My First MOMble

I'm a first time mom who just gave birth to my little snowpie, Sjöfn Léonie Loot Besler, last August 29, 2010.

I would like to think that I've been very diligent when it came to preparing myself on becoming a mommy. After all, I do have Heidi Murkoff's "What to Expect When You're Expecting" and "What to Expect the First Year", which are both considered as some sort of parenting bible by many of my mommy/daddy friends. So, having read those books and many parenting blogs, I thought that I was at least half-prepared for what was about to come my way once my snowpie's here. Little did I know that motherhood (or parenting in general) was actually harder than how I envisioned it.

It was sort of how I always knew that it'll be hard to explain how my daughter's name is pronounced. I was aware that it'll be a challenge but I never expected that it was going to be an excruciating feat! I had this script practiced in my mind:

"It's from Norse Mythology. She's the goddess of love and romance. It's pronounced as s-you-feen."

I thought it was enough to say that and have people understand it, at least, the second time around. However, I was proven wrong. The common reactions to my script were:

"Ano ulit?"  

"Norse? Uhhhh..."

"Ah! Sho-peen / Choo-pin / Sofie / So-feen / etc. !"

"S------ um, ang ganda naman ng meaning. Pano naging (insert wrong pronunciation here) kung S-J-O---- pano ulit i-spell?"

"So it's not Sjaw-fin?"

"You'll give your daughter a hard time in school!"

Believe me, it was frustrating! And, given that we live in the Philippines where umlauts (that's how the 'ö' is called) don't exist (both in our alphabet and on our keyboards) and the letter J is never pronounced as a Y, I think the worse is just about to come. Now I sort of dread seeing the outcome of her Philippine-issued birth certificate....

So, back to being a first time mom. I admit it: I'm not prepared after all. I found myself crying everyday since we got back home from the hospital. The sleepless nights, the unexplainable crying, the meals and baths that are hurried and no longer enjoyed, the perpetual disarray of the apartment, the excruciatingly sore nipples (sorry TMI), the disabling C-section pain ---- I read all about it during my pregnancy and kind of already knew about the challenges that await me but I never expected that it was going to be this difficult, frustrating, and overwhelming.

But don't get me wrong, I don't hate my new role as a parent. I, in fact, love it. I can't really fully explain why I love being a mom but here's a facebook status I posted just recently:

And you know what? I felt so much better after posting that status message. All the negativity that was hindering me from experiencing all the positive things that my baby was supposed to make me feel was relieved off me once I answered that ever so familiar facebook question: "What's on your mind?". Right then and there I knew I was going to be fine. Besides, being a mom is wonderful! It's just that, with the many roles that I was adamant on doing well on (such as being a loving partner and a hardworking psychologist), I knew that I had to somehow find some form of catharsis for all the emotional and information overload that adding the 'mom' role was doing to me.

So welcome to my chosen medium of catharsis: blogging.

I might entertain you, bore you, inform you, anger you, inspire you --- the heck --- there might not even be any 'you' to begin with! I might just end up blogging to myself!

But I'm fine with that.
After all, this blog is a mere collection of cathartic mumbles.
Nothing monumental --- just mombles.