Motherhood is the True Test of Patience

I always felt that the one virtue I possessed quite naturally and in abundance was patience. It was easy to be patient by taking a few short breaths, counting one to ten, tuning out or simply just letting things go and enduring the situation (waiting in a long queue, dealing with an irritating person, you know!) Motherhood was a reality check that made me realise how wrong I was. 

Today would have been a great day if I had not woken up with a pounding headache and a feeling like my head would explode. My toddler son (who usually wakes up late) decided that this was the best day for "early to rise" and as fate would have it, Murphy's law came to pass in every possible scenario this morning. I was barely able to drag myself to the washroom when I heard him plead for "milk". Everyday it's mostly me pleading with him to gulp his mug of milk in the morning. So I calmly promised I would give it to him as soon as I finished washing my face. But no... Toddlers love to have their way and I witnessed the first whining performance of the day. I was still calm. I tried to distract myself because of the extreme queasiness but my darling son's pleas went from milk to cartoons and I still managed to remain calm (note excessive use of word). I handed him his milk and decided not to argue with him about watching cartoons, I hoped instead to lay down for at least ten minutes. That's when he decided that early to rise means early to poop and announced it quite loudly and triumphantly. On any other day, I would have praised him to the roof and covered him with stickers but did it HAVE to be today? So with the queasiness at peak, I managed to get him all clean while enduring the second meltdown as he cried because his pink soap was replaced with white soap and he only wanted pink soap (honestly, my calmness was beginning to fade)...

...and then he decided to pull the shower curtain! That was it! The silly shower curtain, that literally screams "pull me" brought out the dragon in me. I yelled for him to "stop it!" and he did, at once (quite in shock and surprise at the intensity of my voice). There was no prior warning, no time to even start counting (forget till ten). It just took a split second for me to lose my patience and I regretted it. 

Later in the day, I heard him talking to his teddy and it broke my heart when he said "Teddy, Mamma shouting! Bad Baby". I immediately left what I was doing and just sat with him. There have been many such instances in the past but this particular one drove home the point of the true meaning of patience and how I choose to deal with such situations in future.

Patience after becoming a mother is the hardest. You can be the coolest, but YOUR child will test you to the limits of infinity. There will be no time to assess the situation, to take deep breaths or to count. It's an instant reaction that you have to run over and over in your mind so you can decide what the final outcome will be. Trivial meltdowns, chaos and insanity just when you expect everything to be calm, moments like today when your drained and unwell. All of the above are triggers of how patient you can and will be. So after today, I have decided to take a few steps to prevent similar "flare-up's" and prepare how I will react in such situations, train my mind to live by the book and never give in to the evil "impatience". It's a choice I'm willing to make and it's definitely worth a try.

Thanks for taking the time to read Moms and I would love for you to share your stories on how you learnt to be more patient.If you enjoyed  my article, do share, like and follow my page "The Blogger Mommie" on Facebook.