How I Became a Mom – Beauty in the Ordinary

It’s time to wrap up our week of how we became moms, and I want to tell you – I chose to go last intentionally. Quite honestly, it was because I wasn’t really sure what my story was, and it all seemed so ordinary. When I was a kid, I never really thought too much about if I wanted to be a mom or not. It just always seemed like the natural progression of things to me – grow up, get married, have kids.

I’m the oldest of four girls in my family, and there is a big age gap between me and my next sister – 9 years. When my sisters finally came around, I was old enough to help, and I helped a lot. My dad was working multiple jobs at the time to allow my mom to stay home, so after school and on weekends I got an early crash course in the basics of parenting. At 9 years old, I started changing diapers, giving bottles, helping with naps, and more. I gave my sisters baths, helped them potty train, taught them the alphabet and more. Most of the pictures we have of their childhoods are photos I took. Even through all that, I still didn’t really think much about the mom thing – it just seemed like what would happen eventually.

And then it all happened. I consider myself fortunate that for me, it all happened in exactly the way I expected. Chris and I married in 2011. After one early miscarriage, we welcomed Abbie on December 21, 2012. Ella followed on November 3, 2016. I’ve been a mom for almost 4.5 years now, longer if you count pregnancy. I even count some of my “mom” experience back to helping out with my sisters. For me, everything went according to plan, but it still is incredible to think about how beautiful it is. How amazing is it that we become moms at all?

Every day, women become mothers, in all different ways. There’s the planned way I did. There are moms who have complications. There are foster moms and adoptive moms. There are moms of multiples. There are young moms and older moms. There are moms who try to control the process but can’t, and moms that endure countless medical interventions to get there. We all have a different journey to get to motherhood. We all have a different way to get to this seemingly ordinary role.

As much as I thought my journey to motherhood was ordinary, motherhood is actually extraordinary. There is so much that can’t be explained. It’s beautiful and messy and all-encompassing. It’s frustrating and tiring and different every day. Sometimes you love your kids so much you can’t stand it, and sometimes you would do anything for just a few hours alone. We learn something new about our kids or motherhood each day, and it all flies by so fast, even when it feels like it’s crawling.

And that, mamas, is beautifully extraordinary.