Motherhood & Brotherhood
My never-ending project about motherhood and everything that goes along with it...
It is a story of a young mother that is still learning how to be one. Here I'd like to share my thoughts on being a mom of boys, hoping it would make someone a bit less lonely on this extraordinary path.
Content:
Chapter1.: Motherhood is a mind-blowing adventure!
Chapter 2.: About Mother's Legs
Chapter 3.: Night Knight Mommy
to be continued...
Somewhere Between
I'm somewhere between a size 8, 10 and 12,
but clothes in odd sizes aren't sold on the shelves.
My fashion's between what I like and I need,
something that looks good but still lets me feed.
I'm somewhere between wide awake and asleep,
between survival and living the dream.
I'm somewhere between five half-finished tasks,
I'm somewhere between happy and sad.
Some days I look but it's hard to see -
I'm postpartum, but what am I pre-?
I'm somewhere between fading and glowing,
a strange combination of shrinking and growing.
I'm somewhere between broken and whole,
maybe losing my dreams, maybe reaching my goal.
I can't tell if I'm trapped or totally free,
if I'm lost or exactly where I'm meant to be.
I guess you could say I'm in no man's land,
in a place only woman can understand.
I'm somewhere between the shadows and sun,
in the part of my life where me becomes mum.
I'm somewhere between rock bottom and heaven,
and still looking for clothes in a size eleven.
Hannah Blanton
Instagram & Facebook: @hannahblantonpoet
Motherhood is a mind-blowing adventure!
Without a doubt I have always dreamed to be a mother.
How little I knew about that!
Taking my own family as a role model, I believed that motherhood was all about "giving" and never expecting anything in return. My family taught me what ultimate sacrifice and real love are, and I still carry that knowledge with me.
Yet, it has been so interesting and mind-blowing to realize that my search for meaning in motherhood would eventually lead to finding myself—all through watching small boys grow up.
(This image is the first one taken to start this "never-ending project." It was taken at 5 o'clock in the morning, when I finally dared to get out of bed to capture how it actually feels to be surrounded by my boys. It is hard to believe there is any place for me to sleep in this bed. It's crowded, tight, and difficult to find rest. Nevertheless, this is my life. In the depths of extreme postpartum depression, I felt an unfamiliar darkness of loneliness and invisibility.
Starting this project was a tremendous step toward getting better. I finally understood what I needed to do to be seen and heard. So, I took my camera and took a shot.)
It took us seven long years until we finally met our firstborn son. He is the love of my life and the biggest gift we could have received!
Knowing that we were going to have a baby boy made me incredibly anxious. It was completely unknown territory for me because I grew up surrounded almost entirely by women. I have a sister, and I studied at an all-girls school. Even my father raised me with an extraordinarily high sense of self-worth and the idea that women rule the world. Because of that, I did my best to grow up as an independent woman.
There was always a certain feminist vibe in my family, and in my country in general. Women have played a massive role in Ukraine’s history and culture. We place them on a pedestal as queens; they are the non-verbal leaders of the pride.
I always knew what womanly pride was and what my value as a woman meant. But having a boy became my biggest milestone. I never really understood how these creatures become who they are, and more importantly, what they need to become the best version of themselves. I felt a great responsibility to raise a man! It became the biggest mission I’ve ever had.
Since I was little, I have always been told how gifted women are. We receive a huge amount of skills, talents, and power from birth, simply because we will have so much on our shoulders in the future. On the other hand, I used to think that men were given much less by nature, making it harder for them to stand out—and that this was why they constantly felt the need to prove themselves.
Boys will be boys!
Why do they need to bump into things all the time?
Why do they scream so loudly?
Why do boys love to fall and make so much noise?
These were just a few of the questions constantly on my mind whenever my boy got rough again and again. The mystery is still unsolved. But whatever my son was getting himself into—whether it was a hole in the ground or a super-high slide—I knew what I had to do: I had to run right behind him. I think I remember my bruised knees even more than he does!
It takes two!
When our first son was born, I couldn't pick up my camera for a very long time. I didn't know who I was anymore, or whether I even wanted to take photographs. That incredible chapter of my life felt sealed and locked away, and the key to that door had been lost somewhere between the toy excavators and the beans. (My son loves to play with construction trucks and beans as if it’s a real construction site! 😅)
Don't get me wrong—before children became my dream, I loved photography profoundly! It was everything I truly felt, and often, it was the only way I could express my feelings to the world. But then my first child was born, and there was nothing more beautiful in the world than him. I just couldn't take my eyes off him! I was scared to death of missing a single thing he did or how he did it. For almost four years, photography was erased from my life. Until life granted us our second boy.
