The Agony of Motherhood

I've been thinking a lot about motherhood recently.  I'm at a strange place in life right now.  My kids are growing up, and I don't like it.  I've got one half-way through elementary school, one getting ready to enter kindergarten, and one toddler who is trying very hard to potty train herself.  I'm not taking any of it well.  And it's because I'm not ready to be done with babies and diapers.

My head knows that in our financial situation and with my health issues that are exacerbated by pregnancy that it wouldn't be prudent to have another child.  But what the head knows and what the heart desires are often two very different things.  John likes to remind me that I should be grateful for the children we already have.  Believe me, I am so grateful.  I absolutely know how blessed we have been.  So many women struggle to conceive even one child, and we have conceived three, practically without even trying.  I am so, so grateful for these three beautiful blessings, but that doesn't take away the pain of an empty womb.

30-something weeks with Lydia.

 The pain shouldn't surprise me, though.  Motherhood is the only vocation that seems ordered toward agony.  I have cried more tears in the almost 8 years I've been a mother than I've probably cried the rest of my years combined.  I shed a tear of thanksgiving when I saw that first positive pregnancy test, and more tears of thanksgiving when each of my kids were born.  Tears of pain and frustration learning to nurse a newborn, and tears when they decided they were done nursing.  I've shed more tears when I've watched my kids battle an illness, and when I've bandaged their skinned knees.  I've cried tears of sympathy when I've watched them be rejected by a classmate, and I've cried tears of pride when I've watched them do brave things like singing in front of the school or trying out for a talent show.  Tears at night wondering if I'll ever get better at this mothering thing, tears wondering if we'll ever be out of debt, wondering if we'll ever be able to start saving for their college funds.  Tears of frustration every time I work on the grocery list, trying to make my very limited budget stretch as far as it can so I can feed my family nutritious food, and tears of frustration when they refuse to eat it.  Second guessing everything, wondering how I can best serve my family, to work or not to work, and on and on it goes.

2 1/2 kids in Mom's lap.

But I think the majority of my tears have come as each new stage arrives.  There is excitement with every new development and every new stage, but also grief for the end of the previous stage.  Every end a new beginning, as they say.  The newborn stage ends and the infant stage begins.  It's so fun to watch them learn to smile, learn to sit, learn to crawl, walk, and run.  But there is still sometimes the grief that the tiny, sweet smelling, fuzzy little newborn is gone.

Lydia, fresh out of the oven.

Lydia is trying to potty train herself, I suppose because she detests the thought that her brother and sister can do something she can't.  The nerve of them.  I'm not objecting to her goal, I know it will make life easier and cheaper to not have to find diaper money in the budget each month.  But it's sad to think of a life without diapers after so many years having at least one child in them.

I'm not ready for my babies to grow up.

How quickly things change with each new development.  How quickly time flies.  The sleepless nights spent nursing a newborn turn into the sleepless nights waiting up for a teenager to return home.   One minute they are just minutes old.  You blink and they are having babies of their own.   Years spent trying to teach them right from wrong and how to treat others turn into years wondering where you went wrong and crying as you watch them make bad choices.  It's been said that the mother's heartbeat is the first sound a baby hears in the womb.  How appropriate since that same heart that beat for them so many times is the one they will break just as many times.

So glad Daddy got this really attractive photo of us napping together.  Anything to sleep.

As the mother you spend their whole life raising them up to be independent, loving, caring people, all so they can go and leave you in the end.  And then what?  Well, I guess, hopefully they give you a gaggle of grandchildren to dote on.

Yes, motherhood is a vocation of agony.  And sometimes it feels more like the agony of defeat.  But it's a beautiful agony born out of the great love of a mother for her child.  It's a visible manifestation of the love between a man and wife--a love that created a beautiful, unrepeatable, sweet little human being.

It's an agony I would choose over and over again.  And I wouldn't have it any other way.

The kids who break my heart daily.

How could I say no to this agony?