I can’t believe I am writing this out, but our family of three is about to become a family of four.
We’re having another baby.
And honestly, if you had asked me a year ago whether I thought I would be writing those words, I probably would've said no.
Not because I didn’t want another baby. Deep down, I think a part of me always did. But I wasn’t mentally ready to grow my family again.
So before I tell you about this baby, I think I need to tell you about the mother I was the first time.
I would tell you that becoming a mother wasn't what I expected.
I would tell you that I loved my baby so deeply, but I was struggling in ways I didn’t know how to explain.
After Liam was born, I experienced postpartum depression and anxiety. I didn’t get help from therapy until he was eleven months old. Looking back, I can see how long I was trying to carry something that was never meant to be carried alone.
I would tell you about some of the places I cried.
By the living room window.
On the couch.
On my bedroom floor.
Sitting in Liam’s rocking chair.
On the floor of his room.
In the kitchen while I packed the dishwasher or tried to cook dinner.
And the bathroom became my favorite place because it was the one place I could cry without worrying that someone would see me or hear me.
I would tell you that my OCD and perfectionism got the best of me.
I thought my house needed cleaning every day. I thought clothes needed to be washed and folded. Everything needed to be wiped down and dusted. I thought I could keep everything together if I just worked hard enough.
I would tell you that I was trying so hard to be everything at once.
A wife.
A new mom.
The person who kept the house running.
The cook.
The cleaner.
The business owner.
And the woman who was supposed to go back to her normal life.
Before Liam, I had built a graphic design business. I was a girl-boss, do-everything, hustle-type of girl. I had built something of my own, and a huge part of my identity was wrapped up in being creative, independent and capable.
I genuinely thought I could do it all.
I thought I would be a mom and an entrepreneur. A momtrepreneur, if you will.
I thought I would have Liam, take a few months off, and then go right back to my business.
And for a little while, I did.
I went back to designing on and off for a few months.
But eventually, I shut the business down.
And I would tell you that shutting down something I had worked so hard to build felt like losing a piece of myself.
I didn’t know who I was without it.
And then there was the part I didn’t really know how to say out loud:
I was ashamed to call myself a stay-at-home mom.
I remember thinking, I’m just a stay-at-home mom.
As if what I was doing suddenly had less value because I wasn’t bringing in an income or running a business anymore.
I felt like I needed to prove that I was still doing something meaningful.
So I disappeared.
At least, I disappeared from the places where the people who knew me were watching.
I stopped showing up on Instagram and Facebook. I stopped sharing pieces of my life with people I actually knew because, honestly, I didn’t really know what pieces of myself were left to share.
But I didn’t completely stop creating.
I kept writing on my blog.
I kept creating on Pinterest.
In a strange way, those spaces felt safer.
Most of the people who knew me in real life weren’t seeing everything I was posting there. I could create without feeling like I was being watched or wondering what someone from my past thought about what I was sharing.
I could just be.
I could write about motherhood. I could make things. I could save beautiful things. I could explore who I was becoming without having to explain it to anyone.
And I think I needed that little bit of distance.
I needed a place where I could exist without feeling like I had to prove that I was still the woman I used to be.
So while it looked like I had disappeared from the internet, I hadn’t really disappeared at all.
I was just finding quieter corners of it.
I would tell you that becoming a mom changed my identity before I even realized it was happening.
And somewhere in all of that, my husband and I were learning how to become parents too.
I would tell you about us.
Becoming parents changed our marriage in ways we didn’t expect.
We were learning how to be parents while also learning how to be partners in this completely new life.
And one thing about us is that we’ve always tried to keep things even.
If one of us does something for the other, the other wants to return it.
If one of us takes care of something, the other wants to make sure we’re carrying our share too.
Even now, we joke about keeping score.
Who got Liam ready?
Who made dinner?
Who cleaned up?
Who did bedtime?
Who got up?
Who needs a break?
But when you’re newly parenting a baby who needs you constantly, that little scoreboard can become exhausting all on its own.
Because sometimes one of you simply did more that day.
Sometimes the baby needs one parent more.
Sometimes one person is running on two hours of sleep.
Sometimes you’re both exhausted, and neither of you feels like you have anything left to give.
And that’s when our 50/50 rule went completely out the window.
