The job that never ends

So here I am, laundry piling, dishes piling. I did dishes twice yesterday and then made a nice meal, which made more dishes. I do not own a dish washer, though I keep hinting, which has now turned into begging, for one. Laundry three times just to have two more loads to do today. Swept the floor once and tried to get around to mopping, but my son made another mess on the floor and I just wondered what was the use? It's just going to get messy again anyway... Where does all this work come from? I truly do believe there are people living here that I haven't met yet.

I feel this need to upkeep my home. Not just for cleanliness, but for that "just in case", for safety, and for unexpected company. But why? I am working around the clock picking up, putting away, wiping, scrubbing, just to do it all again in twenty minutes. So why? I take pride in my clean home, but why? I feel my family walks right by the mess, ignoring it until it overtakes that part of the house. But then I still need to clean it. I do love cleaning, but I am the only one doing it. But why? Those who make the messes should clean them, am I right?

I'm not ungrateful in any way, but after nearly ten years of picking up everyone else's mess, why? Should I have laid down the law early and refused to pick up the messes created by others around me? It would have ended in many fights and a filthy house from everyone refusing to pick up after themselves, so I took it upon myself. Should I have taught my husband, my children, to clean the messes as soon as they are made to prevent having to scrape applesauce off the kitchen chair, to prevent missing a dirty shirt under the bed or socks under the couch after the laundry is already done? Should I have to check under the couch and bed every time I do laundry?

So many unanswered questions. I am a housewife, a stay-at-home mother, but that does not mean I enjoy it. Some days I dislike my "job". Some people could claim that's ungrateful, but it is a thankless job. I get zero pay for it. I don't get a paid vacation. I don't get designated lunches without jam hands in it. I don't get designated breaks to sit without a child on my lap, pawing at my breasts. I do not get the luxury of a full night of sleep without comforting a child or two when they wake multiple times per night. I do not get the luxury of just walking outside for a breath of fresh air without children bursting out of the door and having to wrangle them back in. I do not get to even do dishes without children climbing up my legs or make dinner without a child climbing on me and having to physically move them to prevent burns.

Does that make me ungrateful? Does that make me a terrible mother? I do not have a babysitter. I do not have family nearby. I have never spent more than an hour or two away from my children, and even then, it may be once every two to three months. I have not been on a date with my husband without children since before we were even married. Does it make me a bad parent to just want a break? To want to escape to some quiet during the day so I am not wasting my nights getting quiet just to lose sleep and do my "job" on four hours of sleep. It's a never-ending cycle. Please tell me I am not alone. Please tell me I am not the only one contributing to the household chores. Please tell me someone else has taken a strike and made a difference.

I am grateful my husband works hard to provide for our family monetarily. I am grateful for my husband, who repairs the things that are broken, does upkeep on the vehicles, mows the lawn. I am thankful that my children are happy, healthy, and intelligent. I am thankful to have a roof above my head, clothes on my back, food on the table. But is it too much to ask to be able to enjoy those and for everyone to contribute, even a little bit on the every day chores? Is it too much to ask for clothes to magically end up in the hamper, dishes rinsed and nicely laid by the sink, folded clothes to be put away instead of dug through and dirty clothes mixed in over the course of a couple days? It takes just minutes to bring the vacuum five feet and vacuum up the cereal from the floor.

But I will keep doing it. I will keep doing it because I do it faster, more efficiently. I do it better. I actually do it. It gets done because I do it. I can't slack off because it's my job. But should it only be my job? How does everyone else's household work? Was it ever different? How did you make that change?

So I guess I go back to doing dishes, doing laundry, cleaning that mess yesterday that my son made that has since dried onto the kitchen floor. I have fought this battle many times in the past and I've just done it and kept quiet, assuming it was part of my job description. I have gotten some cooperation as milk now gets rinsed, sauce gets rinsed, most clothes make it to the hamper, but there is still so much work to do in teaching the household how things should work. Is it really too much to ask? I'm drowning in dirty things in an otherwise clean house.

Rant over.

Love In All Forms

This one is going to be huge and very personal for me, but I believe it needs written down. I believe it's what has made me into who I am today, the many forms of love I have given, been given, or robbed of. Love truly does make the world move. Love has energy that is limitless. It gives mothers super human strength, it makes even the toughest men do things they could never imagine doing. It makes people cry, laugh, sing. More words have been written over love than any other emotion, object, or idea. Love has fueled me, drained me, and literally has saved my life.

Love has come in many forms for me but my favorite is definitely the love that I've found in my husband. It wasn't always my favorite and it wasn't always what I had hoped for, but it's always been my biggest love. It's always been the most energizing, even if not always a positive. It's been the most honest love, the love that hurt the most and even the love that healed the most. Love has been the center of my universe since I was born. I either thrived from it or I found a way to survive without it until I found a new form of love to enjoy.

Love can be different from person to person - a passion, a person, a hobby, or something completely different. The word love has truly lost its meaning over time, thrown around like it's just another word. To me, it is powerful, it goes beyond just words. It is a promise. It is a bond. It is something I give so freely to those who show the same to me. But it isn't given easily. A person earns my love as they earn my respect and trust. Love is also not given or shown in the same way from me to every person. My love for each person in my life is different from individual to individual.

I guess I'll start from the beginning.

Growing up, I had two parents who loved me, sometimes one more than the other, but always constant. I was hard to handle sometimes - a bundle of never-ending energy, constant curiosity, always finding something for my hands to do, including cutting all of my hair off once I ran out of baby dolls to work on, projects that always resulted in the biggest messes. Always making messes, always doing a little more than needed, or never doing enough. I was a tough child to love, but my parents never once wavered from showing me more love than they were shown as they grew. That's all we try to do as parents, is do better than the generations that came before us.

I relied on this love heavily through my childhood, always finding comfort in the love of my parents. I trusted them as others had broken my trust by showing me the evil ways of humanity during my early childhood. I was robbed of love from those I trusted long before I should have known how that felt. As I grew, it became increasingly harder to give my love as freely as most children do. As I once did.

