
At your baby shower people likely told you helpful things like “enjoy every moment” and that the time goes so quickly. Others say that motherhood is beautiful. They may even tell you it is challenging.
But motherhood is much deeper than these simple thoughts.
Here are seven things no one tells you about being a mom.
1. You will be worried most of the time
Before being a mom there were times I worried about things that felt huge in that moment. Meeting deadlines with school. Running late. Messing up something at work. Worry was occasional and situational. Truthfully, worry was rare.
Once I became a mom, I learned there is a whole world of things to be worried about that never before occurred to me.
The first few days home from the hospital you go through all the stages of worry. (I think within hours I was wondering how they even let us leave the hospital with no clue what we were doing!) At the beginning there was a great deal of worrying about the basics. Over the years, the worrying shifts as you go through different phases.
While grandparents remind us that the worry will never fully go away, it does change over time.
2. You’ll be cherishing even a few minutes of leisure time
Being a mom means you have so much on your plate. Whether you are a rockstar working outside the home or a domestic diva, motherhood will find you juggling all the things and having limited time to yourself.
Finding a few moments to yourself in the day brings those same feelings of joy that you had when you would find the toy in the box of cereal as a kid.
Even if it is just fifteen minutes – leisure time to do whatever you want to do will feel golden.
3. You’ll have longer bathroom times
No, I don’t mean that you will be constipated all the time. I simply mean that after becoming a mom you’ll start to consider your bathroom time as your breaks. Your bathroom breaks or even your shower time might be the only time you’ll get for yourself because when you step out, you have a child to take care of.
And let’s be super honest…most of us still have kids at our feet when we go to the bathroom for at least a while.
But eventually, your bathroom breaks will become your sweet escape.
4. Motherhood will mark a huge change in your relationship with your partner
Parenting is life-changing for both you and your partner. As a consequence, you might have more feelings (and arguments) over trivial issues like – who is going to get the night duties or whose turn it is to do the dishes, and things like that.
Spending your day with a little one, you may find that at times you will be touched out.
Time together for just the two of you is also harder to come by because now it means finding someone to watch your little one. This can be even more challenging as a military family since you likely do not live near grandparents or siblings, so you have to find and hire a babysitter at each new duty station.
The good news is that if you both lean in toward each other and choose to be understanding of one another’s needs, you and your partner can develop a deeper and stronger bond.
5. You’ll be more compassionate
Motherhood gives rise to a soft part of you. You might have been soft-hearted before, but now as a mother, you’ll be even more. You’ll be more compassionate, more understanding, and kinder towards people.
(On the flip side you may also be surprised how quickly that mama bear side of you emerges when you sense danger around your child!)
6. You’ll also have to choose joy
Motherhood can only consume you if you let it. That is to say, the world will ask you to make sacrifices, compromise your little moments of happiness. But you do not have to do it all the time.
Feel free to do things you like once in a while, if not all the time. Try to maintain a balance. It would be next to impossible in the first few days, but you have to try. It will get better soon.
7. You will quickly learn that no parent has it all figured out
We all have an idea of who we are going to be as parents before we actually become parents. (Spoiler alert: most of us were wrong!) Whether you were the “I’m going to feed my baby only organic foods” or the “Kids shouldn’t have access to screens” thinking-person before you had kids, you will likely find yourself making changes along the way.
Parenting is learning to adapt and pivot. It’s a giant guessing game of making the best decision in the moment and a whole lot of hoping for the best!
If you feel like you’re in survival mode at your current stage of motherhood, hang in there!
What things did no one tell you about being a mom that you had to discover on your own?
Motherhood has both its dark and bright sides. In the beginning, it would feel like a nightmare, but later it would feel like a daydream. (Yes, I made the Taylor Swift reference here).
Do you think I missed something? Do you think you can add something out of your own experience? I’m all ears! Feel free to drop your thoughts in the comment section.
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