motherhood

But that was long ago. She has long since lost interest in motives, in the details of other women's crimes. Even the hatchet makes its usual sense. A mother who loves her child with all her self is only so far from the hatchet anyway; one casual swing and it's done. Hatred, love, all muddled up in that space inside a whisper, when the words don't matter anymore, when the baby's half asleep and you can carry it all the way there if you want, on nothing but the tone of your voice. When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall. Sing it as softly as you like__he words clench their own teeth. The child still falls.

When I wasn__ in the barn garden, helping out, sorting seeds or checking hoses I__ spend time alone, usually in the bathroom adjacent to Joel__ room, staring into the shattered mirror as my hand gently caressed my baby bump.More often than not I would cry. Not because my pregnancy upset me, or that my hormones were getting the better of me, but because I missed Joel, my baby__ father. That the baby would grow up without a dad made me anxious. Then again, if he had survived, what irreparable damage would he have suffered and how would his pain translate to his child? Jesus, I was studying myself in the very mirror he__ smashed the night he chose to take his own life.The bump had grown slowly in the last couple of months. With these limited resources, I didn__ have the privilege of eating whatever I craved. Had that been the case, I was sure I would have been bigger by now. Still, I tried to eat as well and as often as I could and the size of my belly had proven that my attempts at proper nutrition were at least growing something in there.Nothing made me happier than feeling my baby move. It was a constant source of relief for me. In our present circumstances, with no vitamins and barely any meat products save the recent stash of jerky Earl had found in an abandoned trailer, my diet consisted of berries, lettuce, and canned beans for the most part. Feeling the baby move inside me was an experience I often enjoyed alone. I would think of Joel then as well. Imagining his hand on my belly, with mine guiding his to the kicks and punches.

Happiness is when you realize that your kids have grown up to be AWESOME people!

No place in this world is, as safe as my mother__ womb,And nobody in this world is, as loving as my mother.

Motherhood is a vocation like any other. It should be freely chosen, not imposed upon woman.

No mother is ever, completely, a child's idea of what a mother should be, and I suppose it works the other way around as well. But despite everything, we didn't do too badly by one another, we did as well as most.

Have you any idea how many children it takes to turn off one light in the kitchen Three. It takes one to say What light and two more to say I didn't turn it on.

Motherhood is a choice you make everyday, to put someone else's happiness and well-being ahead of your own, to teach the hard lessons, to do the right thing even when you're not sure what the right thing is...and to forgive yourself, over and over again, for doing everything wrong.

So how on earth can I bring a child into the world, knowing that such sorrow lies ahead, that it is such a large part of what it means to be human?I'm not sure. That's my answer: I'm not sure.

...after all, she had birthed us alone, diapered and fed us, helped us with homework, kissed and hugged us, poured her love into us. That she might not actually know us seemed the humblest thing a mother could admit.

Sometimes when you pick up your child you can feel the map of your own bones beneath your hands, or smell the scent of your skin in the nape of his neck. This is the most extraordinary thing about motherhood - finding a piece of yourself separate and apart that all the same you could not live without.

Anne looked at the white young mother with a certain awe that had never entered into her feelings for Diana before. Could this pale woman with the rapture in her eyes be the little black-curled, rosy-cheeked Diana she had played with in vanished schooldays? It gave her a queer desolate feeling that she herself somehow belonged only in those past years and had no business in the present at all.

There's no bitch on earth like a mother frightened for her kids.

New mothers enter the world of parenting feeling much like Alice in Wonderland.- Being a mother is one of the most rewarding jobs on earth and also one of the most challenging.- Motherhood is a process. Learn to love the process.- There is a tremendous amount of learning that takes place in the first year of your baby__ life; the baby learns a lot, too.- It is sometimes difficult to reconcile the fantasy of what you thuoght motherhood would be like, and what you thought you would be like as a mother, with reality.- Take care of yourself. If Mommy isn__ happy, no one else in the family is happy either.- New mother generally need to lower their expectations.- A good mother learns to love her child as he is and adjusts her mothering to suit her child.

I don__ think the world should assume that we are all natural mothers. And it does. I don__ think it__ such a big thing anymore, but the idea that you sacrifice everything for your children__t__ a load of rubbish. It leads to very destructive living and thinking, and it has a much worse effect on children than if you go out and live your own life. You__e meant to adore your children at all times, and you__e not meant to have a bad thought about them. That__ facism, you know, and it__ elevating the child at the expense of the mother. It__ like your life is not valid except in fulfilling this child__ needs. What about all your needs, your desires, your wants, your problems? They__e going to come out anyway, so it__ better they__e acknowledged straight off. Having said that, I really do believe that children have to be protected. They have to be loved. Somewhere between the two, I think, something needs to be sorted out. The relationship between parent and child is so difficult and so complex. There__ every emotion there. We mostly only acknowledge the good ones. If we were allowed to talk about the other ones, maybe it would alleviate them in some way

Motherhood is near to divinity. It is the highest, holiest service to be assumed by mankind.

Thus far the mighty mystery of motherhood is this: How is it that doing it all feels like nothing is ever getting done.

If it weren't for me, she wouldn't have to take jobs like this. She would be half a planet away, floating in a turquoise sea, dancing by moonlight to flamenco guitar. I felt my guilt like a brand.... I had seen girls clamor for new clothes and complain about what their mothers made for dinner. I was always mortified. Didn't they know they were tying their mothers to the ground? Weren't chains ashamed of their prisoners?