The Mundane of Motherhood

The repeated cycle of sameness and one of many ways to look at it.

Baby has had a runny nose for what seems like decades. Four weeks can feel like a decade when you have to clear that stuffy nose every night because if you don’t neither of you is getting any sleep.

The Mundane of Motherhood

The long nights where you feel like you have nothing to give. I’m currently writing this at 3.32 am. I’ve been up since 1.10 am or thereabouts. My baby hates when I use the sucker to clear her nose. Her resistance and flapping of her hands, make the job less efficient and longer. I have to take breaks, hoping that this time she can breathe properly, but I can still hear her breathing through her mouth. And we go again. 

The repeated cycle of sameness.

Oats for breakfast… every day. To be fair it’s her favourite and she will gobble it up without hesitation. It also used to be my son’s favourite, until he realized there was more to life.

For all the ‘hate’ the mundane gets, it is predictable, tried and tested, almost safe even. The routine works. It brings order, a sort of rhythm that is easily recognizable and easy to move to. It’s the laundry, the dishes, the cooking, cleaning, feeding the babies.

Ordinary, boring, mundane. The backdrop for unpredictability, spontaneity and the unknown to occur. The mundane brings structure to our world. It is the bedrock from which we fly. The safety net that we come home to. 

Is it possible to be grateful for something you don’t particularly like? It is. Especially, if the ‘something’ you don’t like is a necessary part of life.

Although it is exhausting, I am grateful that I provide ease to my daughter every night. I am grateful that my husband and I provide order and structure that my children can trust, from the mundane tasks we do every day. They know they will wear clean clothes, there will be food on their table, and milk to satisfy hunger, they’ll eat from clean dishes and bottles, and they will get prompt attention if they wake up at night.

I’m grateful to wake to the same excited smile every morning, as soon as my daughter wakes and catches my eye. I may not be in the mood to bathe her because dressing her up is like a wrestling match these days but the amusement from her squeals of delight as the water touches her boy trumps that. To see my son’s eyes light up as he sees me when he arrives from daycare at the same time every day. 

There can be much to dread in the less favourite parts of the mundane but also much to expect and much to look forward to in the sameness of daily life. 

These things make the world go round, the predictable, the routines. 

“As long as the earth remains, there will be planting and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night.” Gen 8:22

We cannot always escape our monotonous routines but we can choose, after a long day of doing the ordinary, to look back on our day with gratitude and seek out the moments of beauty in the mundane.

Listen to a minute of encouragement below:

If you’re feeling a bit defeated in your efforts to self-care or romanticise your life. Go to the Source. Go to Jesus.