What It Means to Feel Ready

Encouraging the notion that entering a transformative era can indeed be prepared for.

Welcome to Mother Love Letters, my newsletter for nurturing words and shared experiences about the highs and lows of pregnancy and motherhood. Free subscribers receive occasional public posts. Paid subscribers receive all weekly posts, Journaling Prompts, Body Love Letters, Community Chats, and full access to my archive.

Thank you for reading this weekly post. If any of these words resonate with you, feel free to share your thoughts in the comments. I’d love to connect.

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I feel ready for motherhood. I don’t mean that I have everything figured out or that I don’t have a million questions or that I am fully equipped with the knowledge of what it means to be a mother. I mean that my mind and my heart are open to all there is to come. I mean that I am in a place where I am ready to learn, ready to be present, and ready to embrace the unknown.

Life’s big decisions carry heavy expectations, often demanding us to decide with clarity what avenue to pursue, who to pursue those avenues with, whether to date, whether to marry, whether to sell your material possessions and live in a van traversing wild countrysides, whether to make that career pivot from medicine to marketing, or whether to follow your gut or your brain or a combination of the two. Does creating a grand plan for any of these decisions mark readiness? Or is readiness simply when we become open to embark on the new adventure itself, regardless of what it entails? I believe in the latter.

Throughout my pregnancy, I have never resonated with this phrase I’ve heard from many: “You’ll never feel ready.” I sense that this quip is an attempt to ease a soon-to-be new parent’s mind that none of us have it all figured out. But I have never met another person who finds comfort in anticipating stress.

Most of us new mothers innately feel a sense of uncertainty and unease about matrescence. Our bodies are changing rapidly and painfully. Our hearts are expanding. We’re growing tiny humans. We’ve never done it before, or we’ve done it before and it was terrifying for a multitude of reasons. Right now, I can hardly picture anything beyond the present. I have heard all of the attempted jests that I need to stock up on sleep and the warnings that I am to “just wait” until the baby comes to understand it all.

I wonder why these phrases are repeated colloquially when so many of us feel so frustrated by them. I know that what is ahead of me is uncharted territory, but I do not intend to dampen my excitement with reminders that I might screw it all up. It’s going to be hard and exhilarating and weird and messy — but I will define when and how and why in my own time.

My fears may be different than yours, just as my experiences are different than yours, my pregnancy is different than yours, my newborn phase will be different than yours, and my child will be different than yours. Childbirth is a natural process, but many moms still feel so alone. I think this is because we are expected to greet a universal experience with universal feelings even though all of us live simultaneously unique lives in unique bodies.

I don’t want you to feel alone. Your experience in motherhood is yours to keep, no matter how many women before you have experienced motherhood already. No one else has had the experiences in your own body. No one else knows what your world is like.

There are plenty of ways to prepare for matrescence and I do not at all suggest that I have it all figured out, and I also do not at all suggest that I am heading fearlessly in the direction of Baby. I recognize that women have been birthing babies since the dawn of time. I recognize that they did so before modern medicine and before young women like me could write about their silly little experiences in an electronic newsletter. I just mean there are ways to ease this transition, and there are ways to talk to pregnant women about this transition with more gentleness.

I feel ready for motherhood. And this conviction is helping me make space for peace before I dive headfirst into the unknown.

Photo by Alexandrae Photo

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Right now, in this moment, 31 weeks into pregnancy with a splitting pelvic floor, mismatched bottles strewn about my pantry, and crib parts scattered haphazardly across Joni’s floor, I feel peace. I do not feel stressed. I am not trying to win a ribbon or a cookie or a trophy with this actualization. I just simply feel at ease knowing that I have done all I can do up to this point, and so the future will unfold in time. I will adapt as life happens upon me. I have no other choice.

My moods moved in strong currents during my first six months of pregnancy. At some point in the last several weeks, I stabilized. Physically, everything hurts. Mentally, I feel calm for the first time since this journey began for me in August 2023. It’s a peculiar balance of discomfort and joy in this third trimester.

I am blocking out the Just You Wait Battalion. I am ignoring the audible disbelief from others that I am, in fact, not spiraling out of control in this moment. I hope that everyone in pregnancy can feel this sense of ease at least once. I hope that everyone in pregnancy can feel convicted in their eagerness for what is to come without feeling forced to bemoan the process at each pivot toward gratitude.

Sometimes, we just feel all right. And it feels so good to feel all right.

Matrescence has reinforced the notion that I cannot stress about what I cannot control. I anticipate there will be hard days ahead in motherhood. I anticipate there will be days that make me want to rip my hair out, days that will make me cry happy and sad tears within the same twenty-minute period, days when I will feel like I’m flailing, days when I will feel like I’m grounded, days that wrap-up everything wild and unruly and sweet and taxing all in one.

Some days I am afraid of what the unknown holds. Some days I am ready to greet the undiscovered. Today, I invite the future and it looks bright and beautiful.

There are, however, some things we can prepare for in this journey. For me, I have been reading everything I can get my hands on. Books on parenting. Books on the anatomy of the womb. Blogs from other mothers. Newsletters from fathers. Do I expect to absorb the secrets of motherhood and parenting like I’m a mommy-encyclopedia? No, but I think it helps to have some semblance of familiarity for the things that lie ahead.

I’ve loved learning about how the placenta grows out of nothing like a bodily miracle. I’ve loved learning about how often babies sleep, how milk is produced and consumed, how each month for a baby is a giant leap in the exploration of self and existence. If I begin to feel overwhelmed, I close my books and open them later when curiosity strikes again. This practice has made me feel empowered about my body, knowing what it can do and create, and it has been fascinating to learn how much (and in some ways, how little) we know about making and caring for a new life.

My husband and I also signed up for baby classes — in-person, the old-fashioned way! We’re learning things like how to diaper a baby, hold a baby, feed a baby, put a baby safely in a carseat, swaddle a baby, and protect a baby from choking. We feel like young children in a classroom learning the alphabet again for the first time. Everything is new and silly and important. We know we will figure things out as we go, as everyone else has, but it’s comforting to have a foundation to spring from.

I feel ready for motherhood because I feel ready to let it take me where it must go.

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I cannot prepare for everything motherhood might throw at me. That would be an impossible feat. I am sure that I will return to this newsletter in a few months reflecting on a moment in time I didn’t know could exist about a feeling I didn’t know I could have.

I know my life is going to change. I have no idea what that change will look like.

I just know that it’s coming, and I welcome it with open arms.

You’ve got this. You’ve got this. You’ve got this.

Xo,

Violet Carol