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Lesson Learned During Pregnancy: The people who you think will love you unconditionally won’t once they realize that you are no longer living your life how they want.
So, I really wanted to use this as a forum to discuss the happy parts of pregnancy, but this post has been on my heart for a while.
As many of you already know from Whit’s introduction of me on this site, I am a 28 year old graduate student who is learning to balance marriage and motherhood all at once. As you can imagine this is a very daunting task especially when you’re a bit of a control freak, which sadly I am. The last 7 months of my life have been a whirlwind. I found out I was pregnant…started my last semester of PhD coursework… taught 5 classes… got engaged… moved in with my fiancé… got married… found out I was having a son… and the list just goes on and on.
Of course when you find your life changing in so many ways and so quickly, you think you should be able to rely on the people who have seemingly always been your support system. So imagine my surprise when I found my relationships changing with the people who I thought would always love me unconditionally. Despite the fact that I’m almost 30 and have always been a pretty responsible young woman, there were some people in my life who questioned every single decision being made. I expected this and had a well thought out plan prior to telling anyone aside from my now husband that we were expecting. What I didn’t expect was there to be so much conflict about these decisions, specifically MY choice to not have a wedding. If you know me in real life, then you know that I am not the Bridezilla type. I do not like being the center of attention, and whenever I discussed the possibility of getting married it always ended in elopement or heading to the courthouse. Well being pregnant before getting married made going to the courthouse an even smarter option. We wanted to be married before our son was born and before my belly was too huge and our wedding pictures ended up looking like a maternity shoot. Initially, we weren’t going to have anyone there unless we needed witnesses, well of course that changed and my husband decided we should at least invite our parents. I knew that this would cause an issue with other family members (specifically on my side of the family), but I said okay. Well of course, when people heard about the “parents only” portion they were livid and I became a horrible selfish person. No matter how many times I explained that we’re having an anniversary party in the fall for everyone it wasn’t good enough. I am now the horrible person, who did not invite anyone to my wedding, which by the way I don’t consider a “wedding,” but I digress…
The point of this post is to say that while pregnancy should be one of the happiest times in your life, it won’t always smell like roses. There will be challenges, physical and emotional, that will force you to ask yourself tough questions. For me getting married and being pregnant have kind of been like starting a new year…you know when people start a new year and get rid of all the baggage from the previous year? Only the people who have become scarce are not the ones I expected to behave in this manner at all. People told me that I should attempt to make amends, but honestly I do not feel like it’s my place to do so. I did something that made me happy despite how others felt about it and the only way to make things better would have been to ignore my own happiness. Something I used to do a lot, but decided that it was important for me to be happy, not only for my son’s health, but also for my own. I do not want my son to see me as the weak “do what others want” person I’ve been in the past. I want him to see his mom as a strong woman who did things not just for others, but also for her. I want him to know the importance of making yourself happy. Sadly, I thought the people who loved me “unconditionally” wanted the same thing for me.
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What life lessons have you learned during your pregnancy so far? Leave a comment and feel free to share this on facebook and twitter!
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