The Rollercoaster of Emotions of a First Time Mother

Becoming a mother has made me feel in ways that I never had before. Emotions that I have felt previously but not to the same extremes and not with the same intensity. And certainly not changing from one far end of the spectrum to the other within a fleeting moment. Now Im not just talking about love.

Of course yes the love I have for my child is like no other, deeper and stronger than anything i have ever felt before. That one i was prepared for, in fact i expected it. Every day since i saw those two little lines on that stick, the love i have for my little boy has grown and grown like a tall oak tree, slowly creeping up each day.
However, there have been other emotions that I wasn’t prepared for or if i was, i wasn’t prepared to feel them so intensely. Lets have a think about some of these.

Exhaustion: This is not just about a lack of sleep or lack of quality sleep. I’m sure even a mother (albeit a very lucky one) who gets 8 hrs solid sleep at night still feels exhaustion by the time her child is tucked up in bed at night. This is about giving so much of yourself from the moment you wake til the minute the sun sets on that day and beyond. I wholeheartedly believe in the notion that a person needs time for themselves to be able to give fully to another, this is not a luxury but a necessity.

Guilt and Fear – Is whatever I am doing, even if I have read every book, talked to so many mothers and trusted in my own instincts and heart speak, going to be right or enough? The enormous responsibility of being entrusted with building a strong, stable, loving launching pad for these little people to start the rest of their lives from, is at times overwhelming. I have witnessed firsthand the negative impact a dysfunctional or unstable childhood can have on adults that lasts a lifetime. I think of the words from a Savage Garden song that used to love as a teenager “I believe that my parents did the best job they knew how to do”. Yes but is that enough? I guess we just have look into the beautiful eyes of our sons or daughters, do the very best we can every day, and hope to hell it will be.

Pride and Joy – the moment I saw his first smile or the first time the word ‘mama’ came bursting from his little lips. The first year is a year full of beautiful firsts and I was never quite prepared for how filled with pride I would become or how joyous it would be to witness my baby master each one. I was surprised that despite knowing that at some point my little boy would roll and crawl and stand, I was so ridiculously excited when he did actually do it.

Frustration – Man this one can be the hardest to overcome, ride through and come out the other side still feeling at peace with your actions and behavior in those moments of intense frustration. How is that we can be calm, collected, happy individuals in pretty much all other aspects of our lives but at times our interactions with our children can cause us to dive deep into waves of frustration like no other.

Confusion: in this age of information, it is easy to become overwhelmed, confused and genuinely bogged down with all the options and choices available to us when choosing parenting philosophies and strategies. Do I let my child self settle, cry it out or whatever you prefer to call it? Or will this cause psychological damage as some ‘baby experts’ claim it may. Do I follow baby led weaning and what about giving peanut butter or eggs? It seems as each hurdle is overcome, there is another and another question that pops up and I spend hours reading and contemplating what is the best approach for our family.

The strangest part about this all, is the experience of feeling all these emotions (and many more) a hundred times over in any given day often jumping from love to exhaustion to frustration, to then confusion and guilt. To feel such intense frustration that you behave in ways that you are not proud of and later regret. To feel in the same moment, guilt for feeling the frustration and even anger, and then confusion and always so much love for that little being as he/she stares back at you. To have all these emotions swirling round and bouncing up and down in my already exhausted and overwhelmed mind, is a crazy and confusing but oh so rewarding experience.