Surprised By Motherhood Quotes

Charity, till then, had been conscious only of a vague self-disgust and a frightening physical distress; now, of a sudden, there came to her the grave surprise of motherhood.

...motherhood is the thing in a woman's life that catches her by total and complete surprise.

to understand him, the temper and the challenge, the brokenness and the stubbornness,

1. Motherhood is hard 2. Motherhood is glorious 3. Motherhood is hard

You have no idea how grief will take you. The same with severe illness, motherhood, any profound experience. You don’t know yourself. Others don’t know you. These events show who you are. And you’ll be surprised, shocked even. You’ll feel the way you feel when you’ve done a particularly offensive-smelling shit – That couldn’t possibly have come out of me – and start to rationalize it – Must be that bag of pistachios I ate earlier, or perhaps I am unwell. You can’t believe you could do something so foul and unrecognizable. Something so outside yourself.

I’m surprised by how many women sign up for motherhood considering how difficult pregnancy can be—morning sickness, stretch marks, death. Again, you’re fine,” he added quickly, taking in her horrified face. “It’s just that we tend to treat pregnancy as the most common condition in the world—as ordinary as stubbing a toe—when the truth is, it’s like getting hit by a truck. Although obviously a truck causes less damage.

Grace and chocolate cake can cover a world of awkwardness.

A mother continues to labor long after the baby is born.

Of course, my mother is her own person. Of course, she contains multitudes. She reacts in ways that surprise me, in part, simply because she isn't me. I forget this and relearn it anew because it's a lesson that doesn't, that can't stick. I knew her only as she is defined against me, in her role as my mother, so when I see her as herself, like when she gets catcalled on the street, there's dissonance. When she wants for me things that I don't want for myself--Christ, marriage, children--I am angry that she doesn't understand me, doesn't see me as my own, separate person, but that anger stems from the fact that I don't see her that way either. I want her to know what I want the same way I know it, intimately, immediately, I want her to get well because I want her to get well, and isn't that enough? My first thought, the year my brother died and my mother took to bed, was that I needed her to be mine again, a mother as I understood it. And when she didn't get up, when she lay there day in and day out, wasting away, I was reminded that I didn't know her, not wholly and completely. I would never know her.

Vic didn't have a car and probably spent a hundred and sixty hours a week at home. The house smelled of piss-soaked diapers and engine parts, and the sink was always full. In retrospect Vic was only surprised she didn't go crazy sooner. She was surprised that more young mothers didn't lose it. When your tits had become canteens and the soundtrack to your life was hysterical tears and mad laughter, how could anyone expect you to remain sane?

Not every woman wants to be a mother,” he agreed, surprising her. “More to the point, not every woman should be.” He grimaced as if thinking of someone in particular. “Still, I’m surprised by how many women sign up for motherhood considering how difficult pregnancy can be—morning sickness, stretch marks, death. Again, you’re fine,” he added quickly, taking in her horrified face. “It’s just that we tend to treat pregnancy as the most common condition in the world—as ordinary as stubbing a toe—when the truth is, it’s like getting hit by a truck. Although obviously a truck causes less damage.

I’m fine but, wow, thanks for asking! Very few people ask how Mom is doing; we usually get asked how baby is doing, and that’s that.” My simple “How are YOU?” was met with a complicated response when I asked my niece Anne what her life was like now that she had become a mom. This surprised me not at all.

Still, I’m surprised by how many women sign up for motherhood considering how difficult pregnancy can be—morning sickness, stretch marks, death. Again, you’re fine,” he added quickly, taking in her horrified face. “It’s just that we tend to treat pregnancy as the most common condition in the world—as ordinary as stubbing a toe—when the truth is, it’s like getting hit by a truck.

Still, I’m surprised by how many women sign up for motherhood considering how difficult pregnancy can be—morning sickness, stretch marks, death. Again, you’re fine,” he added quickly, taking in her horrified face. “It’s just that we tend to treat pregnancy as the most common condition in the world—as ordinary as stubbing a toe—when the truth is, it’s like getting hit by a truck. Although obviously a truck causes less damage.

I knelt down to pick up the hatchling to . . . . what? Give it back to its mother? Here is your dying chick? Just before I made contact with it, she dive-bombed me. The mother actually dive-bombed me. I sat back on my hunkers in surprise and admiration. So slight, so drab, so courageous. She put me to shame. I stood up and backed off and she alighted in front of her young, setting herself and her pattering heart between us. Babies die, I thought as I regarded her. That is the world we live in. I did not make this world. If I could, I thought, I would make a different world. I would make a different world for you and me, Sailor. And for this brave bird. But I can't.

