Great Expectations

I've been writing this post for over a week now, but with baby E going through a developmental spurt with early mornings (4am!) and quickie naps (30mins once a day!), I've not been able to write much. But I guess it's fitting that I finally get to finish and publish this post on Mother's Day. Because this post is all about me figuring out motherhood.

Before having baby E, I knew motherhood would be tough. I knew children tend to wake up at the crack of dawn, that they have boundless energy and hate taking naps or going to bed. After having baby E, I realised that all I knew about children and motherhood was shaped by storybooks and popular media like TV and magazines. 

Happy smiling baby! 80% of the time.

I figured that babies would only cry if they are hungry / thirsty, need a change of diaper or if it was too hot / cold. Okay, these are things that I can easily fix and then the baby would stop crying right?

Turning into the hulk. 20% of the time.

How wrong I was. It took a lot of crying (by both myself and baby E), research and willpower (to fend off unwanted / useless advice from well-meaning relatives) to understand that babies have feelings and emotions too and that they can cry when tired, or upset or just because they need someone to hold and comfort them. The hardest thing was learning to listen to my instincts as a mother and respond to baby E the best way I knew how.

So motherhood is not just about keeping a baby / child clean, dry and well-fed. It's also about being emotionally supportive and giving your child the understanding and respect that another living being deserves. It's also about having confidence in your abilities as a mother to listen and tend to your child in a way that you feel is right.

I hope that I'm doing the right thing by baby E, because motherhood doesn't just fit neatly into a box which makes everything outside that box the wrong thing to do. What works for one family may not work for another and what worked for my own mother may not work for baby E.

Thinking face...

Happy Mother's Day!