My Wesley Clarke + My thoughts on Birth and Motherhood

My oldest son Wesley turns 6 years old today. Time is insane. I can’t believe it was 6 years ago that I was (impatiently) waiting to meet this sweet kid. Obviously i’ve been thinking a lot about the kid who made me a mom, and motherhood over these past 6 years. Its been quite the journey and ive learned a lot, so I wanted to share some of my stories and some thoughts.

Lets start with his birth story.

I have a tumor in my right eye that would later be diagnosed as cancer, but at the time we didn’t know that. The tumor had bled several times through out my pregnancy, filling my iris with blood and then forming a clot which was very painful. My OBGYN decided that the pressure of pushing during Labor and Delivery could possibly start my eye bleeding again, and he didn’t want that, so we opted for a C-Section. We were scheduled to go in to the hospital at 10:30 to prep for the C-Section. We had been trying to sell our house since before we even knew we were pregnant, and finally got an offer just a few weeks before I was scheduled for the C-Section. The final inspection was scheduled for the day of my sons birth, which wasn’t a big deal, because we would just be at the hospital while they did the final walk through and inspection.

The weekend before his birth was record breaking cold. Some pipes in our basement had frozen and we weren’t able to do any dishes for several days. Pipes all over the valley had frozen and all of the plumbers were crazy busy, so the day before his birth we finally got someone in there to fix the pipes. Just before we had to leave for the hospital, I was doing the dishes so that I could come home to a clean house. I turned the water off at my sink so we could leave, but we could still hear running water. We ran downstairs to the basement and found a pipe had burst and was spraying water EVERYWHERE. My husband turned the water off to the whole hours, we used literally every single towel in the house to sop up as much water as we could, threw them all in a laundry basket and ran to the hospital. Ohhhh it was stressful.

My husband was so sweet and told me to just focus on bringing our baby into the world and that he would take care of everything with the house. Remember how we were supposed to have the final walk through that day? My husband spent most the next couple of days balancing being there for me, enjoying the birth of his first child, and rescheduling home inspections, contacting plumbers, figuring out what it meant for the sale of the house, talking to our insurance company, ect. Usually I would be very involved in those sorts of things, but he took care of everything and I just got to cuddle my sweet baby.

Everyone tells you that meeting your baby is unlike anything else and that you are instantly overwhelmed with love. That wasn’t the case for me. Honestly I think I was in a shock at meeting him. I loved him instantly, but It wasn’t an overwhelming kind of love and truthfully I didn’t feel connected to him. It worried me, because everyone told me how it would be, and my experience wasn’t anything like that. I thought maybe I didn’t love him the way I should, maybe i wasn’t going to be a good mom, ect. Now, with 6 years of perspective on my side, I can confidently say there was nothing wrong with me or capacity to love or to mother. While I was in awe of the very real magic of birth, I had just had a living thing literally cut out of my body. Of course I felt weird about it. It took me a long time to feel comfortable to share my experience meeting my son. But when I realized that maybe if someone who had similar experience as me (and lots of people do) had been more open or honest about it not being love at first sight, then maybe I wouldn’t have wasted time worrying something was wrong with me. Im not saying that people should have warned me that might happen, because I don’t think anyone, especially first time moms need to sit and worry about all the scary parts of giving birth and meeting your child. Positivity goes such a long way! But I think people need to understand that we each have our own individual experiences. We can share what our experiences were like, but we need to be careful about telling other people how they are going to experience something. Or how they will feel. Everyone is different. Its OK that I had a different experience from a lot of people.

I did eventually have that overwhelming feeling of love for my son, but it wasn’t until a day or two later, when my body wasn’t still open on an operating table with lots of bright lights, doctors, nurses, ect. It was in the quite of my hospital room when it was just me and him. I was holding him, looking at him in awe of what I had created and I just burst into tears. I loved him SO MUCH. I still do love him very, very much, but my view of motherhood looks so much different than I thought it would. I love that people share their experiences and I love spreading positivity, but I also feel very deeply that it is ok to share our struggles as well. People can connect through happy experiences as well as hard times. I spent too much time feeling alone because I didn’t feel like I knew how to be a mom. I didn’t know how to spend time with him, and i certainly didn’t know how to teach him the difference between right and wrong. We think that we become parents and we just suddenly have all the answers. Not true (unfortunately). Six years into motherhood and I still feel lost and confused sometimes. It takes lots of patience, learning, doing these wrong and lots of prayer. But I also feel so fulfilled. He fills my soul. He makes me laugh daily. He is so fun and sweet and I love watching him learn and grow. He is the best big brother to my younger son Sawyer. He has loved him from the day he was born and watching them bond has been one of the best parts of motherhood. And SOMETIMES I have parenting wins where I KNOW i’m doing something right.

“ In raising children I have lost my mind but raised my soul”