Becoming…Mum
By: Valeria Frisch
Tags: Motherhood, Baby, Parenting

In this article, I want to express my feelings about motherhood. Perhaps it is going to be quite frankly, but on another hand truthfully. And yes, one more thing, to be more précised I am going to talk not even about motherhood as such, but to say it correctly — about becoming a mother.

Judging by the stories of most women, immediately after they have seen their newborn baby, they immediately felt an all-embracing feeling of love, overwhelming their whole being. I don’t know if this is indeed a truth or if I’m just a pitiful exception … In any case, this was not the case with me. And this is exactly what I want to talk about hereby.

When my baby was born and the nurses put him on my chest, my first thought was: damn, does he already have teeth? Perhaps now it seems ridiculous, but then he so greedily dug into my breast that I almost cried out. And then … looking at his sleepy little face, I thought only about one thing: “Phew, we have managed it. The baby is here, he is with us, and he is healthy.” That’s all that worried me at that time. I do not know whether this is good or bad, and I am not going to judge it. And, actually, what’s for? I just really want to share my discoveries that I have already made on this new path for me. Maybe there is someone for whom this unconditional-love-from-the-first-sight-click didn’t work right away, as it was with me.

Thus, the first few days I still could not believe that this small, peacefully snuffling creature, who is jerking his arms and legs in a funny way while being awake, a couple of days ago, was in my tummy … and now he is here … with me … lies quite a side by side. On these first days, you are still functioning under the action of hormones, and therefore you constantly cry while looking at your baby (how cute and wonderful he is!), but at the same time you feel this wild tiredness: the body hurts, nipples … I was horrified only at one thought of breastfeeding because at the beginning the pain was horrible, nipples were bleeding and every time when my baby wanted to eat, I was almost crying and trying not to scream while he eagerly dug into my breast. Even while standing under the shower, you try to find such position so that water trickles nowise run over your breasts. The body aches a little, it’s uncomfortable to sit, you just can’t get enough sleep, because He literally needs you every two hours. The back is already aching from turning circles around the apartment, rocking the baby and calling out to the skies so that this stupid colic would have already stopped and the baby would finally fall asleep because it is already 2 am in the morning. The idea of ​​going to bed makes the eye twitch nervously, because you know that normal sleep will not work anyway, and how long you can sleep … only your Little one knows it … In general, this is how the first couple of weeks fly by. And you unwittingly ask yourself questions like this:

- Damn, and this is how my whole life is gonna be from now on? I’d rather shoot myself immediately.

- And there are people in the world who go to all kinds of clinics, hoping to get pregnant and voluntarily condemn themselves to such things? Such people … are they all normal?

- And mothers of large families? They are either heroines or … maybe sadomasochists? (sorry, black Russian humor) or everything together?

Then pangs of conscience or something like that begins to torment you a little … Everyone around is so delighted with your baby, and everyone admires how cool and calm he is … and you … you are just tired and dream to sleep … and the thought that this load of insomnia and constant fear for your child you have to carry for the rest of your life…it scares you incredibly and even pressing down with its weight …

But then a couple of months is passing by … The first smile (at first, it would seem, completely random and meaningless), the first independent upheaval from back to tummy, the first real laugh, the first tooth, the first spoon of vegetable puree, His first kiss … the baby himself. Now he can grab various objects with his little hands, and is amused knits the brows, trying hard to taste one. The kid is so happy just because you’re there, and this emotion is so sincerely! And now you can see dancing naughty sparkles in his eyes. From now on you don’t wake up on an alarm clock and you don’t actually need one, because your current alarm clock is a special now — sometimes he slows down the blanket from you, sometimes he starts just telling something, and sometimes he claps you on the cheek with his small palm or actively squeezes your nose, as if it were some kind of soft toy or a ball … And as soon as you open your eyes, you see how two huge blue eyes look at you, full of cheerfulness, curiosity and genuine interest in what this new day will bring.

I don’t know, maybe this is how spring and the sun behind the window act on me, or maybe just awareness and understanding of my new role in this life takes some time … And this is exactly what is happening to me now. As you know, there are two types of people: the first belief in love at first sight, and the second — that love comes gradually, and, as a rule, thanks to this unhurried pace, every day grows stronger. So now I clearly understand that I belong to the second category of people. And again … this is neither good nor bad. This is just my reality. I am extremely happy that I can observe myself and my changes from the side, that I recognize, thanks to my baby, that my heart, my being is getting filled with a tender and warm feeling, to which I don’t want to give a name. And actually, what’s for? One of my favorite writers Antoine Saint-Exupery once said, “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye “. I would like to modify this expression a little bit (I hope that Mr. Saint-Exupery will understand and forgive me for that) to something like this: “It is only with the heart that one can see and feel rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye and impossible to describe with the words. “

At the moment, I just enjoy every moment spent with this little miracle and I am already looking forward to a huge amount of new and interesting discoveries that we are going to make together. So, what did I want to say with this?

Becoming a mother is not easy, and sometimes it is even more difficult to realize your new role in this life, but all these fades, when your little boy just smiles at you or trustingly buries his nose in your neck. In such moments you realize that you do not live in vain, that someone needs you and that there is someone else in this world, whom you want to believe, you can make happy.