{HarassedMoms Thoughts} The rites of passage of parenthood

Those of us with older children wear our mother badges of honor with pride.

They are symbols of everything we have survived and everything we will survive.

We have earned these badges, we have worked hard to have them pinned on our lapels,

We know the new moms will get them. We all get them – it is our rite of passage into Motherhood.

You don’t really have to do anything to get them, they will come!

So what are these rites of passage?

They are the sleepless nights. Even if your newborn sleeps, teeth will come, illness will come, growth spurts will come, night terrors will come, the full moon will come.  These things will come and they will result in many many sleepless nights – maybe not in a row, but you will feel a tired that only a fellow mother will understand. It is a tired in your bones, a tired that no coffee can make go away. You will wear that label in the dark rings around your eyes.

There will be vomit and there will be poo and there will be pee and there will snot. You will, at some point in your life as a mother, attempt to catch one (or all) of these in your hands! You will fail, not because you are a bad mother but because your hands were made for many things – catching projectile vomit was not one of them. You will wear this label on your snot stained shirt.

There will be tears. Oh boy will there be tears. First day of school, first concert, first step, first tooth (these will be tears of sheer joy because at least now you can sleep….until the next one tries to come out). There will be tears when they finally eat something, when the poop in the potty (lots of tears for this one). Often you won’t even know why there are tears, but tears there will be. You will wear these in your laugh lines and wrinkles.

There will lots and lots of wasted purchases. Bottles that are rejected, educational toys that are ignored. There is stuff they said are essentials that you are still trying to figure out how they work when you ship your kids off to varsity. You will wear these, literally, in your pumps bought from Pep so that you could buy the fancy bath seat your child never sat in.

Someone, probably someone who doesn’t know you, will tell you you don’t know what you are doing and that breastfeeding/bottlefeeding your child will be the cause of the Apocolypse. You will doubt your decision in your quiet moments and it will probably hurt, try not let it thought. This badge will be worn in your “Don’t care attitude”

You will arrive to meetings with a teddy bear, Lightening McQueen or Elsa in your bag. When you reach in for a pen, you will probably pull out a crayon. If you are really luck you may find a sweet from Spur (I always find these finds a stroke of luck). You will wear this in your knowledge of all the Pixel movie characters (and the fact you know the words off by heart to Let It Go).

You will develop mad ninja skills. Moms can sneak of bedrooms undetected, eat chocolates in silence and without a trace. We can catch babies from falling off the table from across the room (really have you seen a mom move when their child is in danger?). Moms can whip up dinner, bath kids and tidy the house in the same time it takes Jamie Oliver to make one of his so called 15 minute meals. You will wear these badges in the pulled muscles and carpet burns on your knees

Your heart will break. Nothing will break your heart like watching your child being bullied or watching them learn a hard life lesson or watching them walk away from you. You will know they need to learn the lessons, you will know it is part of life but it will break your heart into teeny tiny shards of pain every time it happens. You will wear this label in your eyes.

You will change. Becoming a mother will change you. You will do things you never imagined, you will say things that sound ridiculous, you buy things you know you shouldn’t and you will sacrifice everything to see your child happy.

We all wear these badges, we have all earned them.