…to be a mother

I was super excited and pretty surprised. We wanted to have a baby, but it’s one of those things where you are like ‘Oh, I’m actually pregnant!’

It took us a while to settle on a couple of names. We went to the hospital with two. We had one that we were positive would be his name and one we weren’t. We saw him and decided to pick the backup name.

I had a C-section, so I didn’t get to hold him. They put the baby by your face. Roughly 45 minutes later you do get to hold them. It was awesome. The way that you love that baby is insane.

When he was a new baby it was kind of scary because you wonder if they are getting enough food. And you don’t know because they can’t talk to you. That is what I was most nervous about when he was a baby if he was gaining enough weight or not.

All of the firsts were crazy. It’s awesome watching him grow. From one day to the next, even just how he talks it’s like ‘wow, he said that sentence super clearly and yesterday he wasn’t’. 

When you are with them every day you see them growing, but when you’re not it goes by so fast.

My husband was deployed in the military for five months this year. My son was 18 months when he left, and when he got back he was about 23 months old. He just got back about a month ago. He was like ‘wow, he is talking so much this is crazy!’

You have to be very patient and understanding. Our son is so verbal that there are times that we forget that he is only 2.

I think [motherhood] is more than I expected in a good way. Being a mom is awesome. I think that truly my kid is the best thing ever. He is so awesome and he is so fun.

You don’t even think you could love a tiny person as much as you do. And I feel like you don’t understand that with your own parents until you have a child.

When they are really little, you don’t have a ton of time for hobbies because any free time you have you are going to want to spend with your children.

Being a teacher is already a pretty busy career, so I have to really try to balance when I am going to do school stuff vs when I am going to make sure I am spending plenty of time with my son.

We are staying home right now [due to the virus]. Humans need interaction and when you are 2, facetime doesn’t really give them the interaction they need.

There are times he stresses me out, but I guarantee there will be many times throughout his life in which he’ll stress me out. That’s part of the relationship parents and children have.

It was a little scary the second time I in the sense that my son and I are very close. We are still super excited to have a second child, it was just initially scary like ‘oh, how is this going to affect the relationship I have with my son’.

We have three names picked out for her and we are hoping she looks like one of them.

It is not as good as we thought it would be. We were going to wait for my husband to get back from deployment and then buy everything, but then quarantine happened.

There are some things that you forget about from the first because with your first, everybody buys you all the stuff and with your second, you don’t really need the stuff. It’s more so about remembering what to bring out.

To any first time mothers, I would probably say to give yourself some grace. There are going to be times that are stressful and there are going to be times that you feel like you aren’t doing it well enough or you feel like you are not being a good mom when you are probably being a great mom. If you need a break, take a break. No one is going to judge you.

And for people wanting to have a child, I would say ‘go for it, it’s the best thing ever as long as you are ready for one!’