Am I A Naturally Empowered Mother?

The fact that you are responsible for the survival and development of a baby is so powerful that you will inevitably wonder if we are ready to be a mother. Few questions are as important and as powerful as this one.

In fact, I would say that there is no doubt more disquieting than this one, as it calls into question not only our biological functioning, but our competence as a human being. We are distressed to think about the possibility that nature has endowed us with the capacity to create and guarantee a good growth and education for our children.

Little by little, when we look at other mammals like dogs or cats, we marvel at their instinctive ability to care for babies. We all want to be endowed with this maternal instinct that allows us to keep our children protected, because we are aware that the time will come when it will be necessary to resort to it when what we have previously learned is not enough.

Maternal fears: as normal as necessary

“I worry about things that I’ve never done before. It’s as if antennas have appeared whose function is to detect possible dangers that could harm my daughter. Maybe I should answer her call, maybe sometimes I should feed her more, maybe I need more clothes. Sometimes I’m lying down and suddenly I think I haven’t covered her well or that something could fall over her crib…”

Do you identify with that? Probably partly yes. Being afraid that something around our children is bad is totally normal. In fact, it’s one of the most important functions when it comes to keeping an eye out for the dangers that surround our children.

The mother who acts motivated by these “positive fears” reduces the possibility of accidents, oversights or mistakes that can be fatal for the child. For example, we must be especially careful with the dangers posed by high tables, low cradles, sockets, sharp objects, etc…

However, while the psychological pressure is high, it is critical that these fears are not crippling and that we allow our children to explore to make them feel healthy and happy in their place in the world.

Tiredness, another natural enemy

What is certain is that there are phases in which our children turn to us a lot, so the tiredness builds up. This is because much of the possibility about the child is ours, there is always a part of us that is working.

Therefore, it is important to know what this tiredness consists of, which accumulates and is sometimes strong. Let’s look at the reasons behind this:

• All children are what matters to us, but above all they are in their first year of life. This creates fatigue, mainly because of constant worry and lack of routine.

• Expectations about mothers play a big role in the tiredness scenario. The psychological pressure that mothers are expected to be knowledgeable about at all times simply wears out and exhausts them.
• Even when tasks are delegated, the ultimate responsibility for everything usually falls on the mothers. This can be saddening, exhausting and despairing, it makes women look back after the first year and perceive the previous phase as a stain.

In the first phase, all this will make us perceive reality as a disconnected mixture of pleasures, rewards, worries, fears and tiredness. Therefore, as time goes by and the baby grows without more difficulty, we will discover that we have overcome this test by fire that we feared so much.

Therefore, this self-knowledge process full of doubts and fears becomes the fundamental basis of the maternal mental attitude; as a result we will rely more and more on our mothering abilities, a subject we feared we would not pass and in which we have gradually become experts.