Loosing myself and finding myself.
Without a doubt, I fully dedicated myself to being the best mother in the world, because there was nothing else I cherished more. And that is totally understandable. I was never afraid of losing myself in motherhood because deep in my heart, I knew I would always find my way back.
But my strength was put to the test during my second pregnancy. I couldn't believe where all my power and energy had vanished to. After the birth, I slowly started to fade away. I felt like I had been left alone in the darkest cave in the world, where the love of my life, my husband, my son, and my newborn couldn't reach me.
I slept so little that I could barely function. I was in physical and mental pain all the time. Now, I can finally open up and admit that it was the darkest moment of my life—a time I felt I spent completely alone. Postpartum depression hit me right in the face and confronted me with many unfamiliar questions:
Where am I in all of this?
Am I still here?
Does anyone still see me?
Who am I?
Motherhood is a superhero job!
Then my friend Charlie reappeared in my life, along with the Fearless Family. Time and time again, she became a lighthouse in my darkness. Because of her, I started to speak and be seen. I cannot express enough gratitude to her or describe how important she is in my life. I did nothing to deserve a friend like her, but she is always there for me, time after time.
It takes great internal bravery to stand up again when you have fallen so deep. And it was time to find myself again.
I must confess that I am a mother who is quickly overstimulated and sensitive to touch. Even the touch of someone beloved can push me over the edge. And yet, I am touched by my hyperactive boys pretty often! It is crazy how boys need to test their limits on mothers just as much as on fathers. We teach them to be gentle, but what a great price it is to pay.
I admire mothers so much for what they do in their daily lives to be there for their families. It is the craziest job you could ever do, and you never truly understand it until you are fully in it. Like many others, I underestimated what it takes to be a mother, and through this, I have finally, truly seen my own mom. The sacrifices she made so effortlessly, so easily, and without expecting anything back... how naive I was.
While I spent all this time thinking it was really hard to raise boys, I finally understood that all this time, I was raising me. And that is actually the hardest part!
My journey through motherhood is still going on, and I have hope. I hope that my house will never be less warm than it is now—the house where I found my way back to myself.
Every day, I tell myself:
Our house is not a mess. It is full of life! I used to hear noise everywhere when things weren't organized the way they were before children. But I learn every day how to compromise on our space, and how to integrate chaos into the pattern of our lives. Actually, it’s not chaos—it’s a children's world full of imagination and creativity!
Children are washable! So it's okay to let them get dirty.
Slow down. I am teaching myself to slow down and not run all the time. Our children slow us down, but that is exactly what we need! The real wonders of life start to become visible only when you stop running and watch them happen.
Play more. I tell myself that things get less difficult when we start playing with our children more—when we truly participate in their games instead of multitasking.
Be gentle. I am learning every day how to be a gentle parent. I'm not proud of myself every single day, but I do my best.
I am still learning, and there is definitely plenty of space left on this page to keep writing. But this is what I have learned recently, so I wanted to share it with you.
There is a time to work and a time to rest. So, I will stop here and go get some well-deserved sleep. And so should you! 😉
With love,
Lara
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About Mother’s Legs
It all started this week with my feet—specifically, when I was thrilled to successfully cut the nails on my right foot while my son was taking a shower. As women, we transform from normal human beings into multitasking monsters. If, before children, we could be proud of walking through the house and managing to straighten up everything in our path, now we celebrate just cutting the nails on one foot! Yes, it was a great success for me, though not so much for my left foot. We still multitask, but on an entirely different level.
We carry so much weight on our legs. On top of everyday housekeeping, we carry another heavy bucket filled with emotional worries, emotional support, and responsibilities for ourselves and everyone around us. It piles up so high that our brains hit the sky just as often as food drops from a toddler's high chair.
We multitask a lot, we multitask even too much. It is a hidden danger for a mother's brain. I realized this a bit too late, after I had already drained myself to the point of becoming a desert. There were only cacti and snakes left for my family—a sad picture for a warm, cozy home. But now I know that celebrating little successes is just as important for keeping my spirits high. So, yes: this week, the right foot. Maybe next week, the other one! ;-)
A few years ago, our house had a very vivid center. The heart of the home was right in the middle of the kitchen, where all the best things happened for just the two of us. Now, I feel like the center of the house has "grown legs." It moves around. Or, better yet, everything now happens mostly around me. A mother is a place to eat, a place to cry, a place to jump on, a place to play hide-and-seek, a place to cuddle, and a place to find security, safety, comfort, and everlasting love.
