Oh Sis, You’re Pregnant! by Shanicia Boswell

It was a cry that I had familiarized myself with and learned that it meant sleep was nowhere on the horizon.

The cry rumbled from deep within her belly and escaped first as a gentle gurgling whine to a full on hysteric scream. On this night, I placed my daughter in her crib, managed to light a candle, settle into my place on the couch and make it through half of my glass of wine and she started to cry. I felt like all I did was steal moments of sleep and breastfeed my daughter. While I loved my daughter, my days felt robotic. Motherhood was taking its toll on me and I had made myself numb to the idea that this was my new normal. I wanted to sit on our sofa, light a candle, have a glass of wine, and just take a deep breath. On this particular night, I was craving to have a nightcap on the back porch with her father. At best, we were lucky for four hours of napping or relaxing in quiet before I would have to breastfeed again.

My daughter may have been two or three months old so a full night’s sleep was still not on the roster just yet. I had put my daughter down for bed and I thought that my partner and I could enjoy a few hours of alone time before she would awaken for her next feeding. There is an evening in the onset of parenting that always sticks out to me. If you have not found her yet before becoming a mother, you will certainly discover her after childbirth. There is absolutely nothing wrong with remembering who you are. Your attitude and confidence, your self love, is when you are the prettiest. Your outer appearance, no matter if you are dressed down or dressed up isn’t when you are the prettiest. It means taking that line, “sweatpants, hair tied, chillin with no make up on” entirely too literal and forgetting that you can still put on makeup, some sexy lingerie, and still be fine - even with your stretch marks.

It means that you wake up every morning with a smile on your face and show up for each and every person in your family and your life, including your friends, bosses, and companions before you determine that it is okay to show up for yourself. What does that even mean? Believing that you have to be “good enough” as a mother is the mentality that you are never allowed to have any days off. I believe that by using my own motherhood journey as my reference point, making note of the times I felt isolated, confused, stressed, and out of my own body, I could write about these occurrences and hopefully save at least one mama from the inner conflict of feeling like she just was not good enough. One of the important factors of my inner drive to continue my platform, Black Moms Blog, is to help mothers understand that they are not in this mamahood gang alone.

Oh Sis, You’re Pregnant! by Shanicia Boswell