Expanding Our Family Together
- Vicky
- Oct 28
- 3 min read
I knew I wanted children right away and Kevin was on board. I never wanted there to be such a huge age gap between my children but here I was. It bothered me for a really long time but again, something I know that was God’s timing and not my own. And it has worked out.
I would have gotten pregnant on my honeymoon, but we thought we needed to wait a month before I was covered by my husband’s insurance. We were wrong! So, as soon as we got that assurance, we were pregnant with my son.
The pregnancy was good, as was my daughter’s, but the whole after was not. I had A LOT of thoughts that I didn’t know what I was doing. Looking back now, I can see that it was postpartum depression, but I had no idea at the time.
I thought after 8 years, which was the age gap between my first and second child, I would know how to do this mother thing, but I didn’t. My son cried all the time, and it made me feel like I was failing as his mother. Everything I tried wasn’t helping, and to top it off, he wouldn’t nurse either which devastated me. I was so scared of what people would think because he didn’t breastfeed, and to make matters worse, my mother was a lactation consultant at the time and even she used every trick she had to no avail. I took on the worry of what people would say about her too. It was a recipe for disaster.
The parenting from when I was 19 and alone to 27 and married was vastly different. Somehow, I was more confident at 19 and not second guessing everything I did with my baby. Writing that seems so weird to me but I think the personalities of my children had something to do with it, and I also think I was still holding onto shame from getting pregnant at 19 and it was impeding my ability to feel confident.
Even though I was dealing with a lot emotionally, I think the thing that surprised me the most the second time around was the ability of a mother to love another child as much as she does her first. I worried about being able to fully love another child like I did my first and I worried about my daughter being able to accept her new sibling. Both things I worried about were for nothing as I found space in my heart for another and my daughter was wonderful to her new brother, most of the time 😉
Three years passed and we welcomed another baby, my last little girl. The mother I was at 19 to the mother I was at 30 was so different. On the one hand, I doubted more of my ability as an older mother, but I had grown and learned so much in my 11 years of mothering that I was able to work through those doubts easier. My third baby was the complete opposite of my second and I was so grateful….my heart needed a break.
Looking back, I see how the two versions of me — the young, determined mom figuring it out alone, and the older, more reflective mom learning to trust God through her doubts — were both needed. One taught me perseverance, and the other taught me grace.
I LOVED being a mom. It was my most favorite thing in the world! Motherhood has looked different in every season — young and unsure, older and overwhelmed, confident and content. But through it all, God has been shaping me, softening me, and showing me that being a mom was never about getting it all right. It was about love — the kind that grows, stretches, and keeps finding new room.