There is so much going on around us as mothers. People don’t usually get the opportunity to witness it, but it is an undeniable fact. It is a gift, but it is also a heavy weight of responsibility; it is not easy, and it is not always fun. It is so important to recognize the mental load that goes along with it all. Sometimes, I just wish "these legs" could take an easy walk through a regular park, and not Jurassic Park.
In the meantime, I still have dreams that put heels on my feet instead of sneakers. For a while now, I have truly loved and preferred wearing my sneakers, and I wouldn't trade them for anything in the world. But I allow myself to accept the need to dream about my heels sometimes.
With love to my feet,
Lara
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Night Knight Mommy
The first time I ever witnessed and photographed a childbirth was the birth of the first baby boy of my lovely sister. I remember that day so vividly, like it just happened today. It was a golden autumn day and night. All the happiness of the world was in that hospital room. There was that magical moment when I was blessed to see with my own eyes the first breath of a human being. I had a feeling that it was the moment when his soul entered his body, and my whole world stopped for a second at that particular moment. Until today, I’m profoundly grateful to my beautiful sister for allowing me to witness that day.
That day, I saw a sign in the waiting room of a delivery unit that has stayed with me until now. It read: “Sleep deprivation makes everything worse.” I still remember that interesting phrase, and only now have I truly and deeply felt what it feels like to be fully under the control of sleep deprivation.
I don’t know if everyone experiences it the same way; I can only share what was happening to me during that time. And I hope you or your loved ones will become a bit more alert to that very dangerous period of time when mothers may have an extreme shortage of sleep. I’m going to try to be very careful with choosing my words because it is a very personal experience for me.
With our first child, I still had “a bucket full of energy,” and I’m not sure how exactly, but I went through that first year with a shortage of sleep without major troubles. However, with our second child, I completely lost myself because of sleep deprivation.
When the night came, it turned into a warzone for me. I found myself on a battlefield standing completely alone against the most difficult enemy I could ever find at that moment—I was fighting myself. And there was no one there to save me. These are the moments you have no rational understanding of what is going on; you can’t rely on yourself because you are just surviving. A battle without weapons, a battle without a shelter to hide in, a battle without a winner whatsoever. It happens in your mind, and no one knows how it will end. The baby is hungry, the baby is crying from his lungs… I was still breastfeeding my always-hungry “caterpillar,” and I was in agony. Unfortunately, I wasn’t very lucky to have a magical breastfeeding process because I never had enough milk and always had pain. So my nights were 100 times more exhausting for me than my days. Every two hours I had to feed. And I couldn’t stop it somehow. Strangely, there was no one who could convince me to stop breastfeeding because it had become a necessity in my mind.
Somehow, around 6 months, I stopped when I reached my limit, when I had to save my own life. And it was the best decision I could make for myself and my baby. It took another 2 months to fully transition to bottle-feeding; however, my lovely boy saved another night challenge for me that, unfortunately, still hasn't changed. He wakes up at 5 am every single day, very hungry. So we have to rise from bed together with him. Luckily, sometimes WE, instead of only me. That helps a lot! Thank you, my love, for being there for me!
Sleep deprivation made me numb, made me highly overstimulated, and made me inattentive to the point that while driving a car, I couldn't see obvious, large objects in front of me, which led to damaging our car. I found myself crying at the dining table without a particular reason and feeling my body so heavy that I couldn’t lift it up. Our kids were born heavy, and they are still heavy. And it was difficult for me to lift them up, but it was heavy even to lift up my own body. So, I was on the edge.
I wish we all could be so much more attentive to our sleep because it has such a tremendous influence on our well-being.
It’s been a while since I had this turning point, but these “high peaks” of exhaustion are still coming back from time to time. But at least I know how to recognize them. I do sports, I try to rest alone without any disturbances, and I try to talk about it so my family can be aware of the situation. And I talk here to you, my reader. You heal me by hearing me out. So, thank you for being here for me without even knowing it.
“Sleep deprivation makes everything worse.” Just remember this phrase, because it is the key to staying away from that warzone.
Love,
Lara
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