Kristen had dreamed of having children since she was herself a child and had always thought that she would love motherhood as much as she would love her babies. “I know that being a mom will be demanding,” she told me once. “But I don’t think it will change me much. I’ll still have my life, and our baby will be part of it.” She envisioned long walks through the neighborhood with Emily. She envisioned herself mastering the endlessly repeating three-hour cycle of playing, feeding, sleeping, and diaper changing. Most of all, she envisioned a full parenting partnership, in which I’d help whenever I was home—morning, nighttime, and weekends. Of course, I didn’t know any of this until she told me, which she did after Emily was born. At first, the newness of parenthood made it seem as though everything was going according to our expectations. We’ll be up all day and all night for a few weeks, but then we’ll hit our stride and our lives will go back to normal, plus one baby. Kristen took a few months off from work to focus all of her attention on Emily, knowing that it would be hard to juggle the contradicting demands of an infant and a career. She was determined to own motherhood. “We’re still in that tough transition,” Kristen would tell me, trying to console Emily at four A.M. “Pretty soon, we’ll find our routine. I hope.” But things didn’t go as we had planned. There were complications with breast-feeding. Emily wasn’t gaining weight; she wouldn’t eat, wouldn’t sleep, wouldn’t play. She was born in December, when it was far too cold to go for walks outdoors. While I was at work, Kristen would sit on the floor with Emily in the dark—all the lights off, all the shades closed—and cry. She’d think about her friends, all of whom had made motherhood look so easy with their own babies. “Mary had no problem breast-feeding,” she’d tell me. “Jenny said that these first few months had been her favorite. Why can’t I get the hang of this?” I didn’t have any answers, but still I offered solutions, none of which she wanted to hear: “Talk to a lactation consultant about the feeding issues.” “Establish a routine and stick to it.” Eventually, she stopped talking altogether. While Kristen struggled, I watched from the sidelines, unaware that she needed help. I excused myself from the nighttime and morning responsibilities, as the interruptions to my daily schedule became too much for me to handle. We didn’t know this was because of a developmental disorder; I just looked incredibly selfish. I contributed, but not fully. I’d return from work, and Kristen would go upstairs to sleep for a few hours while I’d carry Emily from room to room, gently bouncing her as I walked, trying to keep her from crying. But eventually eleven o’clock would roll around and I’d go to bed, and Kristen would be awake the rest of the night with her. The next morning, I would wake up and leave for work, while Kristen stared down the barrel of another day alone. To my surprise, I grew increasingly disappointed in her: She wanted to have children. Why is she miserable all the time? What’s her problem? I also resented what I had come to recognize as our failing marriage. I’d expected our marriage to be happy, fulfilling, overflowing with constant affection. My wife was supposed to be able to handle things like motherhood with aplomb. Kristen loved me, and she loved Emily, but that wasn’t enough for me. In my version of a happy marriage, my wife would also love the difficulties of being my wife and being a mom. It hadn’t occurred to me that I’d have to earn the happiness, the fulfillment, the affection. Nor had it occurred to me that she might have her own perspective on marriage and motherhood.

Instant Access “When my twins were born, I moved abruptly from being a professional career woman to a full-time, stay-at-home mom. The role shift opened a new door of commonality which surprised and delighted me. I was instantly welcomed into a special “Motherhood Club,” where before I never would have related. It felt as if I was suddenly bonded with mothers worldwide. It's important to remember—nothing stays the same, nor do we.

It would have surprised Mrs. Thornton very much to have been told that hitherto she had meant practically nothing to her children. She took a keen interest in Psychology (the Art Babblative, Southey calls it). She was full of theories about their upbringing which she had not time to put into effect; but nevertheless she thought she had a deep understanding of their temperaments and was the center of their passionate devotion.

Motherhood, however, took her by surprise. She found herself so in love with her children that she felt a need to change and restructure her life to afford time with her two bundles of joy. It led to her next phase of entrepreneurship, starting a string of baby-and-mother-related businesses. CRIB is a platform for mothers and women to network, and Trehaus provides the space for working mothers to have a career and yet be there for the baby’s first moments.