I watched as other children grew with two parents who were madly in love and I longed for that. My parents loved each other in different ways at different times. They were in constant turmoil with each other, and, while I knew that wasn't my fault, just knowing they didn't love each other the way I knew love could work broke my heart. Our household was broken long before the divorce, but it fully broke when my parents divorced when I was nine.

I confided in friends, all of whom were from households whose parents were together and loved each other. They looked at me with pity. I didn't want pity, I just wanted a friend, an open ear. I started seeing judgment in children's eyes, the ones that shout in silence, "this is going to mess up your entire life". They were right and wrong at the same time. It wasn't long before it had gotten back to a teacher. If you search enough for comfort in the wrong people, that energy you are putting out will find the right ones.

I confided in this teacher for some time just about my feelings over the divorce, how I still loved both parents, regardless of their mistakes and their lack of love for each other. I asked the hard questions like, "How do I love a parent if I am not allowed to see them?" and "How do I love a parent if they were abusive?" and "How do I love a parent when the other parent has nothing nice to say about them?" I believe this teacher realized that I had grown up long before this divorce and he answered these questions honestly with personal experience. "I went through the same things, Amanda, and I was not much older than you are now." Over the school year, I confided in him and he confided in me. He was inspirational. He went on to have a healthy marriage with a loving wife, and three loving children. If he could survive a broken household and go on to thrive, I could too. I had hope from that year on.

Each year got a little harder, not because of the divorce, but because I had no idea what to look for when it came to love. I knew how it felt, but I didn't know what it looked like in forms other than family. I searched for love in friends but they never understood me. I was that crazy friend who tried to make it all seem okay when it wasn't. I truly believed I could fake being okay when I wasn't. Even through the years as I would remember connecting with my teacher and the conversations we'd had, I knew something was missing. I knew there had to be a secret to love that I just couldn't see.

Skip ahead to seventh grade. I was at a friend's house and a song came on. It was one I barely remembered but I could not shake the thought of my father when I listened to it. I thought it would be much like a song stuck in your head that if you listened enough, it would get out of your head. I was wrong. I listened to it a lot over the course of the weekend I stayed, relived some memories I had of my father with my friend and she helped me find a way to contact him. I was nervous because I knew how my mother felt about him, but I had to make that decision for myself, and, being a little more mature emotionally than my peers, I knew I was ready. We called any familiar name in the phone book until we came upon a friend who put me in contact with him.

We agreed to meet as he knew the area and I had zero intentions of telling my mother. She never had a good word to say about him anyway, so I would judge for myself and I would make the decision when to tell her. I met with him once and he loved me then, in that short moment of awkwardness, but the love was unfulfilling. Something was missing. Little did I know he was not sober then. Alcohol was his drug of choice. I still let him know that I loved him and I didn't see him again until three years later. I do believe my friend's parents told my mother, but I could be mistaken.


The next year, I had my first boyfriend. I searched for love within him but instead found anger, frustration and very unloving words from him. I thought I was doing everything right but nothing I did could make him happy. I saw sides of him that even his family did not see. I learned to hide within myself and shied away from those I loved and who loved me. We broke up after a relatively short time because he wanted a physical love I was not ready for nor old enough for. I learned then that sometimes love means different things to different people and just because they call it love does not make it the right kind of love for everyone, including me.

I spiraled as my family changed, more siblings were introduced. I was no longer the baby and I had to share the attention with others. I had no issue with that, but it left me feeling like my life was not as important (not in a bad way), and that I needed to just help with my siblings and not get in the way. The stresses were high as my mother accepted a love less than she deserved from someone who was not raised with as much love as he deserved. Love or lack of love can truly shape people so differently.
I began to cocoon myself, locked away inside my thoughts. I began to write, put my feelings onto paper. I began to do and think for myself while I watched everyone else making the wrong choices. People selling themselves short. People denying themselves the love they deserved to comfort others. I vowed to never settle for less than I deserved. I actively looked for friends who were interested in my best and sought for people to add to my life who genuinely cared for me the way I cared for them. I had so much trouble finding this until the summer before my sophomore year of high school.

I was depressed, always locked away in my thoughts. I thought there was no person who was going to take the time to learn who I was. To allow me to break myself in half to see the light shine through. I thought I would never find a person who wanted to know it all - the fantastic parts, the scary parts, the doubt, the guilt, the fear, everything. I never thought I would find someone who would allow me to melt into them and release those thoughts that held me captive for so long.

And then I met my husband...

This is where my story gets uncomfortable and raw. This is the part that hurts to tell. Admitting that I had hit my lowest point so early in life is shameful but it is my life and I embrace it. He was, in one way or another, my divine intervention in life. My miracle, the one who literally "saved my life". He had no idea how much of an impact he had made just being himself and loving me for who I was until much later.

The day I met my husband, I was prepared to take my life. Phew, that's always a hard thing to admit. I was at my lowest and faked it so well that nobody knew. I tried to make excuses to shake him. I tried to use everything in my power to stray away from the conversation with him, but something about him kept pulling me back. "He is messing up my plans," I thought, "There is nothing else for me." He kept the conversation going, not knowing how much my soul was crying but my heart was singing. It was my most conflicting time in my life. Two opposing feelings, voices, pulling me, dragging me, nails dug in, kicking and screaming one way and then the other as he just told me about himself.

I was mostly quiet the first night we spoke. I was a whirlwind of emotion, thought, and false, projected opinions of myself. I was so caught up in worrying about the parts I hadn't even gotten to, to fully enjoy the moment. But I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it so much that I could still, fourteen years later, tell you every detail from that point forward. When you find a love that's true, your perspective shifts, you find meaning in the small things. Your eyes open, your world opens, your heart breaks and pieces itself back together simultaneously. You begin to see yourself from another's point of view as they listen to your life story, tell you theirs, and you hear another perspective, a simpler perspective, of the life you've always over analyzed.

Twelve days after we had spoken on the phone for the first time, I met my husband in person. I had always heard people mention "time standing still" and I would laugh. That doesn't happen. Oh, but it did. When he walked around from the back of the house and I saw him, my heart stopped, time stopped. I swear the car driving by his house behind us on the road stopped, or at least slowed. He took my breath away.

