4 Benefits of Motherhood

Although I enjoy taking pictures of furniture and writing about how a wall cabinet changed my life (it didn’t really), the thing that occupies my mind and time the most is raising the two little people I live with.

Am I feeding Forest enough fiber? When should I stop changing the subject when he asks exactly how the special seed goes into the mommy to make the baby? What Bible verse should we read today? And also, the baby just walked by and I think I got a whiff of poop.

I have no doubt that there is nothing better, more important, or more profitable in the long term that I could be doing with my time. Here are just a few things that make raising children the best possible endeavor.

Benefit 1: I am learning new things all the time

You’ve probably heard the quote “A person soon learns how little he knows when a child begins to ask questions.” I would like to append the following:

“A person soon learns many things whilst pretending to teach them to a child.”

Forest is only four, so he hasn’t “officially” started school, but he’s been learning for a long time. I love homeschooling for many reasons, one of them being the rather selfish one of having the opportunity to learn new things myself. If it weren’t for Forest, I would have lived the rest of my life not knowing:

• That starfish can willfully break off an arm, which often goes on to become a brand-new starfish.
• How jelly beans are made and why you probably shouldn’t eat them ever (same video).
• The disturbing process of birthing baby seahorses.
• The rather slimy process of birthing a baby giraffe, which was reminiscent of a human birth, except the giraffe landed on the floor with a nasty crash, and my baby landed on the floor, gently.
• The Lord’s Prayer
• Many other sections of the Bible I sorta knew but not really kind of (“Not really kind of” is a registered trademark of Forest Shoebridge)
• How to cure chronic constipation in little boys (prayer and beans)
• How to make glittery slime
• That tiny batteries are the devil’s tic-tacs
• What maple syrup looks like when it first comes out of the tree

Benefit 3: My body is a wonderland

A wonderland in the sense that every bit of it features interesting, extraordinary things you wouldn’t find in the Victoria’s Secret catalog, where all the girls look about the same, except for the one moderately black girl, and well, after a while it gets tedious.

Starting from the top:

I have the most interesting strands of shiny white hair sticking straight up like so many radio antennas, connecting me to the universe. I started getting a few of these wonderful bits of silvery wisdom shortly after having my first baby, and then they came in rapid succession after I gave birth a second time.

This could mean one of two things: I am aging swiftly and poorly, like Michael Scott’s assistant from Anthropologie, or my godliness and wisdom have earned me a crown of glory (Proverbs 16:31). Makes me wonder at the wisdom of Steve Martin, whose hair started turning white during his second year of kindergarten.

Even more impressive than my crown of antennae, which I would have been happy to receive much later in life, is the ability of my boobs to sustain the lives of two children for many, many months. I was able to nurse both my babies to the point where they were so full, milk shot up from them with the ferocity of the volcano that destroyed Pompeii. I had enough milk to feed, overfeed, donate, and whitewash the picket fence with.

In a few years (or possibly, weeks) my boobs will look like a sock with a marble at the bottom, but I will still be fond of them because of the excellent service they provided. It was thanks to my boobs and my ridiculous overproduction of milk that I met Wren, whose baby I helped feed and who is now one of my favorite people.

Now we are in the midsection, where the most wonderful thing happened. I carried two people inside me (not at the same time, thank heavens) from the time they were as small as the dot on this i, to when they were old and big enough to do a number on my bellybutton. It was around the 37^th week of my first pregnancy when I realized with a quiet dread that it would take a miraculous intervention from Jesus for my bellybutton to go back to its previous glory. I never bothered asking him, because most everything is more important than the deflated bounce house that is my navel.

Just yesterday I went in to see a nice doctor for my decennial checkup. After asking me embarrassing questions (not for me, but he looked slightly mortified) about my body and its functions, he asked me to lie down and lift my shirt.

“Oh, this is going to be scary,” I said.

“Don’t worry, it will just be real quick.”

“For you, I mean.”

The nether regions deserve a significant amount of praise as well, of course. For something as large as a fat baby’s head and middle to pass through a tunnel that was a nice, decent size yesterday, without leaving any real damage is truly astounding. And then for that same passage to return to its normal functions as if nothing happened is even more remarkable.

What else could recover so well? If you forced, say, a small watermelon out of your nostril, your entire face would be disfigured forever, like that guy who went bear hunting and set his gun down because he thought the bear was dead, but really the bear was just waiting like Sleeping Bearty with a rose on its chest, for the hunter to come over so he could give him a piece of his mind and take off an even bigger piece of his face.

Benefit 4: I am a much nicer person now

I am convinced that few things in life encourage (force?) you as effectively and consistently to be more like Jesus than motherhood does. A quick Google search of “Character traits of Jesus” shows that he is:

Compassionate (Up at night with a feverish baby)

Always serving (Making food three times a day plus snacks)

Loving (Morning snuggles and a boob in the face)

Forgiving (Forest has been injuring me accidentally and consistently for 4.5 years now)

Committed (Up at night with the same baby, this time teething ferociously)

Prayerful (Never have I prayed more)

Gentle (Rocking, bathing, nursing, comforting)

Patient (Crafts involving finger paint. Potty training. Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel)

Self-controlled (Everything I say and do will be said and done by the offspring)

Humble (Can’t be cocky with this many stretch marks)

And I would also like to add:

Resourceful (Jesus and I have both been low on groceries and still managed to feed everyone)

Perseverant (Pregnancy, labor, and nail trimming)

Yes. Having kids has definitely been good for me, if not my middle.