Not the mom I thought I would be

When I was pregnant the first time, we chose not to find out the baby’s gender before birth. Although we didn’t officially know, we were both quite sure that the baby was a girl. And then the baby was born and instead of the little girl we had expected, we had a baby boy. And we were surprised.

And Aaron wasn’t just a boy, but a boy who didn’t sleep unless he was being held. And the combination of the exhaustion, and the postpartum hormones, and the surprise over him being a boy rather than a girl, all combined one day and I remember telling him, as I was changing his diaper, and he was screaming, and I was exhausted, and I was crying, “you are not what I expected.”

And he wasn’t.

And he hasn’t been what I expected his entire life. Almost all those ways have been good. But they have caused me to re-evaluate how I needed to parent him. They have caused me to re-evaluate how I needed to advocate for him. They have caused me to re-evaluate the type of parent that I needed to be for him. And the same has been true for Clayton, albeit without all the postpartum new mother freak out.

I am not the parent that I thought I would be when I first started this parenting journey 20 years ago. Because neither one of my boys has been the child/teenager/young adult that I thought they were going to be. So I’ve had to adjust. And I’ve had to learn to be the mother that they needed me to be, not the mother I thought I was going to be.  A mother who over the years has learned more about Barney, Veggietales, Thomas the Tank Engine, the US presidents, theatre, band, choir, art, and art supplies and techniques than I ever thought I would know or need to know.

I have also learned more about asthma, lung diseases, immune deficiencies, and all the treatments for all those things, along with how to deal with insurance companies and disability offices. I have learned to administer medications through a PICC line, administer percussive therapy, insert infusion needles. I have learned to conduct business from hospital rooms and waiting rooms and doctor’s office treatment rooms. I know more about the process of plasma donation and production of immunoglobulin and IGG levels than I ever thought I would want or need to know.

Because that is the mother that Aaron needs me to be.

I have also learned more than I ever knew there was to know about sexual orientation, physical, and romantic attraction, gender identity, gender expression, and gender presentation. I have learned about the history and the context of Bible verses that I had never before bothered to study. I have learned what businesses, churches, and universities are LGBTQ+ friendly and affirming, and which are not. I have learned to love and cherish an entire new village of people that I never had reason to believe I would even know much less come to consider some of my favorite people.

Because that is the mother that Clayton needs me to be.

And the truth is, becoming the mother that these two boys need me to be has changed who I have become as a person. It has broadened my view of the world. It has made me more compassionate, more empathetic, more kind, and more loving. It has also made me less fearful of change and confrontation, more outspoken, more sure of who I am and what I believe, and more articulate in stating those things.

Because that is the mother that they need me to be.

That is the mother I need myself to be. 

That is the person that I need myself to be.

And maybe most important of all, that is the person that God needs me to be in this world.

For my own boys, and for others God has placed in my path.