Navigating You: Becoming a Mother

Picture this one moment:

The doctor hands you the baby you literally just birthed. Emotions are high. You are exhausted beyond belief. You look over to your partner and you both smile like damn.. we really did that.

Now picture this:

You get home and now you are back to regularly scheduled programming: cleaning needs to be done, baby needs to be fed and changed, you still need to eat yet you're exhausted, people are texting/calling you or your partner to visit, you're pretty sure you need to either food shop or throw in another load of laundry.

You can't tell me this hasn't been your mind at one point. I'd call you a liar.

It's so easy within this time frame when your entire life is doing a 180 to completely lose sight of who you are. You just went through something incredibly traumatic. Your mind is full of guilt on wanting to do things for yourself. Hell, even far removed from post partum these thoughts can still creep on in unsolicited.

I'm gonna hold your hand when I say this: tell those thoughts to fuck right off. You can be a phenomenal mom and yourself at the same time. You can either fall back in love with things you used to enjoy pre baby OR you can come to find new interests/things you'd like to try in this new season of life. Showing up for you is still showing up for them. You cannot pour from an empty cup. That is a recipe for disaster. A happy mom will always be better for baby.

Always.