The Uncertainty of New Motherhood… Year Two? by Heather Bowles

Good morning, ladies! To start, Tabitha’s birthday celebration went really well. My father’s birthday is the same day as hers, so lunch with my parents was fun. I can see this becoming an annual tradition. Her cake was not perfect, but it was homemade. You wouldn’t believe how difficult it is to get the shade of orange just perfect by mixing red with yellow. We might get her next cake professionally done, but her father and I enjoyed doing something together just for her in our tiny little kitchen, so perhaps not.

As I look ahead to our future, I find myself wondering if I can still call myself a “new mother”. The term seems to carry with it a measure of forgiveness for little mistakes and acceptance of uncertainty, and I still feel uncertain. Every week brings something new. The day after her birthday, her first tooth erupted through her gums, and since then she has taken off, almost running. I do believe I am on the verge of seeing her last crawl. She spends 95 percent of her awake time on her feet now. She has also discovered the curiosity that is our staircase, which prompted us to install a gate this morning at the bottom to avoid her climbing it while we are downstairs.

And to top it all off? I’m not certain I should even share this at such an early stage, but I did take a dipstick pregnancy test this morning, and it came back positive. The unlikely possibility of a second pregnancy is staring me down, and I’m not at all sure I’m ready for round two just yet. There really is no choice though. If I plan to have additional children, the time is now, and considering my lifelong fertility issues, I wouldn’t complain about being blessed twice.

Perhaps it is not the uncertainty itself that makes one a “new mother”, but the acceptance of continuous uncertainty that makes us more mature as moms. Either way? I’m embracing the experience wholeheartedly, because surprises can be pretty fun. To our future I say: “Bring it on!”

Tags: learning to walk, planning for the future, pregnancy testing, teething, uncertainty