We would literally play rock, paper, scissors just to figure out who was going to do what.
It sounds funny now, and honestly, sometimes it was.
But underneath it, we were just two very exhausted people trying to figure out how to make this new life feel fair.
I would tell you that becoming parents taught us that marriage isn’t always 50/50.
Sometimes it’s 80/20.
Sometimes it’s 90/10.
Sometimes one person has 100% to give, and the other only has 20%.
And eventually, you switch.
The goal isn’t always to make sure the numbers are perfectly even.
Sometimes the goal is knowing that when you don’t have enough, your partner will carry a little more and trusting that you’ll do the same for them when it’s their turn.
I would tell you that we are still learning this.
We are still learning patience with each other while learning patience for our son.
We are still learning how to communicate when we are exhausted instead of keeping score.
We are still learning that one person doing more for a season doesn’t mean the other person isn’t doing enough.
And honestly, I think becoming parents made us learn each other all over again.
But there was another part of those early years that made everything feel even heavier.
Our village was far away.
Our Nanas and Papas live 1,076 miles away.
That is a very specific number, but I think sometimes you need the exact number to understand just how far away that really is.
They couldn’t just stop by for dinner.
They couldn’t come over for an afternoon so we could take a nap.
They couldn’t pop in and say, “Go take a shower. I’ve got the baby.”
They loved us from miles away.
And we loved them from miles away.
But there is something different about having people you love deeply living close enough to physically show up when you are exhausted.
For a long time, our village felt like it was mostly me and Kita.
And I don’t say that with resentment.
It was simply our reality.
We were learning how to be parents, taking care of our home, trying to take care of each other and trying to figure out how to do all of it without the people we loved being right down the street.
And the truth is, even when there were people around us who loved us and would have helped, asking for help felt almost impossible.
I didn’t know how to say, “I need you.”
I felt like needing help meant I wasn’t handling motherhood well enough.
I thought I was supposed to know how to do it.
So sometimes the help was there, but I didn’t have the courage or maybe the capacity to reach for it.
Looking back, I wish I had understood that asking someone to help carry you for a little while doesn’t mean you’re weak.
It means you’re human.
And I also learned that a village doesn’t always look the way you imagine it will.
Sometimes it looks like grandparents sending what they can from far away.
Sometimes it looks like someone remembering your baby and finding little things they know he’ll love.
Sometimes it looks like clothes.
Books.
Toys.
Packages showing up at your door.
Mimi became a really special part of our village in that way.
She blessed us with clothes, books, and toys for Liam.
And those things meant so much more to me than the things themselves.
They were her way of saying, I’m here.
Maybe she couldn’t always be physically here, but she found a way to show up for Liam and for us in the way she could.
And I think that’s something I understand differently now.
A village doesn’t have to look the same for everyone.
It doesn’t always mean someone is physically in your house helping you fold laundry or holding the baby while you sleep.
Sometimes it looks like someone making sure your baby has something new to wear.
Sometimes it looks like a package at the door.
Sometimes it looks like someone sending money when they can.
Sometimes it looks like a phone call.
Sometimes it looks like simply knowing that there are people who love your child and are cheering for your family from wherever they are.
And then there were the people who were closer.
Liam’s godparents, Scieska and Dario, became part of that village too.
I remember how hard it was for us to finally ask them to watch Liam.
It wasn’t that we didn’t trust them.
We did.
It was me.
I had gotten so used to thinking that I needed to do everything myself that even asking someone we loved and trusted to take Liam for a few hours felt huge.
But eventually, we did.
We asked them to watch Liam so Kita and I could have a date day.
And I remember what that felt like.
To leave our baby with people we loved.
To go somewhere together without a diaper bag.
Without a schedule.
Without having to think about who needed what every five minutes.
Just us.
It wasn’t some extravagant vacation.
It was just a date day.
But it meant so much because we finally let someone else help us carry a little bit of our life.
And maybe that was part of learning what a village actually means.
Not having a perfect village.
Not having people constantly around.
But having people who love your child enough to show up when you finally have the courage to ask.
I would tell you that I didn’t understand any of this while I was living it.
At the time, I just felt like I was failing.
Failing at motherhood.
Failing at being a wife.
Failing at keeping my house together.
Failing at being the woman I thought I was supposed to be.
