Motherhood isn’t important enough to write about, is it?

Left without words

I don’t have anything important to say.

At least not right now.

It’s been five months since I’ve had my second child. My first son. Five months. That’s still wild to me. Yesterday I looked at my 5 and 10 year goals that I wrote in 2022. One of my 5 year goals was to have grown my family by at least one more addition. Here we are two years and a million prayers later, and Ive accomplished that goal.

I often cannot wrap my head around this life. So much can change in a year. A year ago in September, I was about a month or two months pregnant. I had just found a job working as a literacy instructor (which I loved), and I was feeling so much fear about starting motherhood over.

I had my daughter 8 years ago. Almost nine. I was a teenager. A young teen mom makes plenty of mistakes. Mistakes that hurt the child, mistakes that’ve hurt myself. When I found out I was pregnant again, I felt the same excitement, but this time fear that I would hurt my son.

In 2021, Yahuah told me to pray to conceive, so I prayed that prayer until I found out I was pregnant. After that, I kind of felt suspended. I hadn’t given much thought to actually praying for a ready heart. Yes I prayed in repentance, I prayed in desire to grow, I prayed for wisdom in motherhood, I prayed for provision. But it didn’t dawn on me to pray to be mentally ready until I was pregnant. That’s when I realized exactly how unready I really was.

The newborn days have passed. Baby sleeps longer, isn’t as fussy, and is ready to crawl. While I’m still breastfeeding 100%, I’m finding a bit more freedom time wise. Yet, when I sit down to write a blog post, an email newsletter, or an Instagram post… all I can think is…

I have nothing important to say.

I’ve written about everything I care to write about on here, for the most part.

⁃ family

⁃ Home

⁃ Food

⁃ Spirituality and scripture

⁃ Marriage

⁃ Femininity and biblical womanhood

I’ve said everything that I know. My life is no longer interesting, at least to me. I’ve lost the spontaneity that I used to have. The freedom. I don’t go anywhere or do anything. I’m with my baby everyday. Which is a good thing personally. But not something interesting enough to write about.

My baby smiles at me. He laughs when I kiss his toes. He kicks the bubbles during bath time and gets me wet every single night. He shivers when I get him dressed. He smiles when his dad enters the room.

I wear him in a carrier when I cook and clean. He watches me prepare dinner, and he whines for half cooked chicken or ground beef, unaware that it needs twenty more minutes.

Being outdoors stuns him into silence. No matter the weather. He hates sitting in his car seat. Sometimes I breastfeed in the back seat. He’ll drink for 60 seconds then start looking around, almost as if he was pretending to be thirsty… I’m onto his little games!

Speaking of games, he likes baby songs. To be tickled. He likes when people dance. He’s a people person but he also enjoys his space as well. He’s like me in that way.

That’s about it. Motherhood is interesting and fun and fruitful and challenging and draining and rewarding. But as a topic of writing, I just don’t see the silver lining. Things are pretty monotonous at this stage. Very routine. What’s there to write about? I do the same thing every day.

I have nothing important to say.

This isn’t how I envisioned blogging after baby #2. I pictured aesthetic photographs, long blog posts with cute updates, and a swift return to my pre-pregnancy writing/publishing schedule. I know I’m capable, I’ve seen other women do it.

One thing that shocked me about this pregnancy was how it racked my body. Sure, pregnancy eight years ago was intense and painful and dreadful in the last trimester. But things were going so perfect this pregnancy until the last couple months. I ended up needing emergency surgery. And if that wasn’t enough, I ended up having the same problem two months later, two weeks before I was supposed to give birth.

Since giving birth, I still feel physically vulnerable in that way. Fragile and Not yet fully restored. Some Days I’m exhausted even if I’ve only laid in bed between meals. I grow cysts out of nowhere. Have insomnia. Always mourning the past or stressing about the future. I’m never right where I am, I always seem to be somewhere else and it is almost always due to the way motherhood has affected my perspective this time around.

But who knows. Maybe I will share my birth experience. We had a natural unmediated birth with a team of midwives and a very lovely doula who also took care of my postpartum needs. It’s hard to think about revisiting that pain, mentally. Perhaps that is the hiccup here.

I might have something important to say but it may be painful to say it. I’m always talking about how vulnerability is one of the most important facets of femininity (and really just human connection overall)… and yet here I am struggling to simply say “I was hurting. I’m still hurting.”

Not just from the pains of childbearing. I’m hurting from not having the recovery experience I envisioned. Hurting from not having my family here on the east coast to share this joy with me. Hurting from the fluctuating hormones. Hurting from smiling when I really want to cry. Sometimes I do but maybe not enough.

I know many women feel like their bodies failed them during or after birth. I wouldn’t say my body failed me, but rather it reminded me that in order for childbearing to be a true miracle, Yahuah must demonstrate that it is only something that can be accomplished by His strength alone. And let me tell you, His strength was all I had. And all I needed.

We are moving into our own home in October and while I’m relieved to be getting out of my in-laws nest, I’m nervous about the cost of living and how expensive everything has become. More importantly, I don’t want to be driven into the workforce again, forced to put my baby in some daycare or hire a nanny to care for him while I slave for pennies. That’s a true nightmare for me.

My prayer was not only for a peaceful pregnancy, birth and postpartum experience, but for the means and provision to be home with my children. Nothing is more important.

I remind myself of that whenever I feel bad about not publishing a post or sending a newsletter. Nothing is more important than my family. I’ve tried to juggle it all but eventually you get to a point where you realize you only have two hands. And I need both of mine in order to hold my children.

I’m so ready for fall. One thing I truly treasure about being on the east coast is the autumn foliage. In Texas, we had brown or green leaves. But here in northern Virginia, it gets red— like really red. Yellow— like really yellow. Bright orange. Vibrant burnt brown. It’s moviesque, so cinematic. It’s also less rainy than where I’m from in Texas. Autumn here is balanced and everything that the internet always claimed autumn should be.

My husband got me pumpkin spice coffee a few weeks ago without my consent. I mean he just went out and got coffee without even asking me what I wanted. I was a little annoyed when he came in with the drink. But oh my, when I started drinking it… I was… suddenly aware that another season change was upon us. Not in an anxious “oh no time is flying by” kind of way. More so in a “things change, and that is what I need” kind of way.

Now I’m going to figure out how to make my own pumpkin spice latte at home! And hopefully by the time I’ve mastered the recipe, I’ll feel I have something important enough to sit down and write about.

Until then, I may just keep popping in and out ad hoc to give updates or share a thought.

I’d love to hear about how your summer went and how you’re preparing for the Holy Days ☺️🍁🍂