My New Motherhood, a Struggle to Swim Through

I don't know what part is toughest. Is it the required mental adjustment as to what I should expect of myself, or the permanent physical pains that accompanied pregnancy and labor? Or is it feeling like a failure because there are plenty of moments of impatience with a cute helpless baby? I am talking about the impatience that turns into frustration that turns into anxiety that skews your view of your situation.

I don't know if it's that I was raised with society shoving the image of an ideal woman down my throat. That a woman was supposed to not put her kids before her career. That her career takes precedence and a woman without a career is not a complete woman. If she does, she is less. Her IQ lower. Her abilities inadequate. A woman with messy hair, with a kid running around, another on her hip, smelling like garlic from cooking, and Clorox from cleaning, was a lost woman, a woman without goals, a pathetic woman.

Or maybe it's the patriarchy I rebelled against my entire life. This particular brand told me that a woman's place was in the kitchen, in the home, at her husband's feet (even if they were smelly), in the janitor's closet, and on the lowest part of the class scale. I remember the quote that shook me to my core. "A woman is like a shoe, you wear her and take her off when you want." In Arabic, it's a lot worse. A shoe in the Arab culture is basically equivalent to poo.

Or maybe it's the back injury that I sustained (oh and I mean SUSTAINED) before I got pregnant that made my labor far more favorable than my pregnancy, however excruciating my labor was.

Perhaps it's the carpel tunnel (also from pregnancy) that stole my art from beneath my hands. Art was my soul's story, my eternal expression, and the pain robbed me of it.

Maybe it's my knees giving out on me, leaving me weak plenty of the time.

I think it might be that I breathe through it all, and carry her on my hip, despite the hand pain, despite the well-intended but useless patriarchal comments, despite pressure from my own expectations of myself, despite the comments like "Oh you left Architecture? But you had so much promise!"

Or maybe it's the silence. Mine, to be exact. I haven't written about this. I haven't quite spelled it out (pun intended) until now. Not really wanting to share my pain with others. I feel embarrassed to share it since mine always seems so little compared to others I know or read about.

When I think about it, it's all of it.

I also know there are other mamas out there who didn't "always want to be a mom" as their primary goal in life. I didn't want to be a "mom," but I want to be me, Leena, with a cute little baby, with all the ups and downs that come with motherhood. I saw children as a part of life, as a part of my life, but not my entire life. Our pockets of culture restrict the image of who and what a woman should be, and then they make a billion photocopies of that image and put it under each door of every home.

My little one is worth far more than these struggles, of course, and it is absurd to judge a mother's love for her child because of her expression of her tribulations. These struggles are my current mountain, the one I am trying to conquer. Just trying to shed some weight here.

God help us, all mothers.

With love,
Newbie