Motherbearing Defined

Do you ever feel, amidst all this parenting stuff, that you sometimes get lost in the mix? Like you’re standing knee-deep in a landscape of Pull-Ups, Legos, and fruit snacks, and you look around and wonder, Where did I go?

Me too. So, I wrote some stuff about it. And bought a domain name. And wrote some more stuff. And here we are. 

I spent a long time trying to think of a name for this. Initially, as I pondered making my blog more “official” and moving previous entries centering about infertility journey to my own domain name, I figured it would be wise to move away from the previous URL that contained the words “heybabyletsmakeababy”. For awhile, Becoming Mom wandered around rent-free in my brain, and I then considered shortening it to Becoming, but finally realized folks might somehow be slightly more interested in Michelle Obama’s memoir and might not appreciate the confusion. Yet the name Becoming continued to spin, because it’s what best encapsulates my experience of the motherhood journey… Becoming.  It took awhile to become a mom in the first place, and then a period where I regretted becoming a mom at all, and then a period of slowly wading into the idea that I could embrace motherhood and retain myself…until the place I’m currently in, fully submerged into the experience of raising an incredible little human while also maintaining my own identity. It’s been a joyful, excruciating, refining, painful, healing, glorious process as I continuously grow and evolve.

One day, in the middle of a long car ride with my husband and son, I was immersed in a deep dive into thesaurus.com trying to find some synonyms for Becoming. As I wound a path through words relating to evolving, growth, parenting, and the like, I came across the word “childbearing”. This struck me. Childbearing is literally the act of growing and birthing a child, and sometimes the term is stretched to raising them as well. As I stared at that word, I realized - it isn’t just a child that’s born. A mother is, too. While I appear similar in many ways to the person I was before parenthood, and while my likes, dislikes, values, hobbies, etc. remain largely intact (despite the fact that I have far less time to pursue them), at a cellular level I am fundamentally a different person than I was before birthing my son. Everything in me has been rearranged - and will continue to be rearranged, again and again, as the relationship with my son evolves and takes on new characteristics. I’m  like the opposite of a home in an HGTV makeover show… I’m completely different, except in this show some parts of me are more threadbare and worn than they were before. As I considered this process, the name settled in my mind: Motherbearing. Because when a child is born, a mother is too. 

The more I reflected, additional meanings came to light; the most obvious being the fierce illustration of an actual mother bear protecting her cubs. As they wander out of the den, we do our best to find the balance of keeping enough distance to let them explore but also close enough so we can pounce (hopefully not literally) on any threats that might appear. Additionally, there’s  all that we “bear” as mothers - pregnancy and childbirth, then all the feeding, clothing, teaching, loving, advocating that goes on afterwards. That weight is significant, and sometimes it needs to be unpacked - unpacking will be a common theme here. 

So, after searching for the term “motherbearing” and found nothing of substance aside from case studies in obscure medical journals, I concluded it was safely Not Yet A Word and decided to stake my flag upon it. The more I thought about it, the more it settled in, like how all the parts of lasagna settle together after they’ve been in the fridge for a couple days. Motherbearing - it really encapsulated the journey that I’ve been on and continue to travel. Becoming a mother wasn’t a single event, but a continuous process of ongoing rebirth. Motherbearing isn’t linear, but cyclical, as parts of me grow and bloom and others wither and fade and then decompose and then grow into something else all over again. At the risk of adopting the tone of my middle school diary, I can’t help but connect to the metamorphosis of a butterfly… wrapping up, dissolving into goo, and then emerging with wings. I’ve spent a fair amount of time cocooned in my own proverbial goo throughout various stages of this journey, feeling overwhelmed and unsure about the next step forward. Yet, somehow, with the right environment and support, we emerge ready to take on the next thing. 

Welcome to Motherbearing. Thanks for joining me on this journey. I pray my journey speaks to yours, whatever form that takes. May this be a place to come when we are cocooned in goo. May it be a place to come when we need to see our own fears and insecurities named by another. May it be a place where we can learn from our mistakes, or maybe it is a place where you get a boost of confidence by silently judging me, a random mom on the interweb.  May it be a place where we get a minute to reflect inward on our own ever-evolving identities, and gather our thoughts about what the next step forward looks like. May it be a place where we remember, in the midst of giving and entertaining and serving and comforting and organizing, that we also matter. 

Motherbearing. Because when a child is born, a mother is too.