I was reading through my usual go-to website for news and entertainment and caught an article that had a slide show of “Daddy Confessions.” Reading through it got me thinking about what I like about being a mom. And of all the little anecdotal things I could write about I want to write about how it has changed me for the better. I want them to know this when they get older and consider becoming parents.
I want to preface this by saying something I have whole-heartedly believed since forever. NOT EVERYONE SHOULD HAVE KIDS. There it is. There’s always societal pressure especially on newly wed couples. The next logical step is kids right? I know that was the first time I felt the pressure. And within a few months of tying the knot, I was pregnant with Felix. I was never even sure before then that I wanted kids. But all of a sudden, I got married at 25, had already had minor surgery on my cervix and felt like, now was the time.
I knew as soon as I started trying that I had made the right decision. I was totally at peace with it and couldn’t wait to get a positive test. I knew it could take months and even years, but for me, it took less than a week. We started trying and I never got another period. This was both scary and exciting. I couldn’t believe how much my life was changing. I had found someone who wanted to be with me in the closest way two people can, and now we were going to have a family. It was a huge change from the lonely person I had been less than 12 months prior.
But that’s just it…had my loneliness driven my choices? Had my priorities just shifted with age? Both? At the time I didn’t think anything of it. Even when I decided to have Fiona I still hadn’t thought of what drove me. Baby fever, and the want for a girl. A deep seated longing for a family of my own, something I had never known growing up as an only child of a single mother. Looking back I think it has been mostly the latter. I have made every decision in life with this notion in the back of my mind of a normal American family with two parents, a dog and a couple of kids.
That being said, knowing now what I have done and why, I still wouldn’t change it. Partially because it’s still what I want…the American Dream. But also, because my decision to become a mother is one of the best I’ve ever made. My children have changed me. I have more patience, I have more energy, I have a better appreciation of myself as a person watching what I accomplish with my kids every day. I have a greater capacity to love and to be loved in a way that is different from any other kind of love. The unconditional love between a mother and her child. I have experienced deeper love and deeper pain and deeper appreciation, deeper understanding, and deeper compassion that I ever could have in life without having my children.
They have made me a better more well-rounded person. They have forever changed my world in ways that it never could have without them. I am richer in almost every way because of them and for that I will be forever grateful of the opportunity to do the hardest and most rewarding job ever: raise them.
Musings...Reflections...Thoughts by TK 