Being a mum is pretty much the single most profound and intense thing you will do in your life.
From the day those two blue lines appear on a little stick (and forever more) you will find that things which before didn’t hold any power over your heart strings and emotions, now have the ability to turn you into a blubbering mess.
Parenthood is quite simply the hardest job you will ever do. And the most amazing one. It will bring you to your knees from exhaustion and make you cry with joy. It is fun and messy and hectic and hysterical. It will totally change everything – and then some.
Here are 10 (out of the million little) things I have come to realise being a mum means:
1. It may mean you can cross a good night sleep off your to-do list for a long time, and yet even the earliest of Sunday mornings won’t make you regret a thing.
2. It means suddenly feeling a bond with women and mothers everywhere. Women who fight for better schools. Or health systems. Or campaign to end drink-driving. Or better school lunches. You will want to hug them all for making the world a better place.
3. It means you will wash more clothes, clean up more mess and tidy away more toys than you ever thought possible.
4. It means you will fall in love with your husband or partner all over again, for reasons that, pre-kids, you found terribly un-romantic. No-one can tell you before you have children how your knees will go weak at the sight of your partner gently cradling your baby. Or dusting powder on a freshly cleaned baby-bum. Seriously, heart-melting stuff.
But also:
5. It might mean that your relationship will sometimes have to take a back-seat. Romantic weekends might have to yield to sick children, or lack of babysitters, or just pure exhaustion. But you will realize this is just part of what being a family is all about.
6. It means you will have a million little decisions to make every day – and they will always make you wonder: “Am I making the right one? Is this what is best for my family?
7. It means finding yourself up in the middle of the night, worrying about your sick child, wiping vomit of every surface in your house or typing “red dots” and “signs of meningitis” into Google at 3am.
8. It means you will still care about your career, your style and your hobbies just like you did pre-motherhood, but never again will they come first.
9. It means never again being able to open a newspaper, or watch a movie, or the news, and not think: “What if that was my child?” Every plane-crash and house-fire and famine will tug at your heart-strings in a whole new way.
10. It means LOVE. Crazy, all-consuming, never-ending, perfect love. Your heart will never be the same. Your body might never either – but that’s fine. You will cry more, laugh more, shout more, run around more and love more than you ever thought possible. And you will not regret a single second of it.
