Myths, and beliefs about motherhood and parenting.
My honest thoughts on the most common thoughts, myths, and beliefs about motherhood and parenting.
Becoming a mother is about sacrifice.
I believe that sacrifice leads to resentment, so I like to think of it as compromise. Especially in our Middle Eastern culture, what we’ve seen and learned from our mothers, was that a woman should give up everything for her family. But times have changed, we didn’t go to university to keep our degree covered in dust.
You are still you, your hobbies, passions, your style, your likes, dislikes, your personality…you don’t have to change these just because you became a mother. Of course, there will be some tweaking and adapting needed here and there, hence why I call it, compromise.
Embracing the slowness of new motherhood, could feel like you’re lagging behind everyone else.
The beginning of motherhood is slow, long and tiring. It sucks all your energy, and requires every part of you to be present. This is a huge transition, the biggest ever, so give it your all. We live in a “bragging” society with social media impacting our mental health and self-esteem on a daily basis. Stuck in Dubai for the whole summer, every time I opened Instagram, all my efforts to stay mentally sane, went down the drain. So imagine how a new mother could feel, with the postpartum hormones and possibly the baby blues, it’s isolating.
Those first 2 years, your baby needs ALL of you, so put down that phone, who cares if so and so got promoted, or so and so started their own business while you spent endless nights humming in a dark room (maybe even talking to the walls)
Take this time as a chance to slow down because, it doesn’t last long!! Soon enough, you’ll be back on your feet, and that world will seem so far away… you might even reach your hand out and try to grab it again, but your 4 year will remind you, that you can’t turn back time so don’t try to fast forward it.
Becoming parents, puts your relationship/marriage to the test
This is a big one. It’s the ultimate challenge and you take it on as a team. Think of it as your first major project together. You will work hard. You will experiment. You will strategize. You will be creative. You will succeed and you will fail. You will laugh and you will cry (hysterically sometimes). You will fight and you will bond like never before.
You are both responsible for the life of a human and will learn so much about yourselves and each other in the process. Be. Patient.
It’s ok to hate it sometimes
It is, for sure. But I can’t say that I never asked myself: “What did you get yourself into?” in times of desperation and deliriums. Or that I didn’t declare to the moon at 3 am for months, that I didn’t want to have another baby. I also can’t say that I wasn’t devastated with guilt for having said those things, because children are a blessing and so many women don’t have the chance to become a mother.
It’s a catharsis. A mix of so many emotions, topped up with exhaustion and self-doubt. But, it’s also a metamorphosis. A transformation and discovery of the self. The reward being, an adorable little person whose footsteps you can’t wait to hear in the morning, and whose breath is your oxygen.
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