motherhood requires endurance.
don’t you know it!
there are so many scenarios where a mama’s endurance is demanded, tried and tested, and therefore, so many instances to work with all that endurance asks of us.
example one:
you are working on getting your baby to sleep. you are rocking, walking, patting, bouncing, swaying, swinging, shhhh-ing, humming, singing, or whatever the very specific thing is that you have found your baby is soothed by. you have been walking back and forth for an hour, and your baby finally gets close to sleep- but then suddenly, mysteriously wiggles and wakes up again. why? who knows why? it appears that sleep is not something we all come here knowing how to do. and so your task isn’t over. your baby writhes in your arms. *sigh* (but not too loud or you’ll wake baby up even more). you start walking again. you are sweaty, because postpartum hormone changes make you sweaty, plus babies are just warm, and you heat each other up with your body contact, plus you are a little bit stressed, the cortisol is flowing because a) you haven’t slept well b) your baby won’t fall asleep and you don’t know why and you don’t know how much longer you can do it c) you’re hungry but can’t go eat until the baby is asleep……………… AHH!
All this put together leads you think “I can’t do this anymore, I really just can’t, I’m done.” But then you think of your options (all the while still doing your ‘soothe the baby’ work out): 1) You could put the baby down, let them scream and cry as long as they want..but then you’ll be worried about them, and they might not ever go to sleep- which means you wouldn’t be able to go to sleep either, and your baby could potentially be feeling really scared, alone, angry and confused. We just don’t know for sure how long term crying affects brain development and therefore a child’s future psychology. Some say its fine, some say it causes harm. So the truth is, we just don’t know. 2) You could put baby down for a little bit while you go eat something and just chill for a sec…but again, then baby could get more worked up and more tired…leading to the over-tired baby state which is the worst. Even worse than this situation! So you realize, the best option is to KEEP GOING. You dig deeper and find you actually do have more in your reserve. Even though you thought you were totally empty, like more exhausted than you ever have been in your life…you do have more strength. You do have more stamina. You have more! This is something that women get to experience through the challenges of child brith (regardless of what kind of birth you have) and parenting– we have so much more power in us that we realize. This is an amazing gift of these situations that push us to the brink. They show us that we have more in us than we knew. But we don’t get to revel in that fact just yet, because we are still trying to get the baby to sleep…
So you keep walking, patting, humming…whatever, doing the thing, 10 more minutes, baby seems asleep. you are soaking with sweat, starving and arms tired from holding baby…so you set them down ever soo carefully, trying to keep them asleep…success!! you start to creep away, feel yourself relaxing, begin to think about how good your dinner is gonna taste…and then all of a sudden they startle awake. You think “I can’t do this anymore!! Like seriously no way. No wonder that guy wrote that book ‘Go The F*ck to Sleep.” But again you think of the options and realize the best thing for everyone involved (even you) is for you to pick baby up again and repeat the whole thing until they are asleep. So you do- 10 more minutes, then you put baby down again. This time they stay asleep while you creep out of the room and close the door. ahhhhhh yesss!!! time for food! and movies! and cooling off!! so you go grab some food and plop down on the couch. after 5 minutes you feel a deeper relaxation starting to seep through you. And then baby cries “ohhh may goddddd, i seriously can’t doooo this!!! i’m going to explode!” you think. But once again, you DO! You get up, almost on the verge of tears yourself, go in and pick up your baby….still hungry, still tired, still achy and hot….you dig deep and find the strength. Its somehow there. In the amazing deep reserve of life force that we don’t know we have until we are truly tested.
Maybe this wasn’t an area that tested you as a mother. Maybe sleep wasn’t any issue. It sure was for me, and I had many nights like the one I just described. But this is just one of the ways that endurance is needed as a mother. There are so many more! Endurance is found in giving birth, when you find strength and energy you never knew you had to actually birth another human being. Endurance is found when you wake up every few hours for months (or years) on end to feed and comfort your baby. It’s found when you haven’t slept well in years and you still wake up at dawn (thanks to baby), to feed them, dress them, clean them, entertain them and teach them things, to do the laundry, clean the house, go to work and maybe spend some time on a hobby. Its truly amazing! This is what life is like as a new parent. Whether you think you have the strength or not, you find it, you do it, you keep going. And its just a lot of work.
Motherhood requires endurance. New kinds of energy output that we have never experienced. And when we fight against this requirement, it is much harder. We waste our previous energy bemoaning the situation we are in. When we lament the fact that we are exhausted, then life is more of a struggle. But when we can experience all of these requirements as opportunities to grow, as times to learn about what it feels like to dig deeper than we believed was possible, then we can expand spiritually. I don’t mean not to complain, or fall apart, or feel downright pissed off at your situation sometimes. My husband would attest to the fact that I complained and cried and fell on the floor like a screaming toddler sometimes. But I also try to engage with the challenge as a way to grow. By saying, well this is what I have before me, this is what life is, and I can stop wishing it was different and be kind of amazed at how powerful I am. I feel like shit, but I really am a warrior goddess I guess.
see we have these limits we have set on ourselves. we have things we think we can and cannot do. we are used to getting to rest after a certain amount of time. we are used to getting to eat after a certain amount of hunger. and yet we are so much more capable than we know. we have so much more ability to regrow, to transform, to rebirth than we know. it can feel absolutely horrible when you are bumping up against those limits- feeling more tired than you ever have, more hot, hungry, achy, teary, angry, needy… it can feel like the end…because it is a limit, a boundary of ourself that we have never crossed. but once we push past it (or are forced to push past it by a crying baby who you feel chemically driven to take care of) we find more strength, more life force is there deep within us.
this is endurance.
through these first 9 months of motherhood i have come to believe in myself so much more. i know that i can withstand a lot. i know that when it feels like i can’t go on, i really can. and that there will be a time to rest, a time to heal, a time to eat, eventually. and if i approach the challenges with curiosity, as opportunities to PRACTICE endurance, then i am in a much better head space. when i am rocking the baby to sleep feeling at my wits ends and i think “okay, i feel like i can’t do this anymore, but i am going to practice enduring” then I feel my stress level decrease just a little. when i’m not fighting against reality, i feel much better. and i also am strengthening my muscle of resilience. this resilience will spread into other areas of life, and will also be something i can pass on to my children and those close to me. cuz, life is hard. no matter your situation, life is hard and so its good to develop traits like endurance. and luckily, life gives us all plenty of opportunities to practice endurance and motherhood is one of those opportunities.