I went to his home to play paintball and one of his friends gave me a ride there. I didn't know how to play paintball. I figured it was simple, and it was, but I was about to make a fool of myself, being the only girl there. We played, we had fun, but I was shy on purpose. I was still hesitant. If this didn't work out today, I was going to fall back on my original plan. Something inside of me wanted the whole day to be a failure. Surviving after you'd already made your choice that this life wasn't for you is stressful. But those few hours changed my life and my view of love forever. It showed my value and I found myself worthy of love again. He redeemed me just with a smile.

As we were leaving, I tossed a friendship bracelet at him. It was unfinished. "What is this for?" and I just smiled. "Wait, what is this for?" He had called me so many times before I was even home. My mother relayed the message as, "You must have made an impression, he's called you at least five times." His house was roughly 15 minutes away. I must have intrigued him.

I called him back and the first question was "What is this for? Why did you give this to me?" and I responded, "It is not mine, I was making it for my sister, so I will need it back at some point." This meant I would have to see him again, if he was interested. We didn't make proper plans to see each other again until my mother mentioned later that night while I was still on the phone with him. "You can invite him to your sisters birthday party next week". And I did.

It was a pool party and I had always been self-conscious about my body once I became a woman. I wasn't fat, but I was a curvy girl. I had stretch marks, I had imperfections. Everyone does, but I was never told this. My body image was never spoken of, I was never told how things work. It was vague and very to-the-point, just as generations before. I wore a bikini because it was all I had. I spent most of the time covering myself. Once we were in the pool, it created a reason for him to hold me. If he was holding me, he wouldn't be staring, right?

He later told me he thought I was beautiful, and that name stuck, even now, married with two beautiful children. I had never been called beautiful from the opposite sex. It was always a word or name that was terribly inappropriate, awkward, or unwelcome. I was falling in love, and quickly. On the way to take him home that evening, I spent the ride tying that same unfinished friendship bracelet (which I still have) on his wrist and trying to hide holding his hand. I knew my mother already approved of him as she would have let me know very early in the evening had she not. As we were turning into his road, I yelled over my mother's music, "Will you be my boyfriend?" and he said, "I thought you'd never ask". I spent the whole ride home staring at the stars, falling madly in love with someone who just came into my life less than twenty days prior.
We spent every waking hour either speaking with each other, seeing each other, or going places. Not long after we began dating, he got his license and together, we explored. He took me placed I'd never been, showed me the wonders of our local world. He lived a totally different life and I wanted to know every detail. He was a book I just couldn't put down and knew, before it even got to the good parts, that it was a book I was willing to read over and over again. He was an ocean I'd never reach the end of. I'd never met someone so intriguing, so real. I was young, but something clicked with him.

He was in a car accident our senior year and survived. I got the news in the most devastating way. I had gone through my entire day at school, not knowing he had been in an accident that morning. I walked my usual walk up our long driveway, thinking about how much I couldn't wait to speak with him and when I reached the top, my life shattered. My mother's boyfriend peeked his head out of the truck window, "Your boyfriend was in an accident this morning" and drove away. I ran to the door and my mother told me everything she knew.

He had a broken neck that could have easily been much worse. When I first visited him, the nurses allowed me to wipe the blood from his arms, face and head. If I am not mistaken, it was per his request that I be the one who did it. I cried the ugliest cries and he still loved me, wiped the tears from my face and told me he was okay. I stayed with him in the hospital on an uncomfortably hard baby blue leather couch that the nurses pulled from the visitor's room. I stayed for his entire stay. I laid at the foot of his bed, knowing what a mother would feel like. I watched him, I lost so much sleep. I shot up at every movement. I got him anything he needed, helped him with everything he needed. I talked with nurses, asked the doctors questions, fought for him, cried for him, worried for him. He had surgery and I hyperventilated and paced the floors the entire time. I knew he was in good hands but I still worried. He came out of surgery and I believe he stayed another two days before being released. I stayed then, too.

In the next few months, I had a looming uncertainty about our entire relationship. I began doubting myself again, searching for love in all the wrong ways, from all the wrong people. I kept thinking that the love he was providing would fade over time, especially as we butt heads a lot in those first couple years. I strayed, I left him for a short time in search of something that felt more real and I didn't find it. All this time, his love unwavering. He was angry, which was justified, but he still loved me through it. He loved me much more than I deserved, especially after all I had put him through while he was recovering.

We reconnected and the trust was hard to rebuild. He began questioning everything and I began doubting my ability to ever love someone fully. I began doubting that I ever deserved a love like his. It led to argument after argument and he moved forward in life, leaving me to figure out my own issues. I fought hard to get his love back and failed for the first year until I gave up and moved on the best I could so he could enjoy life the way he was meant to. I moved away from home, fled into the arms of an older man who could have left me on the street with not even the bat of an eye. He was terribly cruel to me. He was not physically abusive, but those scars would have been less painful than the abuse I endured while I lived there. I longed for that gentle love I took for granted. I cried myself to sleep every single night, wondering where I would be in the next two, three, four years. Wondering if my path would lead me back to that love I had lost.

When I moved back home, we tried to reconnect and it was awkward. We had seen things and been places that were uncomfortable to talk about but we spoke of them anyway. We bared our souls, once again, to each other. It was us trying to connect but the sockets were rusty, abnormal, missing pieces. We continued to try and I gave it everything I had. I put every piece of myself into trying to win back his trust, his love. I lost myself somewhere in trying but I pushed through. All I did, all I knew how to do, was to do anything he asked of me. To not ask questions, but do what was in his best interest. I was a welcome mat for some time as we figured out the new dynamics of a relationship that didn't have a real name and soon, love began to blossom again.

He had quit his job and I supported us for a little while. I changed jobs when I was not making enough and he supported me through that. He was easy to care for and I was willing to do anything to make and keep him happy. When my hours began getting cut at my new job, we made the decision (via a coin toss in the parking lot) that I would go in, put in my two weeks notice, and we would move into the home he had bought when we were apart. We moved an hour and a half away from home.

