Becoming a Mother, Without One

As previously mentioned, I joined an amazing group of mom bloggers, and we’re all focusing on the same topic(s) from month to month...our February topic is postpartum. 

Of course, there are sooo many things I feel like I can talk about when it comes to postpartum care for mamas (and I plan to soon!), but as I started thinking about MY OWN postpartum experience, I realized mine was different than many of my friends’ in what I would consider a significant way:

I handled my postpartum recovery (and before that, pregnancy and now motherhood) without a mother of my own. 

Since I was very young, it’s always been my dad. There were short periods of my life in which my mother was present, but I was young, the time was short, and honestly, I don’t have many memories of those times. As I got older, I came to the conclusion that girls didn’t need a MOTHER as they grew up, they just needed a good PARENT, mother or father. 

For the record, I still believe this to be true. My dad has always and still handles pretty much anything I throw at him. But the one time in my life I felt as though he wasn’t what I needed (although very supportive and loving), was after my first pregnancy and birthing experience. Between my husband and my dad, I had immense amount of support and never a shortage of snacks or help with the baby, but it wasn’t their fault that they couldn’t speak to the postpartum experience with me in the way I was hoping someone would. 

Since I had Ava young, not many of my friends had kids...and if any did, we weren’t close enough for me to feel comfortable asking many questions. I had never been told how f*cking hard, tiring, and some days, gruesome the first few months after a baby are. I didn’t know how many questions I’d actually have. 

I wondered who I could ask how long my stitches would hurt, why breastfeeding was so painful, how long I would have a stomach that resembled a deflated balloon, why I cried every five minutes, why I felt totally numb sometimes, why I would stare at my baby while she slept because I was so in awe of this little squish I had literally created. I had no one to ask the things most postpartum women can ask their mom. I had no one to talk to about what MY birth experience might be like based off my maternal elders’ experiences. 

This “absence” in my motherhood journey honestly hadn’t occurred to me until now. For a couple days, I felt/wanted to feel resentful and/or angry. I felt like it was justified to feel robbed and cheated and mad that I was here, now, with no one to talk to about this body that felt foreign to me. Which, to be totally transparent, there are small moments in my life where I do feel this way, but they are few and far between. I move on easily and for most days of my life, it really doesn’t occur to me...I’m incredibly lucky to have an amazing support system in my life, without my mother. 

But since this DID have me feeling some type of way, I had to choose to see this differently. While not all of my postpartum experiences have been sunny experiences to look back on, I refuse to dim the memories of them if I can help it. So I had to think...I had to think of how exactly I made it through without the presence of my mother. 

The amazing truth is, besides A LOT of reading, all the women around me, though they were not my mother, filled me regularly with hope and guidance and real LOVE. My job, when I went back less than six weeks after giving birth, surrounded me with the most amazing women. They were aunts and mothers and grandmothers, and they were gracious enough to share their wisdom, stories, advice, personal experiences, and even failures with me. They covered my shifts so I could go to a breastfeeding class, they brought food to my house, they made my baby blankets and sweaters and hats, and told me I was doing a good job regularly. They put a space heater in the room I pumped in, they hugged me when I said I missed my baby, they empathized when I hadn’t gotten sleep. I could not ask them about the real personal stuff, but I was lucky to have a lactation consultant who was also an OB nurse and answered all the questions. For the most part, all of the women around me filled the “void” for me. (Just another reason to love women for all they are.)

While I did not have my own mother present, I was enveloped in the true spirit, essence, and absolute magic community of motherhood in general. I witnessed how becoming a mother made you more compassionate and loving for the WORLD, not just your baby. It truly gave me the courage and support I needed to get through the days where I was googling 28 things a day because I was sure I was doing this motherhood thing wrong. 

I’m so grateful, so in awe of the women I’m privileged to have in my world. There is something so special about the spirit, the experience, the life that is motherhood. If my girls ever have babies, I hope to be the 4am call they need to make...but I also hope to be a positive piece in the entire motherhood circle that all of us have benefited from. 

I’m grateful I was able to see my postpartum experiences without a mother in a different light.  It makes me that much more excited to move on with the knowledge that I had LOTS of mothers to guide me through that season...and hopefully I can help to spread the love and knowledge I was gifted. 

I guess the saying “it takes a village” is true for raising babies and mamas.