By Yasmine Jodrey
Published: March. 17, 2012
Physically the journey from conception to being a mother felt nothing short of an opera. It’s all a big blur now, and frankly, I’d like to keep it that way.
In a heartbeat, you are suddenly missing a heartbeat and all of a sudden, you have to consiously provide and protect a being that seems so fragile, he may blow up if you sneeze.
Raging hormones see me crouched in a corner with garlic around my neck and a wooden cross to beat off my husband.
Sleep is secondary to everything else it seems, but somehow you function day in and day out.
Thank goodness for the motherhood glow, since getting dressed in the morning consists of nothing short of a flash toothbrushing and a brief stint on the toilet.
It took a little while for motherhood to sink in for this first time mother. I remember the moment well: I was lying with my infant son, and he was breastfeeding for the first time.
Most of the world has some experience with breastfeeding, and may feel it should be instinctual.
Breastfeeding for me was no walk in the park; like the delivery, I was forced to dig deep scouring my mind, body, and spirit to rise above and leap into the world of breastfeeding.
My husband walked into the room and smiled when he saw us, I declared with a lot of zest and pride “I feel like such a mammal”.
But it was true, what I felt was raw, and real! I felt like the whale swimming with her calf that moved like her shadow.
Or the bambi like foal who never missed a stride alongside her mare mother. I didn’t learn how to survive with my son in that first month, from a book, or a prenatal class, or from a video.
I did what I felt instinctually, and I learned as I went along from the souls that became part of my journey.
Today when I introduce my son, whether it be at the grocery store or at our families, I present him as if he were the Lion King and I am introducing him to the circle of life atop Pride Rock, for the whole world to see.
Sounds dramatic, but that is exactly the passion, and the purpose that motherhood has gifted me. When I see pictures of baby animals, it is not simply the ridiculous cuteness of the baby that I see.
Now I see too, the relationship. I see the mother, I see the connection. And even creepier, I see my own mother as never before.
Motherhood is as complex as being a teenager, a toddler, or a senior citizen; it is an era in one’s life. It is with my new motherhood spectacles on that I see you, I see others, and I see our connection.
Motherhood connects me to all sons and daughters of mother earth. It is through this vision that I can shed judgement and embrace all.
For I am a mother, just as the earth is, she doesn’t exclude, she values balance through diversity.
In my infant stages of motherhood I find the experience to be very spiritual and conceptually challenging of the mind and my paradigms. It’s the fork in the road I will never regret.
