Motherhood is all encompassing. Sometimes it can feel like your whole entire life revolves around your baby, because it kind of does. A mother and writer for Yahoo Shine put her pride aside to ask, "Did you lose your identity when you had a kid?"
Author Mira Jacob described what she called "going-out-to-dinner dread" as the fear of not having anything else to talk to friends about except for the
"'How's being a mom?'" my friends would ask, a question that encompassed such a vast complex territory that the only way to answer it over dinner was to list the mundane. Feedings are great. He's a good sleeper. We think we got a smile yesterday. Inevitably, their eyes would glaze over and they'd move on to my husband." Jacob went on to explain her jealousy for her husband because, "he was still interesting."
Another mother mirrored Jacob's sentiments. "It's like every day, she gets more interesting and I get less," she said of her 3-month-old.
Eventually things changed for Jacob -- she sought the camaraderie of other parents who had been through the same thing, and as the baby grew, she headed back to work and also stopped being so self-conscious about having baby talk with her friends.
Looking back, Jacob says, "It was hard and in some cases even horrible, but it also left me with the strange resilience of knowing that I can do a lot of things for my kid, including losing and redefining myself."
So, feel like a confession? "Did you lose your identity when you had a kid?"
Related stories:
