A Letter to New Moms: What I Wish I Had Known

It’s not May yet, but Mother’s Day is in less than two weeks. For the next three weeks, we’re going to talk about moms. But if you’re not a mom, please don’t leave:

• Consider sharing with young moms this week’s letter (you might find yourself nodding even if you’re an “old mom” like me);
• Stay tuned for next week when we talk about how (and why) to tell some of your stories from your mother’s point of view
• Snap up five quotes for when parenting is hard.

For today, enjoy these musings on the struggles and joys of being a new mom:

New Moms May Struggle for Control and Competence

The bad news: Out (or in) comes the baby—out flies control and competence! 

As a new mom, you will quickly realize that you have lost control and perhaps a sense of competence. In your former life as an English teacher, you knew what you were doing, but with childbirth, your life is flooded with uncertainty.

• That 6 hour epidural-free labor you planned — how about a 33-hour pitocin induction instead?
• That 2-year-old you thought would never scream in the super market? Just hand over the gummy vitamins!

The good news: Being a new mom will humble you — I mean — flat-out-on-the-floor humble. 

Being a new mom will literally drive you to your knees, and while you’re down there fetching toys or changing a diaper, you might as well pray: A LOT! You will become, ironically, like a child, clinging to your Abba Father for moment-by-moment mercy.

New Moms May Struggle with a Sense of Shame and Failure

THE BAD NEWS: Being a new mom is a daily exercise in not-enoughness.

• When that baby won’t sleep through the night the way What to Expect 21st C. edition promised it would, you might feel that you are flawed.
• When you start shouting because your teething toddler won’t stop screaming, you will know you are flawed!

THE GOOD NEWS: It is good to know you are not-enough. You never were. Christ is enough, more than enough. The freedom and hope of the gospel is that our love and patience and kindness for our children grows as we enjoy God’s love and patience and kindness toward us.

You will grow in your understanding that there is no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1), and you will show your child what she most needs to know: in Christ, there is always hope for repentance and forgiveness; we never have to stay in shame or condemnation!

New Moms Don’t Have the Power to Make the Story Go our Way

THE BAD NEWS:  Your parenting story, your child’s story, like the six-hour epidural-free labor you hoped for, will not often turn out the way you imagined it.

As you learn ever so quickly, even if you do things just right, there are no guarantees that what you do is going to “work.”

• You nurse every two hours, just as the lactation consultant told you, but your milk still isn’t coming in.
• You teach that 10-month-old-early-walker the word “no,” and you even try to distract her. She pauses long enough to shoot you a look you will see again when she is a teenager. Then she goes ahead and climbs on the kitchen chair.

THE GOOD NEWS: God is writing a better story than we could ever imagine. He is redeeming our hearts as we let go of control and competence, as we humble ourselves and depend on Him, as we rest in his more-than-enough love for us!

From this old mom to all you new moms, take heart. You will likely struggle with some of these heart issues all of your parenting life, but the good news is that God is making all things new, redeeming our hearts and our children’s hearts through the sorrows and the joys.

A Prayer for New Moms

Lord, we bow before you, the only perfect parent. Wrap us, we pray, in your mothering wings, protecting us and nurturing us, even as we seek to nurture these children you have written into our stories. When we think we can’t change one more dirty diaper today or deal with one more toddler tantrum, give us the strength to endure, and the compassion to love. When we feel like complete failures because our kids are disobeying or not working the plan we had written for the day, help us to know your delight in us and our children. As we try to meet our children’s needs, help us to come to you as your children, knowing that you have called all who are weary and heavy-laden. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.