pre-motherhood fears creeping in | late night discouragement

It's 2:56 in the morning as I lie here reflecting on the day with intermittent thoughts of the new change in my future barging in. I greatly look forward to meeting my little one yet at the same time a tinge of loneliness has been overpowering me since I rolled out of bed this morning. I've done a lot to prepare for him yet today l I feel so unprepared. I feel so incapable of being a mother.

I have longed for motherhood in so many different instances of my life. In times where I was alone in a doubted relationship as I longed for the unconditional love like a child's love that I wasn't getting from someone who had been rendered incapable of giving it to me. As I lie here now next to my fast asleep husband, my best friend who has given me more love than I could ever ask for, I reflect on that loneliness of the past and somehow my fears project those wounded emotions into the future. 

Motherhood and how motherhood is often described as a pretty lonely job sometimes has been on the forefront of my mind lately. How often mothers go un-thanked, unappreciated, and taken for granted. I look at the mothers in my life and see that their roles as mothers have changed. They're still mothers but their children have moved out and are starting families of their own. These mothers are left with an identity that for years thrived on the minute by minute nurturing and teaching of their children that has now become an identity like that of a house of empty bedrooms and phone calls few and far between. And this is where the fears of loneliness seep in. 

I've spent the last 37 weeks nurturing and bonding with this little guy and even though I've never seen his face nor touched his skin with my fingertips I love him beyond words. I love every stretch of his little limbs inside me, the hiccups he has every night, the way he reacts when his daddy touches my belly and talks to him, the way I seem to feel what he feels. It's the most incredible thing in the world to me and the thought of that being gone is already so devastating. I miss his sweet little boy snuggles as if he's already a snobby teenager who finds his mother's affection obnoxious.

Please tell me it doesn't go by this quickly. Please tell me to not fear time passing too quickly because it already has. Oh someone make it stop.