No one can ever prepare a mother on her journey of mothering. She must find her path by living through the experience of the most precious and blessed act in her life, mothering her own child or children.
When we become pregnant with our first child, we’re anxious, full of doubt about our own capabilities as a person caring for another being, we have fear of the unknown, and we’re utterly worried about every insignificant detail. Then our child is born and along with him or her, so are we as a mother.
And the journey begins. We face the anxieties, we put a portion of our doubts to rest, and we drop some of our fears and worries. We grow alongside with this new being that we’ve brought into the world. They become our world and we see ourselves through them. In many ways, we mother ourselves as well.
Then some of us are fortunate to have yet another experience of bringing forth life. We invite a second child into our lives. We imagine what our lives will be like with another being to share his or her life with our current child. We wonder if we’ll ever be able to love another child as much as our first. We also wonder how we’ll ever manage in caring for two children.
Our second child is then born and we quickly learn that going from one to two children is a big leap. It’s not as easy as caring for one child. It’s also not so bad because the first child now has a new “playmate.” We also learn that we indeed love this second baby equally as much as the first. There is no difference in the love we give or share with the new baby. Our hearts become content and we continue on our path of mothering.
It doesn’t matter how many children you have, only you can discover and know your own capabilities as a mother. No expert, or book can give you instructions to live by. The best advice is the advice of the gut. The strong intuition we all carry from the moment our tiny being is conceived. Only a mother knows her child best.
When we decide that we want to experience motherhood for yet a third time, all the same thoughts come spiraling through our thoughts and we soon learn that we become much easier on ourselves as a mother and as a person. We accept things as they are. We drop ridiculous expectations of ourselves and take things for what they’re worth. We know that our love is infinite for our children. We know that we simply do the best that we can. It is what it is. That’s it. We know that life is a small wonder and that our children are the sparks that make it worthwhile and exciting.
We learned along the way that everything we needed to know was already inside of us. It begins at our center, at our core and from our child. Our journey into motherhood is not only a journey in caring, loving and raising our young, but it is also a journey of caring, loving and raising ourselves.
Our children have much to teach us. If we allow them to do just that, we will discover parts of ourselves that will amaze us and allow us to realize that every single child that we bear has a purpose not only to his or her life, but also to our own. They are little gifts and they come with gifts to share.
