We unravel.. and we rebuild

(photo by @fleetingandco)

Love after babies…

There are things you are warned about before having kids. The expense- the countless diapers, car seats, strollers, and cribs. The sleep deprivation, the crying, nursing, and teething. Physical changes like stretch marks and bags under your eyes, wardrobe changes: nursing bras, and stretchy black leggings.

But some changes are far more subtle. 

You’ll find you have fewer expectations for those around you. A deepened sense of understanding, compassion, and empathy is a beautiful side effect of motherhood. Someone needs to cancel plans, show up late, or reschedule? No problem. However, somehow, this deepened understanding and well of empathy and compassion often doesn't translate to ourselves or our significant other.

Everything feels high stakes now. 

This tension of motherhood, of loving yourself, and your partner is that becoming a mother will both grow and shrink your world. As your life revolves around sleep schedules, feeding schedules, changed diapers, and sacred naptimes. Your kids get older and then it revolves around drop-offs, pick-ups, field trips, class parties, play dates, and sports practices and games.

You start to learn, messes happen, and mistakes happen.

But if you don’t surrender at some point this will start to break you.

You become undone. You become broken by how tired you are. This great undoing however can become your great remaking. It takes a monumental sacrifice to surrender to this process of transformation. It’s physical, it’s mental, it’s spiritual, it’s emotional, and will extend beyond you to your relationships. At first, it feels like it's all unraveling…your life, your identity, your marriage, your friendships.

As I approach a decade of marriage and 8 years of parenting I can safely tell you that life after both my babies being born has been my great unraveling… and further down the road how it’s led to a rebuilding.

They tell you it gets easier… parenting, love, life, and relationships.

And I don’t know that it has gotten any easier to be honest, but we get better. We learn we grow, we forgive, we heal, we surrender, we unravel and we rebuild.

This post is part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to view the next post in the series "Love After Babies".