I’m writing this in an attempt to normalize the changes we go through emotionally, mentally and physically when we become mothers.

First it’s physical. Our body rearranges it organs to create a home for new life. Isn’t that just remarkable? As our belly grows and seemingly our bladder shrinks we become closer and closer to meeting our new love. During this time I felt more antisocial than ever. The mental weight of a new baby and actual weight on my body left me feeling too tired to stay up and socialize with my husband, too tired to make love to my husband, too tired to do anything. This is not breaking news. The physical changes we go through are easy for the world to see and for the most part, they adore.

But becoming a mother changed me mentally. It completely changed the way my mind worked. I didn’t realize I had high functioning anxiety until I brought another human into this world and suddenly I realized I had no control. Being in control of my own life was manageable but a simple trip to the grocery store felt foreign and intimidating. My first child hated the car, he would purple cry every single time, the whole time. So to go anywhere, I had to psych myself up to go through the screams, then groceries and the same on the way home. I didn’t want to go anywhere. I also didn’t want to whip out a boob in the bread isle or try to plan dinner with a screaming child in my face. My anxiety would snowball into fear and hypothetical scenarios of what could and would go wrong. If you asked me to describe myself before kids I would have used words like outgoing, social and fearless. I liked to go out dancing, attend music and food festivals, long dinners with an abundance of wine… You get the picture. After kids, I’m literally the complete opposite.

The woman I am now, with kids, plans her life between naps and prefers quick and early dinners. I dance in my kitchen but never late at night and I avoid the hangovers with kids because I wouldn’t even wish that on my worst enemy. My kids come first and that makes me feel like I come first, because that helps keep my mind and emotions right where they need to be. Too often I see “reminders” online about “getting your body back” or wanting life to go back to the way it was before kids. First of all, we NEVER lost our bodies and life will never go back to the way it was. These ads and idiotic marketing campaigns want you to feel empty or that you’re missing something. I’m no where near the woman I was before kids and I’m cool with that. Motherhood has made me feel stronger and yet more sensitive to others. More confident in my choices and yet I’ll still never know what to choose for dinner. I’m able to make deeper connections with people I just meet. I’m happier than I’ve ever been and coincidentally the most tired. Emotionally, my heart is full. My husband (and I) didn’t realize I was changing into a better version of me. Although I will admit, it had been a process.

I’ll be blunt, I did not want to have sex and I had zero desire. After giving everything I’ve got all day long to my kids, sex was the last thing on my mind. How are women expected to go from devoted caretaker to sex machine? My first pregnancy came with a slow and gruesome recovery. I was terrified to put anything in or near my vagina. I had a 3rd degree tear and bled for 2 months. My anxiety didn’t help here either, trying to relax mentally and physically felt impossible. I was in constant fear my baby would just combust into inconsolable crying at any given moment and worried about when I would get my next nap. I expressed my feelings in depth to my husband and sometimes it would bring me to tears. I felt broken, because when you’re not having sex it feels like the whole world is and rubbing it on your leg. I would watch other married women with kids and wonder if they were having sex. I felt alone. After I swallowed my shame, I talked to my other mom friends about it and found out I was not alone. Why aren’t more women talking about this? Sometimes the hardest conversations are the most important ones to have. I even did a poll on my instagram @fruitsofmotherhood and 80% of my followers felt the same. You often hear how motherhood is lonely and isolating, this was just another example. This helped me tremendously.

Being married with kids isn’t all about sex. Figuring out your new roles as parents is another fun challenge. With the new addition comes new jobs (chores) and there are still all the previously existing ones. No one really talks about the marriage part after motherhood. It’s all about boobs, baby and bleeding. I was really hard on my husband, he felt like he couldn’t do anything right. Again, my anxiety. It was so easy to just coexist and lose touch. I was mad at him for who knows what and he was distant from me for obvious reasons. We created a whole new human, who now had to come first. Sometimes I feel as a society we don’t give that enough weight. We brought a new person into our lives while at the same time we were new too. Communicating simple things was hard with anxiety and sleep deprivation always on the front burners. I was hard to talk to and undeniably hard to love. I felt like we were never on the same page but thankfully we didn’t give up. The first year is hard for most couples at best.

I have this “problem” where I have to talk about my feelings until I’m practically blue in the face, which in hind-sight saved us, me and our marriage. Expressing my feelings helped him understand it wasn’t about him, it was me. The pressure of being a new mom and everything else that comes along with it was overwhelming. I was absolutely still in love with my husband and we worked really hard to reconnect in our new roles. Being married is work, being a mother is work, having anxiety is work and sometimes it just felt like it was all too much. I’m here to tell you that you don’t have to be everything. You don’t have to be the perfect mother, the perfect wife and the perfect housekeeper. You don’t have to be perfect everyday. You don’t have to be perfect. We will all make mistakes as mothers, wives and humans. Communication is the key, within your marriage and with other people.

I’m happy to say that we overcame these obstacles and even wanted to have another baby, so if we can do it, you can too. A marriage is really a vow to care for one another till the end of time, emotionally, mentally and physically and ironically, so is motherhood.