I think we still battled with trust until we moved away from the places we grew up. I was still devoted, ready to prove to him that I was worthy of that love I craved. I spent hours, writing, thinking, analyzing every word I'd said, thing I did, thing I should have done, and just kept improving myself. I didn't do it all just for myself, but for him. I refused to lose him again. We were truly terrible to each other in those first years, learning and relearning everything we'd chosen to forget, learning to live with each other. We both worked a lot in those first couple years but otherwise we were free. We knew nobody, we spent a lot of time together, just free. When my job became stressful, I quit and began furthering my education. Not long after, we got married and pregnant. I had our first born just weeks after getting my Associate's.

Even being together for 8 years prior, I learned more about my husband in those first two years of being a parent with him. Being first time parents destroyed our love, we lost that spark somewhere in the multiple wakings per night, the struggling to find a new normal when our families were busy with their own lives or otherwise just too far away to make constant trips. I spent an awful lot of time at my mother's, nearly two hours from where we lived together and I never noticed how much of a strain it put on our relationship. I'd beg and plead for love but I was ignoring his basic needs for connection, for quality time spent together because I was away 50% of the time. It was the hardest part of our relationship. It nearly ended in divorce, if I have to be completely honest.

And then we got pregnant with number two. Something changed. I still can't put my finger on what, but something big happened when we realized our entire world was going to turn upside down introducing another child into our lives. We began evaluating every relationship we had with others and began slowly cutting ties with those who were toxic, burning bridges that led to paths we never wanted to visit again. We eliminated people with big mouths that shouldn't be heard by little ears. We made massive changes, ripples that turned into a wave that washed our love clean. We started communicating, loving, connecting again. We started undoing all of the wrongs we'd made by moving forward, learning about each other and really giving it everything we had.

The biggest change was cutting ties with my family. I did not expect it to happen the way it did, but I am accepting of everything that happens in my life, good and bad. In my family, there has been abuse. While it wasn't always physical, it was very emotional to watch everyone fight anytime I would visit and nobody listened to voice of reason that came from anyone. Everyone, at some point, tried to stop the fighting, to exit the ride to save themselves. Everyone stuck around, but nobody said what needed said and even when you did, it was interrupted, shut down, or downplayed. "What happens in this house stays in this house", just wasn't going to sit well with me when I had two children. I planned to teach them differently, to speak up against injustice, to love through hardship, to never give up on love but to stand up against anything that wasn't genuine. How can I teach them something I wasn't following myself? So a letter was in the making. I needed something that could be read, without interruption, and without me present.

I sent that nine page letter in early August and a weight lifted from my body. That dark cloud that loomed over our marriage had dissipated and I found comfort in the arms of my husband again. I was home to stay and we were going to work on us, enjoy being parents again, and raise our children in nothing but love. And we did. It was not taken lightly though, and most of it was misinterpreted, but I stuck behind my word. The truth can be uncomfortable sometimes, especially for those who have to live it. I still loved and still do love every member of my family. Over the years, we began to lose sight of that love, we started doubting our ability to show it, our worthiness of the love we all tried to show each other. Instead of communication, it was always just frustration.

I broke the family apart with my words - sticks and stones in the form of strings of letters and thoughts. It was not my intention to break an already broken family, but I needed time to heal, time to learn, time to just "be". I wanted to gently parent my children, to do better than those who came before me and I couldn't do that in a household that was always at war. I needed to learn who I was as a mother, as a wife, as an individual, and I'd never learn that spending 50% away from the life we were trying to create together. I did it for myself, for my husband, for our marriage, for our family. I stand behind that. Sometimes you have to sacrifice a relationship with those that you love in order to nurture a relationship with yourself. Sometimes you have to do what is right even if what everyone else is doing is wrong. Even when it's hard to make that decision, sometimes it needs to be made anyway.

Many people will not understand the choices you make in life but they are not others' choices to make. I make my decisions with love. Everything stems back to love. A doubt of deserving love, a need for more love, feeling there isn't enough love. I have loved and been loved. I have gained, lost, and gained love again. I have loved others and I have learned to love myself. I have created life within the walls of my body. I have ripped myself in half to bring them into this world. And through the pain they've caused, both inside of my body and outside of my body, I have loved them through it. I learn to love the people around me in new ways every single day. If I am not exhausted from loving by the end of the day, I try harder the next. I am human, I make mistakes, but I never fall short of loving the ones who show me the same love in return. I am worthy of the love that I put into the world.

It took me a long time to get to where I am now. It took a lot of heartache, uncertainty, surrendering, and uncomfortable self-evaluation to get here. It took so many hours, days, weeks, months, years from my husband, just reminding me that he's not giving up on me so easily like some people who have came before him. It's taken nearly a decade to just feel comfortable accepting true love and convincing myself that I deserve every bit of it. I am a lovable person. And the more I watch how my love has changed others over time and how they, in turn, put that love back into the world, the more I see that love can change the world. When my life gets to be too much, I find that I just need to apply more love. It's never failed me yet.

I hope that every person reading this finds a love that makes their heart sing. I hope that the world can learn that it's easier to love than to ridicule someone you never took the time to truly know. It's easier to love someone who has wronged you than it is to spit venom, to say words you can prevent but never take back. I hope that every person can feel worthy of love. I hope that more people learn that you can not truly find love within others until you find love within yourself - it's so cliche, but it's true. People are sabotaging their relationships and starving the relationship, themselves, and their loved ones of such a basic necessity. Everyone deserves to love and be loved.

So go out and spread some love to those around you today. Hug your loved ones a little tighter. Tell them how important they are, how much value they have in your life. Tell them how much brighter your world is just with their company. You will always be surprised how much your day can change just by spreading love to another person. Even if you're so angry you could scream, keep loving. The best cure for humanity is love, and if it doesn't seem like it is working, you may need to increase the dosage.

