As a new mother, I am often asked, “how do you like being a mother?” I think that is a strange question to ask someone. If I said, “I hate it” everyone would think I was the worst woman in the world, right? Instead of being a sarcastic, I always give the same responses,
“I love it!”
“It is the best thing that ever happened to me.”
“It is a challenge, but I wouldn’t change it for the world.”
The other day, someone asked me a question that truly made me think about my motherhood journey; a question that I feel was the most difficult to answer. “What is the most difficult part of being a mother?” I stopped, thought about it, and there were so many things that came to mind like:
- Teaching my daughter to latch
- Pumping late at night so my breasts don’t become engorged
- Getting my daughter to fall asleep without nursing
- Praying that she does not bite my nipples
- Vaccinations
- Waking up on the hour in the middle of the night to breastfeed
- Always being tired
- The selflessness
- Repeating myself over-and-over again
- patience overall
Although, these things are all challenging aspects of motherhood, they are not the most difficult part. The most challenging part of being a mother, and I know most mothers would agree is learning to let go!
Letting go of your children, allowing them to explore, being away from them, being unable to protect them from the world, this is our challenge because from the moment they are born, you are slowly letting them go, and it happens almost immediately.
- Allowing your child cry themselves to sleep so that they are not sleeping in your bed until they are 5, is letting them go.
- When they crawl, walk, run, climb stairs, or when they try to get off the couch and the bed on their own, this is a part of letting them go, and it hurts.
As a mother, we are forced to watch our children grow; every day they are getting older, and it never stops. Children grow up and that is the most difficult part about being a mother. You have to let them go, be, learn, see, and experience life. Every parent wants and misses when their child needed them for everything.
It’s so hard for me to wrap my head around her first day of Kindergarten; her first sleepover, first adult tooth, first relationship, her first kiss, her first breakup; her graduation, moving away from home, getting acceptance into college, when she gets married, her first child…
From the day a child is born, you are letting them go, and its the hardest thing that I have ever done.