Navigating Motherhood Beyond

In 2024, I got the experience of a lifetime getting to welcome my first child into this world with my loved ones around me! Now I am the type of individual who likes to plan everything down to the letter, that being said I felt woefully underprepared. Now this could have been the hormones but those feelings come from instinct just as much as experience.

As you see on social media platforms you have a birth plan and a nursery set up to welcome your little one into this world. TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, any and every social media site show the joys and the good parts of the experience. They help to project a vision in your head of how everything should go. How your partner is supposed to react to certain events. The outfits you and your little one should be wearing. Even what to bring to the hospital. Everyone has their thoughts and opinions on the subject all over the internet. I’m not saying this is a bad thing but it can set unrealistic expectations and hopes into people's heads mostly in the way of finances. I admit I am a cheap skate I refuse to spend hundreds of dollars on a product when sometimes no matter the ratings and reviews is not possible for all households. Having a baby is already expensive enough without outside influence! Did I personally stay off social media of course not I love Pinterest and I am loyal to the people I follow on TikTok, I had a plan and I knew what I wanted

“I had a plan and I knew what I wanted”

I used the app Birth Plan + as it was easy to use and walked me through everything and explained thoroughly if I didn’t know something. I highly recommend this app for creating a birth plan to bring to the hospital. Once you start the journey of pregnancy and child birth there is so much information out there it can be overwhelming. Birth Plan + helped to take some of that stress away by helping me make choices I felt secure in without having to spend my time deep diving for information. Another app that I am still using is what to expect. It gives you all the information you need and has a platform for you to be able to research safely with no Google rabbit holes to go down. The plus side to this app is you update it once you have your baby it then follows your baby’s journey as they grow!

There was a vision in my head of how I was going to handle everything and what I wanted from the experience. And then we get admitted to the hospital and birth plans and visions of the experience go out the window. We had to adjust the vision in my head to meet the needs and wants of both of us. I am forever grateful to my partner and my mother who was with me the entire time, my father for being so patient waiting in the waiting room. Having people there that I trusted to take care of me was calming to all the nerves I was feeling. 

“Visions go out the window” - social media creates visions and expectations while also causing disconnection.

In today's world, we are more connected than ever before while also more isolated. Sure I had my partner, my parents, friends, and family who were all supportive, pleased to help us bring our son into this world. Social media made me think that I needed to be and act a certain way during pregnancy. I should be able to handle it all, because of those thoughts I have never felt more isolated than during pregnancy and now with my son as I transition to a stay-at-home mom. I call my mother at least once a day and we all know everyone has group chats or snap streaks with people, I even have a TikTok where you can watch the video diary I started to record for updates and get photos of my growing bump. Even with all this connection I feel more isolated from the world around me, as it seems to keep on going while my whole world is changing in more ways than one. learning how to connect with the people around you who are going through different life stages is tough! I feel it is entirely possible and who knows could even bring me closer to the people in my life. 

“The wild chaos that is motherhood”- treating this stage in life as it is chaos.

I am learning to write a new chapter in my book, jumping through the wild chaos that is motherhood, and learning how to connect more thoroughly because of it! Was my experience what I expected or envisioned no but I believe if things had been different then I would not have had the chance to grow and learn for the better. The skills I am learning I hope to pass on to my son.