My Realization and Moving On...

So, after posting about how much I love to take a shower, I had an A HA! moment in the shower the other day.

I posted here about how I'd been feeling my first two weeks home with Ezra.  I'm not going to lie, it was a very difficult transition for me.  Don't get me wrong, I loved my son the minute I saw him, (the minute I saw those two pink lines actually), but add hormones, neuroses, guilt, and lack of sleep to the immense changes that happen when you bring a baby home, and I was a basket case.

I was struggling with why I didn't feel happy about this baby - that I loved so much, but I just couldn't get to a place where I loved spending every minute with him.  I couldn't shake the feeling that it was just going to be too much for me to handle and that I wasn't capable of rising to the challenge.  It was more anxiety and self-doubt than anything.

Well, in the shower the other day, I just kept asking myself (and God) why on earth could I not be happy? This was exactly what I had prayed for, longed for, and felt like I was ready for - for over a year.  I just kept running through the whole experience - trying to conceive, miscarriage, pregnancy test, pregnancy, birth, baby.  It was a long and difficult journey, all of which was supposed to end the way it has, but I still couldn't get myself to a place of positivity about the situation.

Then it hit me.  I was having a hard time feeling like a deserved such a perfect little man, a wonderful and helpful husband, and all the support that family and friends were giving me.  I realized that the somewhat difficult journey to motherhood had left me a little jaded and glass-half-full. 

Even though I'd had a positive pregnancy test, an easy and healthy pregnancy, and a perfect little baby - my brain wouldn't register it.  The entire time we were trying to get pregnant and I was pregnant, I had been preparing for the worst and not the best.  Miscarriage, illness, problems with labor, something to go wrong with Ezra when he did arrive.  I can't imagine how much more difficult I'd be making it for myself if my journey had been even more challenging as many people's are.

I was feeling like I didn't deserve this perfect little baby.  Like it had all been a fluke and I think in a way, I was feeling anxious and self-doubt to prepare myself for whatever might go wrong - because that was how this baby thing had gone for so long.  It's amazing how your brain tries to protect itself - but really you're making it all worse. 

So, in the shower, I let all of that go - and accepted my perfect baby, whether or not I was perfect - and thanked God for giving me such a gift.  Now when I'm feeling overwhelmed, I try to say a little prayer of thanks so maybe I won't yank out all of my hair. :)