When I Was The New Mom

I recently read an article that a friend of mine had contributed to where mothers had written letters to their twenty-year-old selves, giving advice about motherhood.  It made me reflect on my own journey of motherhood. What would I say to myself ten years ago?

My knees creak when I walk down the stairs.  I have more gray hairs every time I look in the mirror.  And it takes me a lot longer to get myself up off the floor than it used to. I am no spring chicken. I have been plugging away at this motherhood gig for over ten years now.  I have birthed babies a whole decade a part, and I have learned that there is still so much I don’t know. But if I could go back and bump into my pregnant self over ten years ago at a Delaware coffee shop, this is what I would say:

Fail gracefully. – You will find time and time again that this motherhood gig is full of choices and decisions and often you will choose wrong.  You will fail. It is inevitable. But how you fail is what matters. Own up to your mistakes. Apologize when necessary. Admit your human flaws and sinful nature.  Your children will learn far more from how they see you pick yourself up off the floor than from all the times you succeeded. Fail and get back up with grace.

Forgive yourself. – Do this often.  Remember you are going to fail a bunch.  So it is also important to remember to forgive yourself.  Mom-guilt is a thing, and it can steal the joy from your mothering if you give it the chance.  Fight that. Don’t let mom-guilt steal your joy. Make the mistakes, confess your sins, forgive yourself, and count it all joy.

“Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.”  James 1:2-4

 Find your village. – Don’t try to do this alone.  You will need role models of mothers who have completed the mothering stage you are in.  Your children need other grownups in their lives to love them and cheer for them. You need other parents to kid-swap with you so you can have date nights.  You need someone to bring you some dark chocolate after a day of potty-training. You need to meet up at a park and let your kids play so you can have a bit of adult conversation.  You need your village to step in during the hard times and hold you up when life gets really hard.

Listen to the wise women. – The mentors God has placed in your life have so much wisdom to give.  Yes, they raised babies back in the olden times without iPads and vLogs, but they still know so much.  They are the best encouragers and listeners. They have lived through motherhood. They are the survivors of motherhood, and they know how to guide those of us in the trenches.  Listen to their wisdom.

Love your husband. – The best advice I received from one of those wise mentors in my village was to work on my marriage.  Put your husband first. Your children will benefit many times over from growing up in a house where they witness their parents in a loving, healthy marriage–so much more than they would benefit if you put their needs first.  They NEED to see a marriage survive in a cruel world. They need to see examples of how a husband and wife treat and respect each other on a daily basis. They need the emotional support your healthy marriage will give them when they are struggling.  Put your marriage first.

You are not responsible for your child’s happiness. – You canNOT own their feelings. They will experience all the feelings, and that is a good thing.  They need to learn how to handle these emotions while they are safely under your care. Let them be bored, let them be sad, let them be all of it. Help them process their emotions and teach them how to act appropriately while feeling these emotions, but do not try to change their emotions.  Do not feel guilty when they are sad or bored or struggling. They will experience all these big emotions as an adult. Prepare them for life by letting them live through these emotions when they are small.

 Read your Bible. – Set aside time to read your Bible every day, even when they are little–no, especially when they are little!  You need this. God’s Word will bring comfort and healing. Keep it close! Put it on your dinner table, and let it be present always.  Open it after dinner and read together as a family. Let your children grow up seeing you read your Bible. Let them see you put God’s Word before their wants.  I know it is hard to find the time. But I promise you, this is more important than clean floors and losing baby weight.

Let them fail. – This is a tough one.  This one will break your mama heart, but it is oh so important for your children.  They need to fail. They need to know they are human. They need to learn how to handle and grow from their failure.  They need to learn this while they are little and still under your roof so when they are an adult they handle this with maturity. Let the forgotten homework result in a zero, don’t go back to get their lunch box, let them take the consequences for their actions, and love them through their failures.  Teach them that their worth has NOTHING to do with their accomplishments. Love them all the same no matter the grade, no matter the goals scored, no matter the games won. Let your love for them reflect the Heavenly Father’s love for them. They do not have to earn it in any way. Work at making sure they understand this.  Let them fail.