Motherhood and all that comes with it

This one is going to be random as it's just something on my mind... Some of this may open a part of me you may not have known about or seen. To some, this may be uncomfortable, but this is motherhood. Motherhood is always uncomfortable. We are ever changing, ever adapting, ever loving. We just kind of wing it most of the time and somehow, at the end of the day, it turns out okay. And then we go on to the next day and strive for better than "okay" just to normally be "okay" again. .

Motherhood.

Men will never understand, just as we will never understand being a father. But there is something primal that happens within a woman when she becomes pregnant and then further intensifying when we become mothers. There's something so beautiful in the transformation that takes place when a woman becomes a mother. Not every woman feels this. Some women don't even feel it for the first few weeks, months, or  years, but it lays dormant, just waiting for the right moment to make its appearance.

When I became pregnant with my first child, it didn't seem real. I loved being pregnant. The pregnancy seemed so long, because, while, I had the support, I just didn't feel I had the support I actually needed. I researched extensively about the female body, how we operate during labor. I looked up the good, the bad, and the adorable. I swear my Youtube search history likely still would show me mostly birth videos as I just couldn't get enough knowledge. I wasn't going to let fear stop me from being the best mother I could be. No person was going to tell me I would be anything less. That passion to be better than the generation before me and before them was the fuel that kept me moving forward.

Then I went into labor for the first time. I labored by myself as my husband worked in the morning and I wasn't completely sure it was really happening. I talked to my neighbor, who was still awake, and she let me know that I wasn't alone. Not long after, I waddled across the street to labor with her. She timed my contractions, talked to me when I needed someone to talk and was silent when I needed silence. I labored on her couch until my contractions became a little more consistent and I waddled home as she watched to make sure I made it okay and didn't start going through active labor in the middle of the street. I woke my husband up and told him it was time and we went to the hospital. Something seemed so wrong on the way to the hospital. Not with labor, but with leaving the comfort of our home to go to a place I'd only seen once. It was so unnaturally bright and uncomfortable. It was so cold. I felt like a dog going into the veterinarian. My eyes were wide, my heart was racing and my body was going through changes that I could feel in my soul, not just physically.

By the time I had gotten situated and into my room, I had made it to 8 centimeters before arriving. The doctor came in, did the usual exams while nurses got me hooked up to IV's  and monitors. I felt so overwhelmed. Everybody was moving so quickly. This wasn't an emergency. It was just labor. I laid there, with labor intensifying with each contraction. My husband was a huge support, even if he had no idea what to expect from me. He held my hand, rubbed my shoulders, got me anything I needed, but something was wrong. I called in the doctor and he noticed my dilation had stopped progressing and then the interventions began. The stress, the nervousness, the fear of being in a hospital, surrounded by people I didn't know, all asking me questions, bombarding me with policies and information that didn't apply to me made a natural progress stop progressing.

The doctor told me he "had to break my water". I asked him if I could get up to walk around and attempt to break it myself. The nurse quickly chimed in, "You are hooked up to an IV." to which I replied, "Yes, but it has wheels" and the doctor quickly snapped, "It is not in our policy". He broke my water for me and pushed on my abdomen. It felt so unnatural to me. I felt so violated. Not long after, I had to go to the bathroom. They refused to let me get up so my mother helped me when the nurses left the room to go to the bathroom. When the nurse came back in and saw I wasn't in bed, she stormed into the bathroom, I guess to be sure I wasn't having the baby in the toilet. She quickly turned away and walked out because, well, I did tell her I had to go. It was either in the toilet or all over the bed. And I'm sure she didn't want to be cleaning a soiled bed and a soiled patient.

My contractions picked up at an insane speed, but my labor was still not progressing. I was forced on to my back and I asked to change positions. "You are hooked up to monitors and an IV. I need you on your back". Again, when they left, my mother helped move my IV lines around my head and moved all the cords so I could attempt to get comfortable. Everything hurt. Everything was wrong. I knew I could do this. I was doing it so well before I arrived here. The light hurt my eyes, even dimly lit. The gown was scratching me. The nurses voices were ringing in my ears. Chatting about me like I was a number and not a person. Talking about me as if I wasn't in the room beside the door they were standing outside of. The ringing overpowered the actual words, but judging the nurse who refused to "allow" me to birth how I felt my body needed to and the terrible attitude, it likely wasn't anything good to say.

I opted for the epidural and felt defeated. Not because I wanted a natural birth but because I felt I was robbed of it just by going somewhere that was meant to be there to help me, not to harm me. I was able to rest a little once the pain subsided and get some sleep. People mostly left my room and left me alone. I'd wake up once every 20 minutes or so and look around. This was not what I wanted and only two people in the entire hospital were listening to what I needed at my most vulnerable time. I watched the second hand tick on the clock as I realized I think I'm slightly allergic to my epidural. I was itchy, I was uncomfortable, I was so cold that I felt that I was dead and my blood turned cold. They gave me some heated blankets and I went to sleep.

I am forever grateful for what happened next. The midwife on the team came into my room, the short lady she is, and lowered my bed to it's lowest setting and her chair to the highest setting so she could be at the right height for catching our child. I still giggle that she had to completely adjust because of how little she is. She told me "The doctor who was seeing you went to help another woman who is pushing, so I will be helping you for the remainder of your birth". I smiled, I felt heard, I felt like a weight had been lifted. She examined me and told me it was almost time to push. She came back in a few more times after and talked me through it. I'm so thankful for her in the last stretch as it could have ended differently had the people who were not listening to my simple wishes been the ones to "deliver" my baby.

My son came out with his chin touching his chest, which made labor very difficult for me. I still say I was progressing normally and once forced on my back and labor stopped, his movement changed and he became crammed against the edge of my uterus upon exit. He was birthed with the back of his head first, coming out with a cone shape. He was having trouble breathing from being chin-to-chest for so long as I rested, waiting for labor to pick back up. It was traumatizing, they handed him to me quickly and didn't even take their hands off him before putting him under a warming light and frantically surrounding him to check him out. Tests all came back fine but he was gasping for air every so often. He was taken to the NICU and was kept there for a while before I was even allowed to see him. When I saw him, I didn't feel like he was my child. I sang to him, I tried connecting but it wasn't there. I wasn't allowed to hold him, to bond with him. I wasn't allowed to share those first moments of breastfeeding like I planned. They gave him formula against my wishes because I wasn't pumping enough, fast enough. I didn't get to attempt real breastfeeding until day three. It was such a struggle and I felt so pressured to give formula, which fueled my need to keep trying to nurse.

