Crying over cloth diapers
Thoughts and feelings on how motherhood continues to break my heart at each transition.
Welcome to Being in Motherhood, I’m Emma. I’m a mother, writer, and artist. I have studied trauma, therapeutic tools, and mindfulness. I hold space for mothers to share their truths and be in their experiences. If you enjoy this writing, please do subscribe and join us on this journey.
Move slowly as you ease yourself in this space, take a deep breath, place your hand on your heart if it feels nourishing, and begin.
I was crying this afternoon as I sat down to write, then I found this poem I wrote last December…
“He is growing up.
Are you witnessing it?
He does not need your help down the stairs.
He walks his bike to the park without assistance.
He plays independently…sometimes, if you are near by.
He is getting bigger.
I know it is hard, I know the nights are long, I know there are moments you want to scream.
I know sometimes you do, and there is nothing wrong with you.
But you will miss these days. These chaotic moments, the times where he needed you to go back to sleep.
Someday he won’t need you in the ways he needs you now.
Cherish it, hold on to each moment, because he is getting bigger.
It is happening, every day, right before your eyes.
No matter how present you are, it still feels some part of him is slipping away.
He is growing, he is changing.
You will miss these days.”
My son was a little over 18 months old when I wrote the above poem. I do miss those days. I truly have found joy and frustration in every phase.
He is two years old now. He rides his bike faster than he did then. He almost gets dressed by himself. He talks non-stop. He still needs me to go back to sleep, and I appreciate that because it is the one thing that makes him still feel small to me.
This week we are potty training. I was going to wait a little longer but my son decide he no longer wants to wear clothes, let alone diapers, and I grew tired of worrying about pee on the floor, so we began. A big storm rolled in this week, and we have been home, unable to go anywhere. Timing is perfect, it is the easiest motherhood transition I have experienced, probably because I let him lead me.
And I am overwhelmed with grief. Potty training is coming on the heels of him possibly dropping his nap. It is unclear, he barely slept more than two 20 minute naps over the past two weeks, then this week he has had two longer ones. Regardless, my emotions are rising as my baby (no, Emma your toddler) is growing and today, the (possible) last load of cloth diapers sent me over the edge.
No matter how present I am in motherhood and life, there are inevitably these moments of grief I cannot escape. My son is going to grow older, he is going to make transitions, he is going to change. My heart seems to explode each time I face one of these pieces of evidence.
He is growing up and not that tiny thing (he was not small, but in comparison to his toddler body, he was small) I took home from the hospital. His car seat seemed like it would drown him. I shot angry glances at my husband in the rearview mirror if there was a bump in the road because I was convinced my son would break. I could not believe I grew him and we got to keep him, forever.
It is impossible to look back with out regret for the struggles of the first year, I wrote about them here. I try to cleanse my heart of regret, I try to be grateful for how much I have healed and how present I am now. But what I wouldn’t give to go back to that first year and be the mother I am now to that baby boy.
At each transition I face grief, and the unavoidable grief of him growing up. While I am relieved to not have to wash diapers every other day or clean the poop pail, I am sad. What happens next? Our breastfeeding relationship ends? He starts school?
Both of things are looming in the future. How is one to do this? Face grief monthly, weekly, daily sometimes. My heart hurts. I know this is a sign of a mother who loves and cares deeply, but will it ever get easier? Will my heart ever not break in the face of the person I love most in this world changing right before my eyes?
Will it ever feel easeful? Will I ever feel the breaking in my heart with a smile on my face and regard the grief as an old friend, a welcomed companion? Mother’s with older children tell me it gets easier (or lie to me, I am open to it).
Or is this what motherhood is? Letting your heart break over and over again to hold more love, compassion, and tenderness.
It does not seem like a bad trade. I will welcome my own big tears and feelings to be able to hold my son’s big tears and feelings, to be able to mother him through the years, to guide and watch him grow as a human.
This is where you will find me at each transition, crying over the loss, crying over the growth, crying over how hard and beautiful this journey is. Because it is not just my son who is growing, it is me too. I am changing, I am shifting right alongside him. It keeps happening at each juncture…he shifts, I shift.
With each transition, I am learning how to follow his lead more, trust his needs, and allow myself to be the space holder for this brave, kind, and loving boy. Motherhood is the greatest softening.
I am grateful for my teacher on this journey, who holds my hand at each change point (until he doesn’t but let’s please not talk about that yet), because we are in this together even when it does not feel like it.
We are in this together, my son and I, until the day one of us passes, this journey will flow between us, I will learn from him and he will learn from me. As much as it hurts, and as often as my heart shatters, I would not have it any other way.
How do you experience grief in motherhood?
Share with me in the comments or reply to this email.
Love,
Emma
I invite you to join the membership ($6 a month, $50 for the year) and tend to yourself through monthly guided journeys. Each journey focuses on a topic, provides questions to guide your reflection, and practices to support your integration. This month’s guided journey focuses on self-compassion.
Recent writings you might have missed…
August guided journey: self-compassion - a guided journey of how to offer yourself compassion in a moment of suffering.
My own unspoken words - my version of the Unspoken Words series where I share what is hard for me to admit about this season of motherhood.
Read Volumes of the Unspoken Words where mothers share their experiences of what is hard for them in this season of motherhood.
Read the first Motherhood Musings Collection where mothers share the differences between their expectations and realities of motherhood.
I call it Love Grief. It does get a little easier—my oldest are 6 (twins) and little is 2. The deep joy I feel in watching them grow and expand meets and mends the sadness of what slips away. I realize a big part of this is the privilege of still being “in it.” In every cell I know that years from now I’d sell my pinky toe to be with them in these young years again, the laughter, the sweetness, the messiness. I remind myself all I can do is to en-JOY it in the moment so I can look back, and while I can’t time travel, or even hang on to every memory, I will know I did my best to love and cherish each moment. At the end of the day, too many parents do not get the privilege of watching their children grow old, and that’s what I remember too. It’s a privilege, this life, every single moment.
Oohhhh I was looking through baby photos the other day and crying my eyes out. They were so so tiny and I remember being so excited for their next milestone, but so sad that that would mean they were growing.
It’s such a strange thing, wanting time to speed up to the ‘easier’ phases, then wanting it to freeze or rewind back to the ‘easier’ phases.
I’m in a current battle with my 2.5 yr old, he wants to stay a baby most of the time, but I’m getting tired of him pretending to be helpless and putting on a baby voice when he is capable of speak quite well, but at the same time he’s my youngest and my last baby so I want to rock him and play along.
Ahh motherhood is a trip!