Go back to the time before you had a child. Did you envision what your life would look like, the kind of mom you would turn out to be? Whether you wanted to be like your mom or nothing like her? You probably had at least one unrealistic expectation of becoming a mother. I did. Some days I am a rockstar and other days I ride the struggle bus.....all day long and I will be the first to admit it.
I had dreams of the perfect birth, the baby boy that I was going to have, his name, what things he would do as a child, and all of the cute things I would dress him in. I prayed and prayed for that child to come when I wanted it to. But prayer doesn't work like that, and it's a good thing it doesn't. I wanted to be just like my mom and have the kind of relationship with my child that we have today. It's like that fairytale life that doesn't exist except for in the movies, which forces us to believe that what we are living and doing is much less exciting or important. And a lot of the times we believe it.
I am a labor nurse (just not practicing) and I have watched hundreds of women give birth to babies and their expectations are sometimes shattered. It's reality. I had to take medication to get pregnant with my child and no one plans for that. Our bodies are supposed to know how to make babies right? Like everyone else can without issue. But no one likes talking to you about the difficult stuff, and if they do, it scares you into going to the crazy side where you then Google every scenario possible, then bawl. I was lucky enough to get pregnant, give birth via c-section, and now I am trying to keep this child alive on a daily basis.
I started reading books on how to properly bring up a child. I read the book, Bringing up Bebe by Pamela Druckerman. After finishing the book I swore up and down I would never give my daughter snacks. HAHAHA right. I literally reached for every "right" way to parent and what was going to make me appear to be a "good mom". I had access to every thing possible during my pregnancy being the wife of an OBGYN physician . You know all of those ultrasounds where you could see your baby, their sweet facial expressions, and then find out the sex before anyone else can? Yeah well, my husband improperly informed me at 14 wks when he thought it was a boy on ultrasound, and I actually saw it too. Damn cord. Because at 19 weeks it was clearly not the vision I had imagined. A girl. What in the hell was I going to do with a girl? I didn't want that or know how to do that. I didn't want to raise a child who could potentially go through all of the pain and heartache I thought I had as a child, or the drama in school. I didn't want her to be like me. And on top of that, my stubborn little girl never showed me her face the entire time she was in my belly, not even once. She always had her hands by her face, the exact way she still sleeps to this day.