I was so disconnected from my son and so tired from a long labor that I left him in the NICU most of the time I stayed. I wasn't ready for all of this - being a mother was a huge adjustment. I was uncomfortable with all the questions, all the care, all the "policies". I didn't feel like he was mine. It was a terrible feeling. I wanted to love this child, I wanted to snuggle him, but I didn't feel like his mother. It broke me. Then not seeing him broke me further. It was a battle inside myself to force my body down the hallway ten steps to ask to see my son. I'd sit beside his "bed" and just talk to him. I was so thankful then, that the NICU room he was in had a door. The things I said in that room, the things I admitted to myself, to my son, just shattered me. I sat in the rocking chair beside him, just holding and rubbing his feet, crying. I can honestly say there was never a more emotional time than the first few months of my son's life.

There were many other things that happened in the hospital that I not only regret, but still haunt me. My heart aches that I missed those moments of bonding. That I made wrong choices that shouldn't have been left up to us as new parents. Things that I was informed on, but still made a decision based on fear, based on the stigma created by the general population. The social norms. I scarred myself and my child. It spiraled me into PPD, which nearly destroyed my marriage. My husband had no idea how to talk to me. Everything was an emotional mess. I never felt heard or understood, and neither did he. Parenthood, those first three years, were the hardest years of our relationship, and overall, for our age, we're pretty seasoned in the relationship department. 14 years today. What an accomplishment for us. Anyway, sidetracked.

I tried hard to connect with my son, and, while we did everything together with me being a stay at home mom, I never truly connected with him until his sister was born and I redeemed my birth. I have a few moments where I felt close, but being robbed of that birthing experience stayed with me and made me resent the entire process. I didn't resent my son, but I was denied the basic maternal, primal need to be with their child right after birth. I was denied a basic need because one denied basic request after another was one less moment I had with my son. It was one more stress, one more dreadful minute of a pain that didn't feel normal. Being in a place that didn't help me feel comfortable even wanting to snuggle with my child. Shunning me for breastfeeding in bed because they feared I would fall asleep next to my baby. Feared I would harm my baby when all I wanted to do is be near him. They put their fear into me. It's what hospitals do to expecting and new mothers. Disagree if you please, but many natural minded mamas will agree that a birthing center or home birth are much more beneficial to mom and baby if both are otherwise healthy.

Jump forward to my daughter's birth. My rebirth. I knew she'd redeem birth for me and give me what my soul craved. When we found out we were pregnant, I was excited but that fear rose in me again. It came up every 2 months or so, as I'd get bigger and the date would get closer. We hired a team of midwives who were not just knowledgeable in all things birth, but also became friends of mine. These women made me feel like I could take on the world and I hadn't even started birthing yet. I was more excited for this birth, despite the fear that maybe, in fact, it was my body's fault in the hospital. I was determined to have a home birth. I could do it. I was made for this. Women have birthed for thousands of years. I can do it too. I am strong. I am able. I am a mother. I survived it the first time, but I could thrive this time. Determination was not letting me quit.

I had symphysis pubis dysfunction both of my pregnancies and every day it became worse. The chiropractor could only do so much with my huge belly, but he did try the few times I called him. I got very little sleep from the pain of never being able to get comfortable. I was ready for this baby to come out so I could begin healing and I could get bonding. I had my entire birth kit ready for a water birth, but the birth took a very unexpected turn, and quickly.

August 30th, I awoke to a strong urge to urinate. I got up and sat on the toilet, wondering if this was labor, if it was happening. The drizzle of rain in the early morning calmed me, the summer breeze blew over me as I sat there, everyone still asleep. I let my contractions overtake me and I just waited. When I noticed they continued, I woke up my husband. I giggled when I checked the time "Hey honey, it's 6:29. Happy anniversary. Also, I think I'm in labor. It's no big deal so you can stay asleep and I'll let you know how it progresses" I just got to the chair to begin timing my contractions and my water broke. I can't tell you how pleased I was that my water broke by itself. It was coming. It was happening. I wasn't sure how far away it was, but it was happening.

I called the midwife when it was closer together, but was talking through some of the contractions so I thought I was okay. The pain was manageable and I actually enjoyed it. I'd get through it and be ready for the next. I told her "there's no rush. My water broke, but the pain is manageable. Just come when you can". She said they had planned for a zoo trip, but that she would feed her kids breakfast and head over.

My daughter wasn't waiting, though... Within 45 minutes, my labor picked up and so did the pain. I threw up once and then felt like I was able to focus more. I was laboring while kneeling against the couch. My husband went out to shuffle vehicles to make room for both midwives and when he came in, I was disoriented. I was at a stage of labor where I didn't know what to do. I was pacing, circling. I had seen dogs do this when I was growing up as my mom bred dogs. It didn't hit me though that the baby was coming very soon. I was frantic. My husband asked me what I thought we should do and I said "help me to the bathroom". I felt like I had to go to the bathroom. I was sitting there, enjoying the breeze from the window and the smell of a rainy summer morning. In the next contraction, I felt the urge to push. I cried to myself "no no no, body, don't push. I can't stop it. I can't control it." The midwives still weren't there and we were going to have a baby, just us two. I could see the look in my husband's eyes. He was as ready as he was going to be, but I knew we were both so nervous.

He grabbed some plastic to lay underneath me and once the head was out, I got over the plastic and birthed my baby right into our hands. My husband quickly wrapped a towel around our brand new baby. We admired baby fingers and baby toes for a few minutes before it truly set in that we were parents again and that we did it ourselves. Then it hit us: SURPRISE GENDER! We had no idea if we had a boy or a girl. We looked and SURPRISE! Our little precious girl. She was waiting for nobody, she was so excited to get into the world and begin changing lives. We called the midwife first, stating that I had the baby and that I was just sitting there on the bathroom floor, absolutely over the moon in love with life and to just get here when they get here. Then we called family and friends.

