Tuesday, November 3, 2015

8 Times Motherhood Almost Killed Me

The people that sit around creating random, crazy holidays have dubbed today Plan Your Epitaph Day. Really, nobody likes to think about the end of life, do they? I mean, no matter how it ends, it's not likely to be a supremely pleasant experience. 

I suppose, though, that thinking about the end of our life can help us evaluate how we live our lives in the present. When it's my time to go, I hope that people will have good things to say about me.

I hope my friends and colleagues will say that I was a kind, hard working, intelligent person who added something of value to their lives.

I hope my husband will say that I was a loving, faithful wife; that I was his best friend and that he would have married me all over again. 

I hope my daughters will say that I was a great mom; that I was was there for them whenever they needed me; that I taught them everything they needed to know to become happy, successful women. 

I think that last one is what I think about most. After all, our children are our legacy. When all is said and done, I won't have any awards on my mantle and it's not likely that I will be famous for anything of great significance. What I will leave behind is my children.

It's been said that parenting, and specifically motherhood, is the hardest job you'll ever love. I would certainly concur. I love my three daughters beyond measure and motherhood is by far the most rewarding thing I have ever done in my 38 years of life. However, it is also without a doubt the hardest thing I have ever done. 

Parenting: The hardest job you will ever love! #TuesdayTen @TheGoldenSpoons


There have been days when I just wanted to run away; days when I thought I was not cut out for this motherhood gig; days when I thought motherhood might actually kill me. 

Seriously.

There have been times as a mom when I was beyond exhaustion and didn't think I could keep going. There have been times that I was so frustrated I literally wanted to bang my head against a wall. And, there have been moments when my heart hurt so much that I thought it was actually breaking into a million pieces.  
  1. Saying Good-bye to "Squirt" - Before we had our own biological kids, David and I had a foster child we affectionately nicknamed "Squirt." After nine months with us, she went to live with a family who planned to adopt her. Saying good-bye was so, so hard. We only saw her once after that. She was six years old then, but she will be 20 years old this December. 
  2. My first labor and delivery- I have a fairly high tolerance for pain and a fairly low tolerance for needles. So, when I was pregnant for the first time, the idea of a giant needle being inserted directly into my spine seemed far worse than the pain of labor. WRONG!!! After 10 hours of back labor and a nurse telling me it could be several more hours, I had a complete meltdown and got the epidural. (You can read the full story in The Mother Of All Meltdowns!) 
  3. My third labor and delivery - By the third one, I thought I knew what I was doing. Again, life threw me a curve ball in the form of a 10 pound 2 oz. baby! Despite the epidural, I still felt that delivery and, afterwards, there was a bit of a scare that involved a lot of blood and me almost passing out. 
  4. Megan's broken leg -  My middle daughter is something like a bull in a china shop sometimes. This was obvious even at an early age. Then, at 20 months old, she broke her leg. It wasn't a bad break - no misshapen leg or bone through the skin. The hardest thing about it all was sitting on an exam table with my oldest daughter beside me (she was 3) and Megan on my lap as two nurses put the initial last on her leg. We had been at the doctors' office for a couple hours already. She had endured x-rays and hadn't had a nap. She was exhausted. I was exhausted. As they manipulated her leg and wrapped it, she repeated through tears in her little toddler voice, "All done, Mommy. All done." I tied to be strong, but my mama heart hurt. Even the nurses were crying!
  5. A trip to the ER - When Megan was three, she went through a period where she got several UTI's and, when she did, she got very sick very quickly. One such weekend, we had been to the pediatrician and received an antibiotic shot. By the afternoon, though, she was still running a 104 fever and became almost despondent, not responding to us when we talked to her and just staring blankly into space. Of course, they told us to go the the ER. Our neighbor came to sit with our 5 year old and our 6 month old (who was still nursing) while we headed off to the ER not knowing what would happen. Fortunately, it wasn't serious and we went back home in just a few hours, but nobody likes taking a kid to the ER!
  6. Lost in DC - When my oldest was in 5th grade, she had the opportunity to go to Washington DC to see the presidential inauguration and take in the sites with a student travel group. The trip got off to a rough start because it was January and the weather didn't cooperate. The night before I was supposed to drive to DC, it snowed. We finally made it out of the driveway, picked up a sweet friend who agreed to accompany us, and got her to her hotel. We said good bye and, after a night in the hotel, my friend and I headed back to NC. Safely at home, I got a call that night letting me know there was an "incident" in which Rachel had been "temporarily separated from her group." In DC, at the Lincoln Memorial, on inauguration weekend. It took every fiber of strength in my being not to jump right back in my minivan and go get her. I couldn't. The incident was very short, she handled it well, and was quickly and safely reunited with her group. I had to let her stick it out.
  7. When my youngest was bullied - Last year was a difficult school year for my youngest because there was a bully in her class who picked on her and many of her classmates frequently. The situation came to a head in January when the bully child threatened to have her dad come and kill my Emily. Needless to say, Emily was terrified and I pretty much came unglued
  8. The Day I Killed the Tooth Fairy - It was an accident. I didn't mean to kill her, but I did. her death led to the death of Santa Clause and The Easter Bunny as well. The guilt almost broke me. It was bitter sweet, for sure. 
This is supposed to be a list of 10, but where are #9 and #10 you ask? Well, I left them off for now, but I'm sure they will happen. There will be many more times in my life when motherhood comes close to taking me under. There will be the moment(s) when each of my daughters drives away alone for the first time. There will be moments when they go off to college, walk down the aisle, and become mothers themselves when my heart will simultaneously burst with joy and break into a million pieces. 

Motherhood. It's the hardest, most rewarding job on the planet. If you can survive. 


Motherhood. It's the hardest, most rewarding job on the planet. If you can survive. #TuesdayTen @TheGoldenSpoons @MamaRabia


Your Tuesday Ten hostesses are:

TheLiebers


The Teacher Wife
facebook pinterest
facebook
We hope you have enjoyed our #TuesdayTen lists! If so, please link up one of your own and share your post using #TuesdayTen!
If you would like to be added to the mailing list without linking up, click here.


Come link up again next Tuesday, November 10. November 13 is World Kindness Day, so share 10 ways to show kindness, 10 times someone showed you kindness, or do 10 random acts of kindness and tell us about it! 
The Golden Spoons

No comments:

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...