Honor the body that carried your babies and don’t let your daughters see you hate it. –  Your body has done amazing and glorious things. It has grown and birthed humans! Your body has fed and nurtured your babies through the first years of their lives. God created your body!  It won’t look like it used to before it made the tiny people. That is ok. That is how it is supposed to look. I know it is hard to accept change and you liked your body more before it was squishier and had all these new lines that won’t fade. BUT when you verbalize those feelings, your daughters are watching.  Don’t let them hear you are fat. Don’t model a negative body image for them. Break the cycle that runs rampant in our culture. Teach them about being healthy and living a healthy lifestyle. But don’t hate the body that brought them into the world. Don’t teach them that looks are more important than what is in the heart.

Find perspective and try not to make mountains out of molehills. – The parenting stage you are currently struggling with may seem like the most important days of your child’s life, but I promise you, they (and you) will survive this difficult season.  You will face other more important and difficult challenges together. So whatever season you are trying to conquer, just know that it is not as big of a deal as it feels in the moment. No child goes off to college still in diapers. They will eventually sleep through the night in their own bed, master reading, survive their first crush, and learn about the birds and the bees.  You will all survive. It is ok if they master this development a little later than others–there will be something else they master first. Don’t stress about it.

Consider the advice, and then figure out what works for your family. –  There are a lot of suggested ways to raise and parent children out there, and you will encounter some very STRONG opinions over the years.  And to be honest, so much of it will be conflicting. So you cannot possibly listen to it all. Take in what you feel is right and best for your family.  And in the end, if it works for your family, then that is the best way to raise your children. Don’t let the LOUD opinions out there steer you off course or make you doubt what you have chosen.  Listen to your gut.

 Acknowledge your strengths and accept your own weaknesses. – Do not compete with other moms.  You will lose. There will always be another mom out there who throws a better birthday party, bakes a better cake, cooks a healthier dinner, and seems to do it all.  The truth is, they are failing in areas you can’t see. There will be parts of this motherhood journey that you will ROCK and others that you just can’t master. That is ok. We all have different gifts.  Celebrate them, and don’t compete with other moms to be the best in anything. Social media can be a great tool, and it can also be an abyss of self-loathing. Don’t try to do it all. Your children will be just fine.  If they are loved, then it will not matter if their birthday parties are over the top, their lunches are organic, their bedroom is color-coordinated, or their Halloween costumes are homemade.

Parent for the End Goal – Even if you are holding a baby in your arms right now, look years into the future and take a moment and figure out what you want that little baby to look like when they walk out of your house as an adult.  Write it down. I want to raise a child to be kind, polite, and considerate. I want my children to love their Maker, to know their Bible, to put others above themselves. I hope they are brave when life is scary. I hope they work hard and give everything they do their best effort.  I hope they use their lives that God has given them to serve Him. Once I figured out my goals for my children, it helped me focus my time parenting the skills that really mattered to me. Being highly educated or on the swim team weren’t goals I had for them, so why was I spending so many nights battling tears trying to achieve milestones on a timeline that really didn’t matter in the end? Parenting my littles with the end goal in mind has forced me to focus on what really matters to me and reminds me to help them to grow into the adults I pray they become.

There will come a day when you are no longer a new mom.  You won’t necessarily feel any wiser because there are still plenty of motherhood milestones ahead of you.  You will have no idea how to conquer any of them. But then again, you have weathered many motherhood storms, and those tiny people haven’t beaten you down yet.   There will come a day when a new mom will come to you and unload all her mothering woes over a cup of coffee. Here is how to respond: don’t give her any advice at all.  Let her complain, cry, question, vent, and get it all off her chest. Smile at her. Give her a tissue. Give her a hug. Let her know that she is doing a great job. Let her know that this season of struggles will pass.  And let her know that you have been there, too.

You have learned so much as a mom. And one of the most important lessons of all is that other moms don’t need your advice; they need your encouragement.  Give that out in bunches. Only give out the advice when it is specifically asked for and even then, pile on the encouragement to go with it. Because mothering is tiring and hard and sometimes when it’s been a day of yelling at children and messy floors and sleepless nights, the best remedy is a hug—not a blog post on parenting.

Hang in there, Mama.  You will survive motherhood.  It will beat you down and stretch you far.  You will have beautiful moments with these tiny humans God gave you, and you will have moments when you will question everything.  Count it all joy! God chose you for these precious children. He knows what He is doing. He picked you to be their mom. Raise them up in Him.

“Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.” Proverbs 22:6