With all the chaos that comes with parenting, it's important to take a step back and appreciate the beautiful gift that is motherhood. Yvette Lamb is a mom of two boys and the brains behind the Big Trouble in Little Nappies [1] blog. She frequently writes about never getting eight hours of sleep [2] and the endless list of reasons why babies cry [3], but after all the humor, Yvette is opening up about the joys of motherhood, and it's really special.
Yvette was recently emotional about her baby's birthday, and after half of a glass of wine, she decided to write a post explicitly calling out what makes her happy to be a mother. Through all the temper tantrums [4] and dinnertime fights, she wanted to talk about something incredibly important. "We are so lucky to be parents," Yvette wrote. "We are so privileged. And life really is very precious."
After her youngest son woke up in the middle of the night, Yvette held him and quickly put him back to sleep, but after feeling his heartbeat, she was swept with emotion. "The same heartbeat we saw flickering away on the grainy scan at six weeks pregnant," she wrote on Facebook [6]. "The same heart that beat inside of me, cocooned against mine all those months. This same heart beats and grows and loves every single day. This heart, with its arrival, filled ours up to bursting point. Life and the universe hold so much beauty. We are all miracles. Yet then there are so many stories of loss, of sick children, of infertility. And it is sad and it is heartbreaking and it is humbling."
It's true: every day we hear another heartbreaking story about miscarriage [7] or childhood cancer [8]. Still, it can be so easy for parents to lose sight of just how lucky they are to be able to experience their child's temper tantrums and Lego messes — Yvette is making sure her readers know that.
"I think it's important to be honest about how tough this gig can be, and that to find it difficult doesn't mean we're getting it wrong or aren't good enough," she shared. "I completely champion sharing the grittier side of parenting, which is hard and exhausting and worrying. But I think it is also important to acknowledge that we are lucky, and gratitude can be shown without the pretense of perfection or of cherishing every moment [9]. (Who, after all, really cherishes being puked on?)"
Yvette closed her note with one final thought: "Though I don't and never will have this whole thing sussed, tonight I need to say I truly appreciate my children. They are our biggest gift and I am so very thankful to have them in this world."