PARENTING: A LIFE ALTERING ADJUSTMENT.

[Another guest post by my wife, Grace]

In my last post I wrote about my experience as a first time mom and I was so overwhelmed by the feedback I received but even more overwhelmed by the support from my husband who encouraged me to actually write the initial post. After my first post, I told my husband how much his support and him spurring me on meant to me. It is such a wonderful feeling when your husband can recognise something you enjoy and then gently push you to pursue it. At least for me, that warms my heart.

This though made me a bit embarrassingly aware of something in my own experience I can so easily minimize, and that is, that it is not just us women who are first time moms, but hello, there’s a man (!!!!), your husband (!!!!) and mine who are also first time dads. And oh dear, isn’t that something to write about… 

After Matthew’s birth, my husband and I, even after having read several books and received wise counsel from experienced parents, were still hopelessly unprepared for the actual experience of raising a baby. I promise, I was the most organized and all-together-mommy-to-be but when Matt came, I wasn’t even sure whether or not I could trust my judgment on the right temperature for his bottle or his bath. I didn’t trust a thermometer (that’s how nutty I was).

In any case, I was happy that I had a partner who was with me on the ride to “perfect” parenting.  But I must admit, hubby gave me many funny and memorable moments in the earlier months, that goes to show the real and tremendous adjustments we had to make or become used to now that we were parents. To parent well requires selfless and life altering adjustments to ones life (and you really don’t have a choice in this).

Now you have to understand our situation before Matthew came to appreciate the significant adjustments we had to make. We were married for 5 years and in that 5 years of blissful marriage we had the luxury and comfort of just having time for ourselves. But BOY when our boy came everything changed (and rightfully so). I get that your life has to somehow change for the most part but once this change touches on the sacred cow of sleep we knew it was going to be one hectic journey! Becoming a parent you soon realize that your own sleep time doesn’t belong to you anymore. Shame, my heart went out to daddy-dearest as I watched him come to terms with this “new dawn”. I remember waking up throughout the night so that Matthew could have his feed and daddy-dearest providing some ‘interesting’ moments.

So we soon fell into an evening routine. During the night one-month old Matt becomes restless and starts to moan for a bottle. I wake Riaan to get the bottle ready so that I could feed him. Then I’d pass Matt over to Riaan so he could pass winds by daddy. This is when the show began, but oddly enough it wasn’t Matthew putting on a show, but daddy (LOL!). I shared our experiences with my family and I got hubby’s permission so he doesn’t mind me embarrassing him for the greater good. Let me explain:

It was the first night of Riaan’s struggle to adjust to the broken-sleep-patterns that would become part of our new lives. It was about 2am the morning and time for Matthew’s feed. I woke Riaan up and urged him to get the bottle warmed and ready for Matthew to be fed. Riaan jumped from the bed and hastily made his way to the kitchen. At this point I’m fully awake and patiently waiting for the bottle. Riaan comes back to the bedroom with no bottle in his hand. Instead with his eyes closed he makes his way to the bed sits down and eats a sucker – YES AN ICE COLD SUCKER! At 2 am in the morning when a bottle should be fetched he eats the sucker.

I turned to him and asked him what’s he doing and it seems it was only then that he actually really woke up and the look on his face led me to believe he had NO IDEA or answer to my question. He was actually still asleep! Yes for some reason, woken up by my request, he got up and made his way to the kitchen and instead of preparing a bottle he helped himself to a sucker while fast asleep, mind you! I know having your sleep broken up at 2am sucks…but did he seriously need to demonstrate how much it sucked (lol)

 

 

The second night Matt wakes up the same time, early hours of the morning for his feed. I wake Riaan and he goes to the kitchen and returns with a plate in his hand giving it to me. At this point I’m convinced he is sleep walking, so I raised my voice and repeat that I need to feed Matt and that he should get me the bottle! He then goes back into the kitchen and returns to the room handing me THE SAME PLATE WITH A CUP ON TOP OF IT. Oh man, I didn’t know whether to laugh or scream but I certainly started realizing the struggle to adjust was real! We still laugh out loud when we think of those early months and how far we’ve come in this short journey!

There are a few other nights with some other (more embarrassing) incidents but because I love him and he is after-all the father of my baby, I will spare him the embarrassment, plus I think the point is made. You are never ready for the kind of adjustments you are required to make when you become fist-time parents and these adjustment are non-negotiable and every parent goes through it (so we’re not alone).

It’s interesting that we often only talk about the changes and adjustments the mother must make and while that is true my experience with this brave dad makes me also want to acknowledge that dads have to make a significant adjustment to their lives too.

So, what carries us through such inconvenient adjustments? Well, I guess, for us it’s not just about strategizing, planning and being real hard on ourselves but it’s more an internal motivation. Before the practical and actual life adjustment, must come the internal heart adjustment. Adjusting to parenting require a selfless attitude! This Christian virtue of “selflessness” is perfectly modeled by our Saviour Jesus Christ. My husband always reminds me that parenting affords us the opportunity to obey Philippians 2:3-5

“…in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others. In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:”

He says that if we are going to be good parents we need to heed the instructions of Philippians 2 carefully, and consider our children above ourselves, and look out not for our own interests (even that sweet uninterrupted 8 hours of sleep) but the interests of our children – who need both are consideration and care. Parenting requires serious life adjustments and God reminds us of the Christ-like virtue of selflessness to help us make these sacrificial and necessary adjustments for the well-being, care and happiness of our little babies! Parenting begins with an attitude of selflessness!

