Colleen Anthony: What Surprised Me Most About Motherhood

YMC teamed up with Playtex Mommyville.ca to celebrate the wild ride of parenting by asking moms to submit a story describing “What Surprised You Most About Motherhood.” The stories made our judges laugh, cry, and nod heads in agreement, but they were finally able to narrow it down to these winning submissions. Read this runner-up winner's story about how motherhood surprised her.

I never dreamt that being a mom could hurt so much.

Not the labour (though that hurt too) but each time they tumbled…a crack against the coffee table, a fall from the crib, the car crash I still can’t let go of, an accident on the ice, a tumble down the ski hill…and more. They healed. With each bump and bruise, cut and scrape…they healed. Yet the feeling still grabs me.

The sight of a little blood makes me weak behind the knees. Not anyone else’s, just my children's.

My eldest was six when the next one was born and I remember being worried that I could never love another as much as I loved her. And yet, the strangest phenomenon occurred—my heart simply grew. Doubled in size with the new arrival and doubled again just another year later.

When you become a mom, your heart resides outside your body and inside these little people—with their tiny feet and wee small hands—your heart is theirs.

You’re never really the same.

You live and breathe for their every need.

You feel their hurts and disappointments as if they were your own and not just the falls and the tumbles but the aches of growing up—not making a team they worked so hard for, being disappointed by a friend who teased them, not knowing where they fit in this world they reside in, or the agony of their first broken heart.

You feel their pain. 

I thought I knew what love was until they entered my life. As each one took up more room in my soul, as I struggled to meet their needs not knowing if I was doing it right or wrong I realized thatit didn’t matter. They worshiped me. I could do no wrong. Each of them peering into my inner being. Each of them becoming part of me. As my heart doubled, then tripled, then all but exploded.

They are my life. I live every day knowing that they’re watching me. That my actions and decisions shape who they are. Shape who they become. I hold their fears and disappointments as if they were my own. I rejoice in their successes and achievements as if I were the one being celebrated.

I never dreamt that being a mom could be so all-consuming and absolutely wonderful, totally terrifying and simply amazing.

I never dreamt I’d be so loved. By three beating hearts, that were once in mine.