Mourning Mamahood

I blinked and he was suddenly three.

This has been a big week. Between bathroom renovations, our washing machine officially dying and rearranging bedrooms to accommodate Sam’s new big boy bed {all in a five day period} I feel like our home was turned upside down and inside out. Or at least, that’s how these changes are making my tummy feel. A little queasy and uneasy. I’m not necessarily a fearless person when it comes to change. I hesitate, I deliberate, I ponder and I get a bit grumpy.

None of the changes this week were all that unexpected. Well, ok, maybe needing to replace the washing machine wasn’t quite in the plan, but we’ve had the bathroom reno booked for a month now and the desire to change Sam’s room has been with me for a while. And yet, I still went through the same old emotional stages; wanting to hold on to the familiar, knowing I need to let things go, and slowly releasing my grip on the past until I was fully, finally reaching for change.

In all that turmoil over changes around the house, what surprised me most, was how suddenly I was mourning. Not mourning the loss of a bathroom {for only good can come from changing that}. I was mourning some part of my mamahood that just faded away with the transition of Sam’s room from “baby room” to “big boy room”.

There I was, sitting in my rocking chair, rocking Sam asleep in his room, his head on my chest snuggled in so close. I scooped him up & carried him over to his toddler bed and just as I started to pull the blankets up around him, I realized, that was it. That was the last night that I would rock him asleep in his room. I had the sudden urge to cradle him back in my arms and sit rocking him for hours. With tears in my eyes, I kissed him goodnight and left him to his dreams.

Then his big boy mattress arrived, a huge double bed {that’s what his toddler bed converts into} that required us to move out some of the other furniture in his room, including the rocking chair. The first night I tucked him into his new big boy bed, I got teary-eyed again. It was one of the first times that I didn’t cuddle & rock him in the chair at bedtime.

Seemingly mundane, maybe even trivial changes, but in this mama’s world it symbolized the very real end of one life-stage and the scary beginning of another. I blinked and he was suddenly three.

I’m still learning how to walk in these mama-shoes.

I stumble and fall and cry a lot.

I wish I could hold onto the “baby” part of my boy, but he just won’t stop growing up. Maybe I’m crazy, maybe it’s because he is our only child, but for whatever reason, I’m finding it hard. They just keep changing, these babes of ours, until they no longer resemble babes at all. They’ve suddenly become people. A tantrum-throwing, the world-still-revolves-around-me type person, but still a person. I can call him my “big boy”, my “little man”, whatever, but we’re still firmly into the this new stage. I now look into his eyes and see the baby he was and the man he could be. Sam is certainly still evolving into his own personality, but there are glimpses of his future self. A self that is entirely independent of me and I get sad. And proud.

There is still so much ahead for this boy of ours and for us too. I’m just going to keep holding his hand as long as he lets me. Keep cuddling him close and even look forward to some of the stumbles we’ll have along the way because, now we can pick each other up.