5,322 Quotes About Mother

Babies cry at birth because it is the first time they experience separation from love.

You're going to make mistakes as a parent. It's literally inevitable. You're human, and mistakes are just part of being human. It's how you handle your mistakes that matters most. Acknowledge them. Apologize for them. Make them as right as possible. Learn something from them. And then let them go. It's okay. I promise. After all, how else will our little humans learn that it's okay to be human.

We are imperfect humans growing imperfect humans in an imperfect world, and that's perfectly okay.

Becoming a parent doesn't make you less of a woman. You matter. Your happiness matters. Your health matters. Your dreams matter. Today do at least one thing for you. Take a walk in the rain. Meet a friend for coffee. Write in your journal. Read a book. Plan a trip. Hug a tree. Help a stranger. Create something. Grow something. Sing something. Learn something. Whatever it is that makes you smile, do a little of it each day. Your children are watching. Let them see you happy.

Night waking isn't the sign of a bad baby. It's the sign of a normal baby. Nighttime needs are as valid as daytime needs and nighttime parenting as necessary as daytime parenting. Crying is communication, not manipulation. Respond to your baby's cries, even if all they need is to know you're there. You're not being manipulated. You're being a parent.

Our lives are our stories, each day a fresh new page, each season a whole new chapter. Our parenting chapters become the beginning of our children's stories in glorious, dog-eared, mud-stained, daisy-chain pages of sunshine-filled days and wish-on-a-star nights and shared struggles and triumphs and tears and laughter. Where their stories go from there is up to them, but where they begin is up to us.

The moment you realize that you aren't creating a cut-and-paste version of yourself, but rather nurturing a stunningly unique individual with thoughts and feelings and hopes and fears and opinions and preferences and plans and interests of their own is the moment parenting becomes an adventure instead of a challenge. It's a simple shift in perspective that creates a world of difference.

I remember when you'll be a month old, and I'll stumble out of bed to give you your 2:00 a.m. feeding.

In my experience nursing is waiting. The mother becomes the background against which the baby lives, becomes time. I used to exist against the continuity of time. Then I became the baby's continuity, a background of ongoing time for him to live against. I was the warmth and milk that was always there for him, the agent of comfort that was always there for him. My body, my life, became the landscape of my son's life. I am no longer merely a thing living in the world; I am a world.