Motherhood Aged Me
Before I became pregnant with my first baby at 29 it was a common occurrence for people to mistake me as being younger than I actually was. It was the same way every time the subject of age came up when chatting with someone who didn’t know me very well. I would tell them how old I was and they would get a quizzical look on their face and then make the declaration that I looked younger than I actually was. I loved it.
Then came my babies.
I thought that my sleep deprivation was causing the dark circles under my eyes and the new wrinkles on my face were the result of my constant scowl from cleaning up poop and spit-up and once I no longer had to do those things the wrinkles would go away. After all, I was still pretty young, so why should I look like I wasn’t?
Then the grays started to pop up. My hair is straight, bordering on wavy, but suddenly these grays started popping up right in the middle of my head and they were curly. All of this happened as I was desperately trying to accept the fact that I would never get another full night’s sleep and I would never be able to wear a two-piece bathing suit because of my newly acquired stretch marks all across my tummy.
Now when I talk to people about my age there is never the reply of “Oh, you look so much younger than you are.” In fact, if I don’t look spot-on for my age, I might look a little older now. I know that I’m going to age, but I swear that having these kids has aged me faster than I would have aged otherwise. Or, as a university professor once warned us all in a health psychology class, “When a woman has a baby, she pays for it.” She wasn’t talking about paying with money, trust me.
I would never trade my babies to get my young looks back of course, but I will be the first to admit that my little blessings were a huge factor in my newly aged look.
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Lissa says...
I can totally relate to this, especially the grey hairs popping up on my head. Aaargh…