I Was Such a Better Mom Two Years Ago

Today I’m guest posting over at my friend Jaimi’s blog The Stay at Home Mom Survival Guide. She’s a fellow mom of four, including twins, and shares some great tips and resources on her blog. She’ll be sharing a guest post here on What’s up Fagans? in a few weeks when I take some maternity leave about something that moms obsess over. We thought it would be fun to do a guest post swap. Read my post about how I was a better mom two years ago than I am now, or, well, maybe just that I’m a different mom…. Motherhood is this great refiner’s fire. Nothing gets you reevaluating everything about yourself, your life, your goals, and your time management quite like motherhood.

The more time goes on, and the more children you have, the better mother it would seem you’d become, because you continue to go through those refining flames.

I don’t know if that’s true.

Lately, I’ve been thinking I was a better mother two years ago than I am now.

A little over two years ago I was “only” the mother of twins (who were almost three years old). Now I am a mother with five year old twins, a two year old son, with another baby soon to arrive. There is no question that my twins put me through the refiner’s fire of first-time motherhood during their first three years of life. Raising twins is a whirlwind of emotions, of learning, of growing pains, of new experiences, of adjustment. Learning how to breastfeed, how to sleep train, how to potty train, how to break up fighting, times two, was a challenge.

Our situation in life was difficult financially and emotionally. I had to make the hard adjustment from full-time student to full-time mom of twins practically overnight. I was lonely, and felt so isolated, many, many times. But, through it all, our little family had this great sense of the important role we had undertaken and have embraced the steep learning curve of parenthood and adulthood with gusto.

Now I wonder if I’ve gotten “too comfortable” in my parenting and my mothering. 

I wonder if I am no longer questioning enough about my parenting methods, parenting choices, or parenting style. I no longer question whether I am a bad mother. I am no longer plagued by mommy guilt and unrealistic expectations. I do not find myself generally overwhelmed by the three children I now have. I am generally happy with my life.

But, I think that’s part of the problem.

Head over to The Stay at Home Mom SurvivalGuide to read the four reasons I question whether or not I was a better mother two years ago than I am now.