Mother's Day

I have to start this post by bragging about my own mother. She has always been my biggest supporter and no one could love me better than she does. She taught me to work hard, be kind, and most of all to depend of the Lord in all circumstances. I think the first verse of The Band Perry's "A Mother Like Mine" says it best...

She's the sky that holds the clouds,
She's the lady of the house,
A blind believer in all I dare to be.
There's no safer place I've found,
Than the shoulder of her white night gown,
I've got the best and the worst of her in me.

This morning I was thinking about everything a woman sacrifices in order to be a mom. As a single girl without children, many people would say I have no idea what the sacrifice for being a mom is, and they are probably right. Although I do have a good idea of exactly what a woman is giving up because I get to live the selfish life of a woman without kids. I can sleep until 10:30 on a Saturday with no one waking me up to get them their breakfast. I can buy 3 new pairs of shoes without worrying about whether or not my children will have shoes. I can go to the grocery store and just buy Lean Cuisines and cereal for a grand total of $28 instead of spending hours meal planning and budgeting to feed hungry mouths. The older I get, the more I realize how selfless a mother must be. I thought I would take a minute to go through the math of a few of the selfless things my mom did for my 2 brothers and me.

• A pregnancy lasts 40 weeks (and I was 2 1/2 weeks late), so mom was pregnant for over 120 weeks of her life or 2 years and 4 months.
• The average baby goes through 5,475 diapers before becoming pottery trained (6 per day for 2 1/2 years. That means my mom changed us 16,425 times
• It takes approximately 2 minutes and 5 seconds to change a baby, which means mom spent 34,218 minutes changing diapers or just over 570 hours. That's nearly a month of time.
• The average mom does 330 loads of laundry per year, so over the course of 18 years, mom did at least 5,940 loads of laundry.
• A middle income family spends approximately $241,080 to raise a child to the age of 18. This does not include college, so my mom (and dad) spent nearly three quarters of a million dollars raising our family.
• Speaking of money, my mom chose to stay home with us, so she didn't work from the time Josh was born until I was in school. Figuring a salary of $36,000 per year for 8 years, she lost out on $288,000 just so she could be the one to take care of us.
• They say new parents lose 2.9 hours of sleep per night during a baby's first year. This means mom missed 1,059 hours per child and 3,176 hours total. That totals to be 4 1/2 months worth of sleep.
• On average a mom drives 1,248 miles per year taking kids to activities, so over the course of a child's life, a mom drives across America 9 times just going to kid-related functions. 

I guess what I'm saying is, moms are pretty selfless. They give up their time, money, and sleep in order to keep their babies happy, safe, and healthy. So much of their sacrifice can't be put into numbers. They listen to kids music instead of their favorite radio station in the car. They allow their house to be a mess for years, so their children can have toys that are easily accessible. They make chicken nuggets for dinner, even though they don't taste that great, because their children love them. It's all an act of love, and one for which I am extremely grateful.

:j