2. Selfishness
Yep, you read that right. One of the greatest gifts Motherhood has taught me, is how to be selfish. It’s surprisingly quite hard! I’m the kind of person that will drop whatever I’m doing to make something even just a tiny bit easier for someone I love.
My energy tank has been running on “E” since 1pm but I know my husband is going to be starving when he comes home from his 13 hour day, and even though he will never ask for dinner, I KNOW he’d loooove some good ol’ homemade thai fried rice. And even though that means 1.5-2 hours of chopping, prepping and cooking whilst holding a baby on my hip/ running after a baby who doesn’t want to be on my hip, I do it anyway- with love.
My Mom calls at 9PM just as I’ve finished applying my “it really works! no more bags!” BS under eye night cream before I finally get to collapse into bed, but I answer anyway.
I have to pee more than the Nile, but that little old lady is struggling with her shopping cart, so I stop to help her.
Kaia is wandering around keeping herself occupied, so I could Totes Mcgotes just sit down and relax for a sec, but I know she could be having more fun if I was playing with her, so I crawl down onto the ground, surprise her and tickle her until she’s belly laughing with all her little belly might.
These things are all great and good, but it’s REAL easy to forget about myself. Motherhood (as well as the help from my husband) has helped me to realize and understand that taking care of myself is just as important as taking care of the people I love and care about. It’s hard to remember, but sometimes putting myself first, means I can be even more of the great Wife, Momma, friend, etc. that I can be.
So now, (and by now I mean…within the past 3 weeks I’ve been able to start doing this) when Kaia wakes us up in the morning and my Husband whispers, “please keep sleeping for as long as you can” as he gets out of bed, sometimes I actually do just that, and go back to bed! And it’s fantastical! Or when it comes time to make dinner and I literally feel like a zombie creature, sometimes I’ll suggest takeout! When Kaia goes down for her nap, I’ll take 30 minutes (or maybe more often than not, an hour) to just lay on the couch and watch some Friends instead of cleaning the kitchen or doing those loads of laundry I keep saying I’m going to do but keep forgetting, and it’s totally okay! Being selfish certainly has its perks. I feel like I have even more to give now that I’m giving to myself more.
So, thank you little Kaia, for letting this Momma experience Motherhood, and for giving me yet another gift I didn’t have before.
