Baby Aria ready for the day ahead
I’m back! I took a hiatus from blogging while I grew and birthed a mini human, and I’ve been busy tending to her. But I feel it’s time for me to start sharing my thoughts again.
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For my first blog back, I wanted to take on the topic of parenting. However, my blogs ongoing will cover all matters soccer, training, entrepreneurship, parenting, and general well-being.
This is a “mom blog,” because it would be impossible to start back without sharing a snippet of the new me. I’m very much the same person, but also completely different.
When people ask me how it is being a new mom, it took me only a week or two to fall right in line with all the most common cliches. Beforehand, I was sure my insight was going to be unique and different. But alas, I guess what they say is true, especially these three cliches:
“You’ll only understand when you have kids of your own...” If there’s one thing my daughter has taught me so far, it’s about my mom. Everyone who knows my mom absolutely loves her, and that’s because she’s the best. But that doesn’t mean we haven’t had a great deal of tension over the years — from her embarrassing me because of “x or y,” to us not seeing eye-to-eye about “y or x”--the list goes on. But wow, there’s nothing like taking care of my own daughter to make me feel extra guilty for every time I was ungrateful or hard on her. I can’t even write about this without invoking every mom-daughter cliche there is. They’re all real.
“It’s effing hard.” I am a natural skeptic. I heard that labor was extremely painful, but I was going to handle it like a champ. After all, I’ve pushed through hard fitness. I was told that breastfeeding is tough, but that wasn’t going to be my experience. I’m used to taking care of my body and relying on it to do difficult things. New parents told me they were beyond exhausted and I thought: they must not be good at napping or used to falling back asleep after being woken up. NO, NO, NO. EVERYTHING THEY SAID IS TRUE! I’ve done some pretty hard things in my life — including competing as a professional athlete while running Techne Futbol, the NWSL Players Association, AND battling a massive flareup of Ulcerative Colitis. Being a new parent is hands down the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. It’s also the most special.
“It goes by so quickly.” Perhaps because the first 3 months are essentially one, long day, or maybe because you literally can watch a baby learning new skills daily, this one is scary real. I think the biggest impact Aria has had on me (and it’s potentially not even her but my hormones) is that I am acutely aware of and very emotional about, the passage of time. Every day I think about how special these moments are and about how quickly time passes us by. This realization has shattered my usually non-emotional self and caused me to burst into tears at things like my mom and Aria dancing to the Elton John song “Tiny Dancer.” I knew I had completely lost it when my mom - the most emotional person I know – then said, “What’s wrong with you?”
Being an athlete, and a soccer player, is still my identity. This is pretty unique, particularly because I’m part of a generation in which being a professional athlete is relatively more common for women. While I can be exhausted and depleted at times (read: all the time) from baby care, I still work out and kicking the soccer ball against a wall still brings me the same joy. You may have seen my “mom workouts” on Instagram. Sometimes my training comes in 10 minute spurts here and there these days when I can fit it in, but I’m slowly but surely getting back into prime condition.
So, there you have it: the new me.
Not-yet-parents: get ready! Parents: Drop me a comment with your reactions, and no matter the age of your children, if you’d add anything to the list!