Conversations

I wrote a post on our family blog… that talked about how despite the hard, hard things about being a mama… there’s so many times when, even in the middle of the night after yet another cry to be comforted, I often look at my little baby cradled in my arms and would have it no other way.

Yet, almost immediately after hitting publish… I found myself wanting to go back and explain it.  Excuse it or apologize for it or dull it down even.  Which when I stop and realize what I’m thinking… makes me pretty upset that I have the urge to do that.  Because why should I feel the need to apologize for loving the hard times, even while I simultaneously, I occasionally want to pull my hair out over them.

I’ve written about this conflict before.  About how some women feel the pressure to hide the imperfections of motherhood, but more often than that I sometimes feel a pressure to hide my bliss in motherhood.  It’s counter-intuitive, wrong even… but it has something to do with not wanting to add to the guilt that I know even some of my very close friends who are mamas have over the fact that they aren’t filled to the brim and glowing over parenthood every second.

Because a constant glow… is nearly impossible.  I surely am not glowing constantly.  But I do carry this sense of awe with me over this little soul, through most of the moments in our days.  And maybe it’s because I have miscarried a couple of times before having our Mason, that I treasure this little gift of a baby so very much, that the hard times feel like blips on the radar screen.

And when I read something like the quote from Casey Wiegand, another mama, who echoes these same feelings… I feel less of a need to apologize, or explain.  And I remind myself that I don’t need permission to soak in these moments.  And to feel the elation.  Even while part of me wishes for a full nights sleep once again.