Transitioning into Motherhood

It's Mother's Day today and so I thought I'd write a bit about how motherhood started for me - when I first made the transition from being a relatively free agent to this position of massive responsibility and privilege.

A bit over two years ago, I became a mother to a beautiful little girl who we called Sophia. It was my lifelong dream to become a mother, and finally after 25 years, it happened. I had planned for this time, reading books and talking to other mums about what to expect. However, nothing prepared me for the shock that the transition to motherhood gave me.

SLEEP DEPRIVATION

I have never been one to cope well with lack of sleep. In fact, I would say I have higher than average sleep needs – 9 to 10 hours is my ideal although I can function okay on about 8. Of course, this sort of sleep is just not possible with a newborn! Sophia was actually a pretty decent sleeper at night, at the beginning only waking 2 or 3 times and then only once through to when she was about 8 months old. It wasn’t just her waking that made sleep difficult for me though. I developed postnatal anxiety and this made it very difficult for me to relax enough to go to sleep. I would take hours to drop off, only to have to repeat the process every time Sophia woke me up for a feed. This resulted in a very tired, very grumpy me, and I began to wonder when the dividends were going to pay for all the sacrifice I was making for this TINY UNGRATEFUL HUMAN!!!

This is pretty much how I felt for a while there!

LOSS OF CONTROL

I had read a book about developing a routine with your baby which promised that if I followed their recommendations, everything would be fairly hunky-dory and predictable by the time the baby was around 12 weeks old. I came to despise this book when it didn’t happen, at the same time despising myself for somehow not being able to get my child to comply with what the “rule-book” said. I saw myself as a failure as a mother – where other mums at church had babies who would sleep quietly in their prams throughout the 1.5 hour service, I battled to get my daughter to have longer than a 45 minute nap at home in her cot. Looking back on it, I see now that my expectations were ridiculous, but at the time the loss of control over what my day looked like was devastating for me.

I treated the routine like a formula and was frustrated when it didn't work that way

FEELINGS

I think I expected that after I gave birth, I would be overwhelmed by an unsurpassed love for my child that would make every sacrifice I made for her seem trivial and every day with her interesting. I was shocked to find myself instead feeling quite resentful of Sophia and the burden her care placed on me. In the first few months I didn’t even find her particularly interesting – she just didn’t do very much (my husband and I used to affectionately call her our little “blob”). Don’t get me wrong, I did experience a mother’s love, but I found it to be something that grew over time rather than being instantaneously there in massive proportions. It also didn’t necessarily obliterate other more negative feelings that arose in me, as I expected it would.

ADJUSTING MY ATTITUDE

So how did I get through this challenging time and adjust to my new role as mother? Well there were a few things that helped, but I’d like to focus on the most important one for me – my faith in Jesus. I believe God brought these challenges to me to teach me about myself and my need for Him. I realised how utterly self-centred I was, placing my own comfort, happiness and need for control above everything else and everyone else around me. This wasn’t the example that Jesus my Lord gave or how He calls me to live as a Christian. He came as a servant to the needs of those around Him and died on a cross to pay the debt to God that sinful humans owe. If He, my King, was a servant, then why should I expect my life as His follower to be different? I needed to have an attitude change and Philippians 2:3-7 told me what that needed to be:

“Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves…. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God…. emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant….”

I suppose the point I’m trying to make is that realising my attitude and expectations were wrong was the beginning of things improving for me. God never intended motherhood to be about satisfying my own selfish wants and desires. He intended it to teach me to serve others more and so become more like Him. Of course, this is not something I am able to do in my own strength – I have to daily depend on Him to give me the strength, wisdom and patience to mother our little girl well. I think that’s the whole point actually.

THE NEXT ONE

Our second child will be born in August this year and I think it is going to be another time of testing for me. Will I have a different (less selfish) attitude this time and will that make a difference to my experience of the whole thing? I hope so, only time will tell. I can say this though: I now absolutely love being mother to my beautiful Sophia and I am so grateful to God for teaching me all He has. I am somewhat apprehensive of the (surely) many more things God has to show me through “trials of various kinds” (James 1:2), but at least now I can say with the psalmist “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me.”