Without a doubt, few things are as worthy of doting and acclamation as the introduction of a new life. Babies have had us wrapped around their tiny fingers for as long as we’ve existed as a species. How else would we survive? How else would mothers find the motivation to feed and comfort and care for an infant if not for our biological predisposition to adore?
This adoration is life-altering, an exists, it seems, often at the expense of our own self. You hear about it all the time. The baby is born and the mother is lost. Lost in the busyness, lost in the fatigue, lost in the all-encompassing sense of responsibility. And lost in the love, the deep, sweep-you-off-your-feet, profound love. We love our babies.
Image cred: Giggles and Wishes Photography
I’m so incredibly grateful that our bodies have essentially mastered falling in love. It happens with such little effort and it motivates us to power through the many exhausting phases of motherhood. But a part of me wished this love wasn’t so frequently built on the repression of our own self.
I don’t mean to sound selfish, but sometimes I’d like to feel like I was more than “just a mother”.
Don’t get me wrong, being a mother is the most incredible, soul-feeding experience of my life. I would choose my children again and again and again and never falter in that decision. But sometimes it’s hard to accept that when I make that choice, I’m also actively choosing not me. This isn’t to say that motherhood isn’t part of who I am. It most definitely is, and I am proud of that. But I was a person before I was a mother. As a mother, I’m a person still.
Today, I could tell for the first time in forever that someone could see me, not just my children. She, a mother herself, complimented my baby, asked how old, the usual. But then she asked, “and, how are you?”. I could tell she meant it sincerely. I could tell she asked intentionally in a way to express, without saying it directly, that I mattered too. That my kids weren’t the only thing worth noticing or considering or even looking at, that there was another person in the room. I mumbled something awkwardly about having been down this road as this was my third child and continued on my way, as my baby was beginning to fuss from being still. But the simple act of consideration stuck with me. In all of the five years that I’ve had children, that interaction was the first time a stranger has asked about me.
Babies and children are magnetic. They are sweet and squishy and adorable. Everything down to their very smell draws us in and leaves us in love. But please, please don’t forget about mothers. Don’t forget about the woman behind the curtain. Maybe she’s stressed and not very social and hopes you don’t look too closely, but believe me when I say she will appreciate being acknowledged as a piece of the puzzle. She will appreciate being considered. She will appreciate feeling loved.
So of course, love on all the babies. But love on the mother, too.
