Motherhood is nothing like I expected it to be.  Its dirty, exhausting, and sometimes maddening.  Its the baby eating the dog food and the dog eating the baby’s poop.  Its a toddler tantrum in the middle of a parking lot.  Its eating your dinner on the toilet because you just need a few moments alone. It’s the baby trying to bite your nipple off and refusing to sleep unless your bodies are touching.  Its dog hair fluffs flying across the living room, even though you literally just mopped.  Its always having food on your shirt from the kids.  Its someone using your leg as a snot wiper.
But in between these moments, there are moments of pure gold.  Its the baby sleeping soundly while and you’re 4 year old joining you for yoga.  Its a kiss on the lips from a little boy who thinks you’re the best.  Its those kicking legs and joyful grunts your baby makes when you return to him.  Its all of these things and more.
It will probably take years off my life in stress but add even more back in love.
Sigh, Motherhood.

​

I have been slowly working my way through Mo Gawdat’s book Solve for Happy. One of the things he says that has helped him to be happy, even in times of immense loss, is a happiness list. His list is forever growing. When I started my list last week, it had things like coffee, the post run high, my kids’ smiles. There’s one BIG thing though. There’s an experience (or 2 actually) that so fully flood my body with contentment when I think about it. It has happened twice to me but in two very different ways– The moment when I finally met my babies. With Leif, the labor was painful and long. The labor itself was not peaceful but powerful, painful, and exhausting. The emotions that reached every corner of my body when I pushed him out were absolute Heaven.

Rein, was different. My labor was peaceful, even zenful. I enjoyed the waves of contractions that rang in my hips. I enjoyed working through each one. Then, as we know, the birth took a quick turn (literally, he turned transverse) and I ended up with a traumatic cesarean. I can still hear my own voice sometimes, the screaming– “Why isn’t he crying?!?!?!?!” Yesterday, while running, I remembered this. I felt my heart racing and tears pooling in my eyes. And then I said to myself, “He’s alive. It’s okay. He’s okay.” When they placed him on my chest, the experience was much different. It was relief. It was “Oh My God, we’re both still alive…” It was “Welcome home, how was a I complete without you?”

​When the world feels really dark, this is where I go. I go to those first moments of holding Leif and Rein. Their wrinkly bodies on my bare chest. My lips, between joyful cries, telling them how much I love them and kissing their heads over and over while midwives and doctors sew me back together (I needed to be sewn up after both births–just different places).
This is the feeling I pray ushers me into the afterlife when my time on earth is done. This is the sacred space where I will always feel at home.