Whenever anyone thinks of any of the mother aspects of the Goddess, people tend to think of the miracle of growing a child into a baby, the miracle of birth, and the warm, loving motherly energy that the ideal mother would give — maybe with some wisdom to go with it.

However, most mothers do not really seem to think or feel that way about ourselves. Frankly, if you’re a mom, you’re probably stressed out and feeling guilty because you don’t have enough time to do all of the things you feel like you should be doing. I know that’s how I feel. I kind of let go of the fact that I created a very awesome human not too long after he was born. I spent the rest of the time worrying and making sure we were doing everything perfectly.

That didn’t work out so well because nobody’s perfect. Right off the bat, I suffered from baby blues. I was afraid of how fragile he was. One tiny snap or shake or drop, and he could be seriously injured for life! I was so afraid of screwing him up. It didn’t help that I didn’t produce enough milk for my son, so we had to supplement with formula. It turned out he had a tongue and lip tie that nobody checked for until he was 10 months old. By then it was too late to recover my milk supply and he already was a good eater of solid foods.

As he grew, I grew less worried about some things and more worried about others. My son is very good about eating, but I still worry that he’s going to choke on a hotdog or something. Last month he started learning to climb. Since then, he has been climbing on everything and trying to climb up and over the back of the couch. Now I worry about him climbing something, falling, and hurting himself.

Now that he’s almost 19 months old, I found something new to worry about — his development. Now my son is very smart. He has figured out how to get through or around almost every baby gate we have. He can figure out how do things that we have found surprising. Today I took a wooden animal puzzle, dumped it out, and watched him put all of the animals back in the right place, even rotating some of them to do it. But he has yet to really talk.

He has learned several signs and uses them regularly. He says “mamamamamama” when he’s upset and wants me to comfort him. Last week he started telling us to “stop”. However, he really only has a handful of words that he uses and maybe three that he uses regularly. He has only just started babbling with any regularity. He was supposed to start pointing at things around a year and he only started doing it 2-3 months ago. He’s supposed to have 20 words by the time he’s 18 months and is supposed to be more interested in talking than signing. but that is not the case.

So now I am wondering, is there something wrong with him? Is there something wrong with what we’re doing? Are we not spending enough time talking to him? Possibly. I work a lot and tend to be too tired when I come home to really attempt to converse with him. I read to him almost every night. At every meal time we try to get him to copy sounds (without success), trying to get him to call something, anything by name. He can eat an entire meal using a fork, but he won’t call the water “wa wa”. I’m sure he’ll figure it out eventually. At least, I hope so!

Anyway, while there are many magical aspects of motherhood, including watching the amazing changes as kids grow from babies to toddlers. No doubt there will be many more magical things to come. However, the worrying is SO TOUGH!