I love being a mother. Why else, of course, would I have become a "new mom" so many times? However, there are certain aspects of motherhood that no mom truly loves or takes much joy in.
There are, of course, the sleepless nights...my husband and I have spent a large number of nearly sleepless nights over the years. There are the newborn nights, the nightmares and the illnesses that all parents deal with. We are in the midst of another round of newborn nights, so if you see me napping in my van at school pickup time and most parents have picked their children up from the playground, please knock and wake me up. However, if you see me napping and the children are not yet released, please let me catch the next few blessed minutes of oblivion...they might be the only ones I'll see that day!
Another area of motherhood that I find little to no joy in revolves around the housework. Our house often looks as if a mini-cyclone has gone through. In truth, the cyclones in my home come in many sizes, starting about the time the children learned to crawl. Once upon a time, when there was only one sweet, cherubic child who was mobile, I thought this was easy to deal with...you just simply pick up the toys that are lying about the little love's room and toss them into the bucket in the corner and throw their cute little clothes into the wash. That method didn't bode well for us, I am afraid. As our family size has increased, the size of our home has decreased (surprises me, too). We have toys and clothes in every single area of our house and yard...and don't get me started on the shoes! I am definitely NOT attached to my children's belongings, and clearly they aren't, either, as they are all over my house. Now that I am a declared full-time homemaker, I hope to get a handle on this...if the sleepless nights allow.
The area of motherhood that I am particularly disenchanted with today are the changes that it causes in my body. Pregnancy necessitates changes and God has created a miracle in the maternal body's ability to provide a safe haven for the new baby, bring him forth into the outside world and nourish him for some time as an infant. It is a beautiful thing! What is not beautiful, however, is the weight that is surely still around from my first and subsequent pregnancies, the widened hips from expansion of the pelvis to birth our babies, abdominal muscles torn as the uterus demands more room, and all things associated with the recovery from childbirth (specifically c-section, in my case). The most annoying to me today, however, are the effects that my pregancy has had on other areas of the body, specifically my ankles. Many women experience swelling of their ankles, as did I, and are overjoyed when our ankles return to "normal", no longer resembling sausages in casings, and I was no exception. However, I have had an increase of ankle pain over the past 2 weeks, which I was associating with a fall back in March. At the time, the PA decided to treat my injury as a sprain, and to not x-ray because I was pregnant. Today, I visited the orthopedic doctor, who x-rayed both ankles. Fortunately, there was no sign of fracture and everything was normal "for someone my age". Unfortunately, the diagnosis was soft tissue inflammation of the synovial spaces due to pregnancy-related loosening of the joints. The prescribed treatment is ibuprofen around the clock and neoprene wrap, both of which I was already doing without a visit to the doctor.
The prognosis: the synovitis should clear up with or without treatment in a mere six to nine months! Maybe the sleepless nights due to a newborn will be gone by then as well...I'm not holding my breath for the chaos in the house to improve for a couple of decades, though!
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