It felt like an eternity before the midwives arrived. I breastfed in the first few seconds of my daughter's arrival. It just came naturally for the both of us, something that I struggled with after having her older brother. My leg was thoroughly asleep by the time they came from sitting on a hard wooden floor. I didn't want to move in case anything happened between that time. Best to stay still. The midwife helped me deliver the after birth and then helped me up and into the shower. They offered to make me something to eat but all I wanted was donuts. My husband left to get me donuts from the donut shop that had just opened. What a beautiful way to celebrate a birthday of the little girl that had me craving donuts my entire pregnancy! While stepping into the shower, I was asked what we'd named her. It was a toss up of names, and, just like with our first child, hearing it being said out loud made all the difference. I chose a different variation based on the midwife's suggestion and it stuck. She was named after my late grandmother and my late aunt. I never met my aunt, but I am told I would have loved her.

We spent the better part of four days just sleeping, lounging around our home as visitors came and went. It was blissful, recharging at home, sleeping in my own bed, raiding my own fridge, using my own toilet, taking a shower when I wanted without having to wear sandals inside. Everything came so naturally at home. It was where I was meant to be. I truly believe had I stayed home another half hour with my son instead of getting in the car, my birth would have been completely different. But I will never know. I will never know if I could have bonded with him differently. I'll never know if his entire life could have played out differently. I love him just as much as his sister now, but before she was here, I found it so difficult to connect. He felt like such a stranger. Maybe he was just always meant to have a sister. I'll never understand that part of my brain - the part that just jumbles thoughts up and turns them into anxiety over everything. I throw confusing things in there and it just makes it more confusing until I tire myself out by running in circles.

Now I have two beautifully healthy children. I made many mistakes with my first that I won't make with my second. I've made many mistakes with my second that I won't make with my third. And I will likely make a lot of the same mistakes two or three or four times with all of them, both present and future babies. I will kick myself every time and still vow to do  better tomorrow.

Motherhood is about stained clothing, messy hair, spotted glasses, a pile of dishes, five mountains of laundry, never-ending crumbs on the floor and loads of love. It's about reading the stories with the funny voices and making the blanket forts and watching the same cartoon twenty times a day because they just love it that much and you love when they're happy. Motherhood is about sacrificing the woman you used to be and even the woman you thought you'd be and turning her into something completely different. It is putting another person before yourself. It is skipping meals because you're always making them the food they ask for or cleaning up the food they asked for that is now on the floor. It is losing sleep because of their sickness when you're even too sick to care for yourself. It is fighting battles we never thought we'd fight against people we never thought we'd fight against. It is taking a stand for those who don't have voices or whose voices are overlooked, unheard, or deemed unimportant. It is being the advocate for your children when nobody else is.

It is selfless.
It is scary.
It is exhausting.
It is love in the purest form.
It is unique to each child.
It is painful.
It is empowering.
It is controversial.

It is motherhood.
It is the unknown.

It's something I could never explain, even in a long blog post, to someone who hasn't felt that love before. I would give my life for my children. I would give everything that makes me happy to make my children happy. I would sacrifice anything and everything to give them the most fulfilling life that I can. I would gather the stars in a net. I would lasso the moon. I would tame the sun. I would give the world to my children because they are my world. They are equal parts of both my husband and I and that in itself makes me love them more. They are a product of love, a reminder of the time we've spent together, the memories we made before them. The whole story, every memory, led up to them. They were the real beginning to our love story, we just had to wait to get here. Children come out equipped to love, equipped to be snuggled, warm, and safe. The more we copy them, the more we find that nature had it right all along. We may be teaching children how to be more like adults, but I've found they have taught me much more in how to be young at heart.

They've taught me that a kind, gentle approach will always be better than getting in the last word. That when I want to scream, instead, I should sing. When I am frustrated, I just keep trying until I get it right. I have so much more since having children and it goes beyond just having two more mouths to feed, twice the laundry, twice the dishes. Everything has multiplied. Our love for each other and for them, our passion for things that are important to us, our zest for life. Even if that zest consists of sitting at home and just enjoying watching them play, using our imaginations with them.

Motherhood has been my lowest and my highest points. Motherhood has overtaken me. Motherhood is who I am. Motherhood is a life sentence of love, a prison to which you are free to come and go, but you never want to leave the comfort of its walls. It's an internal expansion that gives you a new reason to love yourself too. My body created this life. My body created this life just for me. My body may not look like it once did, but, without these children, my body would still look like it once did. I've embraced all of the changes my body has endured to bring two children into the world. Every stretch mark reminds me of the sleepless nights, the leg cramps, the uncontrollable sweat, the insane cravings, the kicks to the ribs, and then the kicks to the kidneys while co-sleeping.

Each child is a blank canvas and I hope to paint a beautiful, vivid picture that they will take into the world and share with others who will also add their mark. I cannot wait to see the final masterpiece. To see the hard work I'm putting in make a difference in the world that maybe I won't accomplish. To use their talents to change even the life of one person, or maybe to go on to change the lives of millions.

Children are a blessing and without them, there wouldn't be mothers.

No matter how fired up we get over their messes, their screaming, their sibling rivalry, we need to remember them at all the stages of their life. We need to remember when they were toddlers, learning to walk, learning to speak, learning to undo every child latch in the house and leave you wondering how they did it. There are so many mysteries to motherhood, things etched so deep in us that not even modern society can touch it. But the one thing that has never been a mystery to me is the devotion I have to my children and children all over the world. When you're a mother, the news hurts more. That's somebody's daughter or son. Somebody out there is missing their child. We can feel that in our hearts, in a place that can't be touched until you become a parent yourself. Every fire whistle brings the hope that it isn't your child and sometimes warrants a phone call, even at 3 AM.

