The stages of motherhood that will break your heart (in the best way)

I find myself wishing I could go back in time, to myself when I first became a mom. I’d try my best to tell her, motherhood is a series of rooms.

The first room: Where babyhood begins (and everything changes)

In the first room you find yourself in, it’s a mixture of darkness and light streaming in, sorrow and joy, a weariness you have never experienced before. You feel whole and broken all at once. Alone and never alone.

You sit in a rocker, between cluster feeds and “shhhhhs” and pats on a little back, there is a sweaty little head, pressed against your chest.

They feel so small, but the load you hold feels so big. Giggles, burps, baths, and tears. They need you for everything, even holding their head up. This room is where you find loneliness and solidarity unlike any other. You often wonder if you will ever leave this room. Yes, you will.

Related: When your children are close in age, motherhood feels like fast-forward—and it’s bittersweet

The second room: Toddlerhood—sticky hands and endless energy

The next room is louder and brighter, the feelings are bigger, and the boo-boos and sick days seem to never stop here. It’s “I do it, mama!” And “Hold you, mama!”

Little convos, with limited and broken vocabulary, bring both jubilation and frustration beyond belief. Everything is sticky. It seems like they find everything that could hurt them, they run fast, climb everything, open every drawer and cabinet their chubby hands can reach.

They need you for most things but find themselves branching out to do things themselves. Some days, you’d like a little break from this room—it’s tiring in a whole new way. But most days, you look around this room with eyes that soak in every detail, because you remember the room before it. You remember that you will have to leave this room too someday.

The third room: Big kids—growing minds, deeper conversations

Sooner than you were ready, it’s a new room you inhabit. In this room, the shoes and clothes are bigger. You don’t go into the bathroom to run a bath for a little one, instead it’s “run take a shower and then we can start the board game.” It’s “Can you pour your sister a bowl of cereal,” or “Bring the trash can in from the road.”

“You have practice tonight, be sure to find the right socks.” There are still boo-boos, but more often now, they are of the emotional kind, and there are no Band-Aids at the store that fix them.

This room fills with belly laughs, full conversations with a brilliant budding mind, its wars waged with overwhelming emotions, its lessons that go with them much farther than you ever will. They need you. In different ways than before perhaps.

In this room, you sit and pause, and begin to realize that the first and second rooms were some of the most beautiful you’ve ever been in, and while you were in them, you wondered how you would ever make it out…

Wishing for a return: Revisiting the rooms in memory

Now you wish, that for even just a moment, you could open a door and walk back in. Pick up your baby, and let their sweaty little head rest on you again, stand back and giggle as your frustrated toddler insists they can buckle themselves in.

Related: Your motherhood journey might look different than what you expected—and that’s OK

You don’t rush, you don’t find yourself flustered, you are simply so thankful to get to step into those rooms again. Each room in motherhood is a blessing, and an opportunity to grow and help your little one grow. You are in a room now—even if you don’t realize it until you’ve left.

Each room serves a purpose. Each room grows you. It grows them. Each of these rooms builds together and comprises your family’s home. A series of rooms, linked together. Those are yours and theirs. I like to walk through the rooms, even if only in my memory. You see, much to my heartbreak, we have to leave each one for another. And our memories hold the only keys to going back.

[This post was originally published by @kat_naps247 on Instagram and has been republished with permission from the author.]