And if I’m being completely honest, there were moments when something else started to grow underneath all of that exhaustion.
Resentment.
Not because I didn’t love the people in our lives.
Not because I didn’t know that we were loved.
But because I was tired.
I was overwhelmed.
And sometimes, when you are the one holding the baby, cleaning the house, trying to make dinner and barely keeping yourself together, it can be hard to remember that someone loving you from far away is still loving you.
Sometimes I wanted someone to just show up.
I wanted someone to see that I was struggling without me having to explain it.
I wanted someone to say, “Give me the baby. Go rest.”
And when that wasn’t possible, I think some of that hurt quietly turned into resentment.
There were people who loved us. There were people who would have helped in the ways they could.
But I also wasn’t very good at asking for help.
So I found myself caught in this strange place where I felt like I was doing everything alone, while also knowing that I wasn’t actually alone.
And that was hard to reconcile.
Looking back, I can see that some of what I felt wasn’t really about anyone failing me.
It was about how much I was struggling and how little I knew how to say, I need you.
I didn’t know how to ask.
I didn’t know how to receive.
And sometimes, instead of asking for help, I would quietly wish someone would just know that I needed it.
I would tell you that it took me a long time to realize that I wasn’t failing.
I was becoming someone new.
And becoming someone new can be messy.
It can be lonely.
It can be beautiful.
And it can hurt.
I would tell you that eventually, I got help.
It took me longer than it should have. It took me years to finally become open to medication, even though I had been so against it.
But getting help changed things for me.
Slowly, I started to see myself again.
Not the old me.
A different me.
A softer me.
I would tell you that motherhood eventually became the most fulfilling thing I have ever done.
Not because it suddenly became easy.
Not because I stopped having hard days.
And definitely not because I figured out how to do it all.
Actually, it was the opposite.
I stopped trying to do it all.
I stopped measuring my worth by how clean my house was, how productive I was, how much I was accomplishing, or whether I was still the woman I was before becoming a mom.
I started to understand that motherhood could be beautiful and incredibly hard at the exact same time.
I would tell you that Liam taught me so much about slowing down.
About being present.
About finding meaning in the ordinary things I used to overlook.
A little hand reaching for mine.
A sleepy hug.
A book before bed.
A random conversation that I never want to forget.
The little moments that don’t look important while they’re happening, but somehow become the moments you remember most.
I would tell you that I started finding pieces of myself in motherhood instead of constantly looking for the woman I was before it.
And somewhere along the way, the idea of another baby started feeling different.
It wasn’t that the fear disappeared.
It wasn’t that I suddenly forgot everything I went through.
If anything, I remember it very clearly.
I know what postpartum depression felt like.
I know what anxiety felt like.
I know what it feels like to lose yourself.
I know what it feels like to be overwhelmed and not know how to ask for help.
And I know that bringing another baby into our family means stepping into a season that will stretch us all over again.
But I would tell you that I’m not the same woman I was when I became a mom the first time.
I know myself better now.
I know when something doesn’t feel right.
I know that asking for help doesn’t make me less of a mom.
I know that I don’t have to do everything.
I know that my house doesn’t have to be perfect.
I know that I can have hard days without believing that I’m a bad mother.
I know that my husband and I don’t have to keep score to prove that we’re both showing up.
And I know that motherhood doesn’t require me to lose myself.
I would tell you that there is still a part of me that is scared.
Of course there is.
But there is also a part of me that is excited.
A part of me that feels ready.
A part of me that knows that this baby is coming into a family that has grown so much since the day Liam made us parents.
And maybe that is how I know I’m ready.
Not because I’m fearless.
Not because I think I’ll do everything perfectly this time.
But because I know I don’t have to.
I would tell you that a year ago, I couldn’t imagine writing this.
And now I can’t imagine our family any other way.
Our little family of three is growing.
Liam is becoming a big brother.
My husband and I are becoming parents to two.
And I get to become a mother all over again but this time, I get to do it as the woman I’ve become.
I would tell you that I’m still learning.
Still growing.
Still figuring it out.
But this time, I know I don’t have to figure it all out alone.
So, here we are.
Our family of three is about to become a family of four.
And there is a tiny little person growing inside of me who has already changed our family forever.
We’re having another baby. 🤍
And I would tell you…
I think I’m ready.