Before I was a mother, I couldn't imagine being a mother. I wanted it, but I never knew how badly I needed it. Every day, these children teach me that I need them more than they need me. And they are more than happy to show me how to live again, all I have to do is listen, watch and repeat. Children are an amazing kind of human, the kind of human we should strive to be. Being a mother will always rank at the top job I've ever had. It's definitely not the pay that keeps me coming back every day. It's those tiny arms wrapped around your neck, the silly jokes, the random compliments, the accomplishments they make, the unconditional love they show. I can mess up time and time again and these children still love me.

Ahhh, motherhood.

Being a stay-at-home mother...

Let's get right down to the first post shall we?

First, my name is Amanda. I am fresh into my 30's and so far, I feel my first 30 years have been a story and a half. I've seen many things, but there is so much I haven't. I am married to my high school sweetheart of 14 years, married six years this coming Thursday. We now have two children together who amaze me every day just being themselves. It's crazy having two children who are equal parts you and someone else, but 100% themselves.

It's hard speaking about myself as most days, I feel like a fairly boring person even if I have a very colorful mind. We moved nearly two hours away from "home" about 9 years ago. I still have yet to make a friend who wants to know everything about me. I still have yet to find that connection where I am and I  have no desire right now. Is that wrong? Being okay without friends? Being a stay at home mother, I have no physical friends and I am okay with that. I made one friend since being here but she has since moved away. My husband is my best friend. My children are growing to be my friends also, though, sometimes I don't like them much. That's also normal. Kids are... well... new to this. Makes it hard to get through the day to day without delays, broken thoughts, multiple messes made over and over again. I definitely love them, but some times I don't like them. I'm sure they love me and sometimes don't like me much either. That's part of most relationships, though.

I am amazed that my body created them, that I carried them, birthed them. Being a woman is fascinating. The ability to create life, hold life, nurture life, to literally break our bodies in half to bring a life into the world. It fascinates me. I always felt I was meant to be a mother, I longed for it. I never thought much about it until my younger sisters were born but once I saw babies in a different way, in a more personal way, it was clear I needed to be a mother. Once we were married and made the decision to start our family, child care came into the conversation. My husband suggested that I stay home as I was already home to attend college online and he was making enough to support us. I still have no idea how we did it because "enough to support us" really wasn't much.

Being a stay at home mother has it's perks and it's downfalls. To me, time is money, so spending time at home while making money was a must. I do know being a stay at home mother is a job in itself, but I must be doing more with my time. I would work five jobs if it meant my kids got to stay home. It's just one of those things that are important to me, a child raised at home. If my husband lost his job, I'd go back to work having 18 hour days, alongside my online business, even if it meant having half of what my husband brings in. I would work to provide for my family. I would work because I enjoy working. But I enjoy working at home more. It just makes sense in our busy world. It has the potential to make me more money than "working for the man" and gives me more freedom.

My favorite parts of staying home are watching cartoons I enjoyed when I was my children's age, watching their fascination, knowing I was just as fascinated way-back-when. Hearing their big dreams, questions, listening to the things that expand my own brain and force me to research and think outside the box. I love that my blanket fort skills don't go to waste in adulthood. I love that someone thinks my terrible jokes are funny, because, let's face it, food puns and knock-knock jokes never go out of style, people just become sticks in the mud as they age.

But being a stay at home mother also has it's downfalls. Most days I am spread so thin. Most days I don't eat a warm meal that doesn't have baby fingers all through it. Some days I am lucky if I eat more than the leftover crumbs of my children's meals. Most of my day consists of food - preparing food, cooking food, storing food, buying food, growing food, researching food, washing food off clothing, cleaning up food off the floor, table, chair, ceiling, windows... You'd be surprised the places you find food once you become a parent. Really, really surprised.

Most days, I make a pot of coffee and lose my cup, pour another, lose that one, find the first one, drink cold coffee, then lose it again in the midst of daily mom tasks. Most days, I forget the last time I had a shower. I have stains on every article of clothing I own, I have baskets upon baskets of clean laundry floating around the house. I'm sure that I've rewashed the same clean clothing multiple times this month because of said baskets. I have dishes by the sink that never seem to get fully finished. I just cleaned the counters last night and they're dirty again and I am pretty sure nobody went near them. I think trolls come in at night and trash the place. It's the only explanation...

I am a mess most days - a train wreck of emotions, clash of mismatched clothing, messy hair, and crooked glasses. And even on the worst days with the most house work, I would never take back these five years I've had at home with my children. We made many sacrifices for me to stay home, but I think it would have been a far bigger sacrifice have someone else raising our children rather than making the sacrifices financially to adjust. I thank my husband each day - the good, the bad, the in between. He's worked so hard for me to raise our children. He comes home to his train wreck of a wife and still showers her in love. He still thinks I am the most beautiful woman he's seen. He appreciates the little things I do along with the big things. That's a big deal to me. To have that love, that appreciation, that acceptance of who I am even through the worst days. To still look at me at my worst and love me his best. That's love.

Overall, being a stay at home mother has been what I was meant to do, but I feel not where I am meant to stay. Most days I wish I was at work instead (I'm sure some working mothers cannot imagine that feeling), but overall, I've loved watching my children grow and learn. I love being outside the home to work - small businesses, local businesses. I love the social interaction, I love seeing adults from time to time. I'm looking forward to the moment that I can replace my husband's income with my online business and still work outside the home just for a break, for my sanity. A job just for fun. The business I work online may very well end up branching into a physical business where I create huge events which will allow me the best of both worlds - both being at home AND being social. That's the end goal. But I truly have no idea what the future will bring.

I can't wait to just write now that the first blog post is done. The first blog post is the hardest. It's your basis of your entire blog, it's what everyone looks at first - where you began. I'm just beginning where my mind is working right now. My mind is set on being a stay at home mother. I'm at a crossroads and I must make a turn, but I'm making them blindly. One day at a time is all I can promise, so it's what I will give. If anyone has a suggestion of what to post next, leave me some comments! I will get to them all in time, I'm sure, but I can't wait to start writing again!

Stay tuned!