The Beauty in Surviving

The Beauty in Surviving Motherhood | Kansas City Moms Blog

Do you know what continues to surprise me—shock me at times, even—about motherhood?

How much of my time is spent just making it. Simply navigating life from one end of the day to another.

I have a baby and a two year-old, so I guess some degree of survival is expected. But I also remember feeling this way when I was pregnant in the summertime with a toddler, and before that when I had a curious new walker at my feet, and even when I had only one tiny, immobile baby to care for.

Like today: it was cold outside and my kids were sick, so I made it out of the house exactly one time, for 30 minutes total, just to walk a few steps next door and attend an event I was a whole hour-and-a-half late for.

I celebrated taking my first shower in days, only to have projectile spit-up all over the front of me within seconds.

I put the baby down for four cat naps and nursed her seven times (or so I think; I’m always losing track).

At dinner, big brother drenched himself and the entire chair in deep red tomato soup, because I forgot to cover him with a towel-as-bib. (But by the time I realized it, I was simply glad he was eating what I gave him for dinner, so I just looked away.)

Of course we also sang songs and read books and prayed and had a few laughs, and there were sweet moments interlaced with the crazy ones. But by bedtime, we were all ready to close up shop, and my husband and I shuffled into our nightly tag-team: him with the oldest, me with the baby.

I’m pretty sure we had a sophisticated bedtime routine in place for our oldest by the time he was 12 weeks old (thank you, baby sleep books 101), but now, I’m lucky if I get the baby zipped into her jammies and manage to slide into the rocker before she realizes she’s hungry. I might hum a few lines of a song if I can manage it, but mostly I just put my own feet up while she eats and let the rocker hold us both for a minute; unhinging from a day of scooping up, carrying, balancing and bending down.

Then, we all go to bed, for as many hours as we can get.

I once heard a mom of four kids say that a good day for them looked like making it, all in one piece, from morning to evening. At the time, I was only a few weeks into parenting my firstborn, and I remember thinking that sounded like kind of a bleak view of parenting. Certainly unromantic.

But I’m so thankful now that she said that, because most days that’s exactly what we do around here: we work our way from one end of the day to the other.

It seems rather purposeless and a little monotonous when I say it aloud, huh?

And yet.

There has been something freeing to me about these days of surviving – these slow days of unwashed hair and interrupted naps and games that sometimes end in tears.

In the grind of survival, my expectations have been lowered. My plans have been simplifiedchanged, even. As someone who thrives on big ideas, lofty thoughts, and dreaming about the future, it has been hard to adjust to the often small and simple life of caring for babies and young children.

But forcing myself to move through a hundred small but important, chaotic, and “just surviving” moments has been good to me in a few ways.

I find myself thinking a little less about my own comfort and more about what’s best for the lives in my care. I am slowly loosening my grip on the pursuit of perfection; how something gets accomplished takes a backseat to its simply getting done. I am little more grateful for simple gifts, like seeing my son curled up in his room with a book, or my baby girl giving me a toothless smile after her nap, or my neighbor sending me home with a mug of hot tea, or even the sun showing the edges of its face after a long, sleepless night.

I certainly did nothing spectacular today — I was lucky to get us into the rocker at bedtime.

But tonight, after everyone else was asleep, I slipped into my children’s rooms and stood for a moment to watch their little chests rise up and down, to listen to the cantor of their breathing. I gave thanks for the gift of lungs that move and hearts that beat. I reveled in the act of those little bodies resting, sleeping, surviving  … a reality so very miraculous and precious to me.

If I can marvel in their simple existence so very deeply, I think somehow my own surviving—my own walking from one day into another, one night to another, from one ordinary moment to another—must also be beautiful in a way. We are making it, together. And for today, that is simply enough.

Jenna
Jenna lives in Midtown with her husband and two kids (ages 6 and 4). She has an M.A. in English and too many overdue books at the library. She has been working with writers for over a decade, as a high school teacher, college instructor, and writing coach. She loves good coffee, serious conversation, and not-too-serious fiction.