 

 

 

LEARNING TO BE A MOTHER, WITH GOD AS YOUR FATHER

[A guest post by my wife: Grace aka Gracious.]

Just over a year ago I became a first time mom to a beautiful boy, Matthew Thomas Boer. The journey that I had experienced was a special one, as many mothers would agree. Many mothers would also agree that with this burst of excitement come anxiety, fear and self-doubt. Becoming a mother is such a daunting experience that you often wonder if you are ‘cut out’ for it. I look at my mom and compare her to my mother-in-law and I am amazed at how beautifully different they have raised their kids yet having one thing in common.

I see these two mothers as strong women, living in a time of struggle, working in and outside of the home, tending to their respective husbands and still making sure their kids were clothed and fed. I ask myself, how? I then realized that the one thing these women have in common is their devoted love for and trust in God. And so it dawned on me, any female can become a mother but to become a god-fearing mother you need to acknowledge God as your Father.

I had such an easy and pleasant pregnancy until the day leading up to Matthew’s birth. I remember seeing the doctor for my regular appointment and upon the routine blood pressure check, she became alarmed with the readings. She urged me to rather be booked in at the hospital for a few days just to monitor my blood pressure and to make sure my baby and I were safe. And so I complied. After being in hospital for a few days she scheduled my next appointment for the following week and before I could get to the scheduled date, Matthew was ready to make his appearance. I endured 12 hours of labour an unexpected emergency C- section and a surface infection a week thereafter. This period was probably one of the scariest experiences I had ever faced.

I’m unashamed to say that I – a married woman of a new born baby boy –  nested like a baby at moms place for some time and I did not want to go back home. To be honest, I was fearful of raising baby Matthew as I felt that most of the care and responsibility would rest on me as the mother. With tears in my eyes my husband, who was lovingly by my side through this entire ordeal, encouraged me and assured me that all will be well. He assured me that I would be okay and that we will handle the challenges of our new journey together. And so I went home…

Clinging on to his words and seeing how true he was to his words, made it all the more easier for Matthew and I to settle in, and so we did. I had such a beautiful idealistic picture in my mind of our little family and how we would parent Matthew and still get to enjoy the beauty of married life. About 3 to 4 months after Matthew’s birth, I felt like I was losing it. It felt like this picture I had was merely just that, a picture that cannot be sustained despite my best efforts and all  the exertion of my energy. Motherhood was not what I expected.

Many nights I cried myself to sleep wondering whether or not in all I was doing, I was doing the right thing. The pressure of rearing an infant and feeling like you are all alone is one of the worst feelings to have. Though my husband was his supportive self, I was too overwhelmed to realize or appreciate his help and partnership in parenting. I was overwhelmed by the cries of a baby, the fevers that broke out, the lack of sleep, the fear of being outdoors with him and worst of all, the feeling of doing it all on my own. To be honest, it felt like I had lost a significant part of me during these first few months.

As a woman, I had endured the bittersweet pleasure of pregnancy, the traumatizing and fearful reality of knowing your life and your baby could potentially be in danger, the physical pain of recovery, and then to have these emotional struggles and insecurities of motherhood was cause to lose your mind. I am sure every mother can relate a story or an experience perhaps different or similar to mine, but at the time I felt like I was the only mother in the world having these miserable and unpleasant feelings about motherhood which led to a flood of guilt because I knew my baby didn’t deserve it.

I often tried to mask my fears and insecurities for fear of being judged by more experienced moms or the younger confident moms. However, inwardly I felt like I was doing a terrible job. I felt that I was unable to tend to my home, love my husband and even care for myself because my baby needed ALL 100% of ME.  However, amidst the overwhelmingly unrealistic expectations and pressures I placed on myself, my experience and especially my struggles as a first time mom has taught me the following lesson:

TO BE AN EFFECTIVE MOTHER, I NEED GOD, MY HEAVENLY FATHER

I have tried to do mothering on my own, my rules, my ways, my opinions – STRESSES AND WORRIES – because I am the mother. In my mind and leaning on my understanding I thought, I had more of a right than anyone else in how I choose to raise my child. But I struggled because I ended up neglecting many things which are equally important in life.

Self-sufficiency is tiresome. Isolating oneself is exhausting. Unhealthy independence is hard work. Self-reliance is madness! I didn’t know how to celebrate motherhood and rejoice in my bundle of joy with my husband, with my friends and more so in God. My time was spent trying to tick off the check box and in doing so I became exhausted and sadly spiritually weak.

However, how was I going to point my son to God if I am not always leaning on Him? How am I going to instill godly values if I was not exercising godliness? How was I going to portray a godly view to my child on marriage if I was not deliberately working on my marriage? I knew that Matthew needed a mother but in order for me to be a god-fearing mother, I was in desperate need of my heavenly Father!

It was with this growing realization that I came to abandon my reign and submitted to my Heavenly Father and realized that in order for me to be the most effective mother I needed God as my Father. He who gave me the blessing of motherhood also intends to help me to be a mother. This has been a really refreshing lesson to have learned and one perfectly summed up by Proverb 3. A passage relevant to all of life and in this case especially mothering

Trust in the Lord with all your heart

and lean not on your own understanding;

in all your ways submit to him,

and he will make your paths straight.[a]

Do not be wise in your own eyes;

fear the Lord and shun evil. – Proverbs 3:5-7