Perhaps because pregnancy and birth get all the magazine covers and headlines—no surprise, as these events sell more stuff—we’ve overlooked this last part of the childbearing story. A woman’s postpartum experience might be given a brief nod at the end of a pregnancy book, or thirty seconds of footage at the end of a TV show, but a deeper look almost never occurs. Rather than get invited to take a sacred time-out after delivering her child, the new mother is more likely met with pressure to “bounce back”—back to her pre-pregnancy productivity, back to her pre-pregnancy body, and back to her pre-pregnancy spirits. But when it comes to becoming a mother, there is no back; there is only through. After birthing her child, every woman must pass through this initial adjustment phase. It is a strange and beautiful limbo zone that is both exhausting and exciting, mysterious and monotonous. When she arrives at the other side of the postpartum phase after roughly a month and a half, she will most certainly be facing forward, prepared to take her next steps into motherhood.

To destroy the institution is not to abolish motherhood. It is to release the creation and sustenance of life into the same realm of decision, struggle, surprise, imagination, and conscious intelligence, as any other difficult, but freely chosen work.

Sweetheart," her mom said, "motherhood is a lifelong lesson in learning to let go. Even if you had planned this child, gotten pregnant when all the pieces of your life seemed just exactly right, hand selected your doctor and hospital, and gone to the classes and read the books and done all that good stuff, the kid would still manage to surprise you. Because you're creating a life other than your own. A child that, from its very conception, is its own being with its own biology and personality and path. All a mother can really do is try to ensure safe passage along the way.

One thing that has surprised me is this: The happier I become, the happier my children seem to become. I am unlearning everything I've been trained to believe about motherhood and martyrdom. In our wedding book, my son wrote, "Abby: Before you came, mom never turned our volume up past 11. Thank you." I hope that my new belief that love should make you feel both held and free is a belief my children will keep.

There’s eternity —where are you going to spend it? And don’t you want to start living eternal life right now? Because you can —you don’t have to die physically to be born again. We can belong to the Kingdom of Heaven right now —and it can make a difference.

The only way to separate yourself from a person like my mother is to embody her fears and insecurities about herself, to become as far removed from her idealized self-image as possible. Or, to be more specific: Go through an awkward Goth phase. Buzz all your hair off in the middle of the night, surprising her in the morning. Get a memento mori tattoo somewhere conspicuous, a reminder that the body is nothing. Put on twenty pounds and wear a tight dress. Now you're free.

In classical art this 'aura' surrounding motherhood depicts repose. The dominant culture projects pregnancy as a time of quiet waiting. We refer to the woman as 'expecting,' as though this new life were flying in from another planet and she sat in her rocking chair by the window, occasionally moving the curtain aside to see whether the ship is coming. The image of uneventful waiting associated with pregnancy reveals clearly how much the discourse of pregnancy leaves out the subjectivity of the woman. From the point of view of others pregnancy is primarily a time of waiting and watching, when nothing happens. For the pregnant subject, on the other hand, pregnancy has a temporality of movement, growth, and change. The pregnant subject is not simply a splitting which the two halves lie open and still, but a dialectic. The pregnant woman experiences herself as a source and participant in a creative process. Though she does not plan and direct it, neither does it merely wash over; rather, she is this process, this change. Time stretches out, moments and days take on a depth because she experiences more changes in herself, her body. Each day, each week, she looks at herself for signs of transformation... For others the birth of an infant may only be a beginning, but for the birthing woman it is a conclusion as well. It signals the close of a process she has been undergoing for nine months, the leaving of this unique body she has moved through, always surprising her a bit in its boundary changes and inner kicks. Especially if this is her first child she experiences the birth as a transition to a new self that she may both desire and fear. She fears a loss of identity, as though on the other side of the birth she herself became a transformed person, such that she would 'never be the same again.

Motherhood is significant for yet another reason. Over the past twenty-five years, I have learned that not only does God use motherhood to change our children, but He also uses it to change us. I once read about a bumper sticker that said, “My children saved me from toxic self-absorption,” 32 and I laughed—and simultaneously thanked God. We live in a culture that constantly pushes us toward narcissism—and frankly, that’s precisely what the emphasis on pursuing our passions does too. But motherhood, unlike anything else I know, has the power to pull us outside of ourselves. It’s one of the only situations where we’re capable of loving someone more than we love ourselves, and we practice a level of servanthood that we would otherwise find impossible. Motherhood allows us to grow at an exponential rate and to be molded into Christ’s image. So much of who I am today, which enables me to do the ministry I do, was developed in the crucible of motherhood.

Life reveals itself in ways you cannot control or predict, so allow yourself to mourn that plans are not going according to schedule, but don’t let it stop you from moving. Life has surprises in store for you if you just keep walking.