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| My mom with Sammy and Gabriel |
Happy Mother's Day to all the moms in the PregTASTIC blogosphere!
I am feeling very lovey this Mother's Day, very womanly and warm-and-fuzzy about being a mom. Until I became a mom, I didn't really care all that much about this "Hallmark holiday." I always sent a card and a gift to my mom, I always told her I appreciated her for giving me life, but I didn't really get it. Honestly, did we really need a whole day dedicated to our mothers? YES, I have realized we do. Now Mother's Day has a whole new meaning. I know the depths of the love my mother felt for me and my siblings growing up because I feel it for my own kids. I understand the highs and lows of being a mom because I am living it. I never realized before, but now I do, that I would actually treasure the craft that my preschooler worked so hard to keep secret from me. Becoming a mother made me appreciate the efforts my own mom has made throughout my life. She was also a stay-at-home mom until and a Navy wife just like me. I never appreciated the hard parts of her job as a mom - the amount of birthday cupcakes she must have made, the number of field trips she chaperoned, the loads of laundry she folded, the difficulty of parenting by herself when my Dad was on work trips, cheering us up when we were in a fight with a friend or rejected by a boy. I understand it now, and I am grateful for it. So I called my mother this morning and jokingly thanked her for giving birth to me, to which she replied, "Oh, it was my pleasure."
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| My sisters, my mom, and her beautiful sister Vivian |
Here are some things I've learned from my mom:
- Put your kids to bed early and enjoy time with your husband alone. My parents still have "wine time" every night! It's a great way to share your day and reconnect.
- Keep your kids busy. Make them run out of energy before you do. One summer, she paid us to swim laps in the pool. I know now that a penny a lap was probably well worth her sanity.
- Natural childbirth is possible. Mine was her fourth unmedicated birth! She was my motivation for heading down the path of natural childbirth that I am so obsessed with.
- Make loving your kids your top priority. We always knew we were loved, and is anything more important than that?
- Make your kids love each other, even when they don't want to. There were four of us, and we moved around like most military families do. We always knew we had each other, and we were always encouraged to play together and get along.
Speaking of always loving my siblings, I have to give recognition to my two sisters Sarah and Jessica this Mother's Day. If you are a faithful PregTASTIC listener, you may have heard them share their Ups and Downs on Episode 195. As my big sisters, they have been my best friends and role models my whole life. Words cannot express the bond that we share and the love I have for them. Being pregnant together was amazing, and now we are all mothers together! They both gave birth in the past month, and I could not be more proud of these birthing superstars!
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| Sisters and parallel cousins in utero |
Sarah had her daughter Sophia on April 8, two weeks before her due date. She was indoctrinated into our Church of Ina May club because she gave birth without pain medication - that's no easy feat, especially for a first time mom! Sarah has been "Tia" to my boys for almost five years now (they like her better than me), so I love watching her embrace motherhood.
Jessica just had her baby girl Julia on Friday. She planned on a homebirth and rocked it like a champion. She had a 20-hour labor. When I talked to her just awhile after having the baby, she told me it was the hardest 20 hours of her life, but it was well worth it. She definitely deserves a medal or a trophy or something to reward her incredible efforts.
I love my sisters, and I can't wait to raise our babies together!
