Skip to main content

Being A Mom Sucks

Mothering Wild Blog has another great post about this!
No one ever tells you this before you are a mom. Or maybe they do and we don't hear it. I honestly cannot remember. What I do remember is being pregnant with my first and being so excited. And then as my due date got closer, I was terrified about absolutely everything - giving birth, sleeping, living, functioning. Add in the absolutely horrifying feelings I had about taking care of another human and the list was infinitesimal. Of course I figured things out but life with a newborn was so hard! And the worst part was it seemed like every other mom but me had it figured out. The picture-perfect vision of moms with their newborns not crying was all I had in my head and that was not my reality. My highlight real was my baby crying, me frazzled, poopy diapers, spit up, my hair pulled back, ten extra pounds, nothing glamorous.

So when my eldest was a few months old, I went to visit my family in WI and got one of the greatest baby gifts ever. My cousin and I were talking, and she had a son who was three and another on the way. Her three year old was irritated and throwing a fit about something and my baby was crying. She looked at me and said, "This just sucks. This is not fun - it's just not." And I smiled with tears welling up in my eyes and slowly streaming down my face, so relieved that someone else voiced out loud what I was feeling. I literally thought that I was the only mom who thought motherhood was hard, that I was the only mom who could not handle the motherhood thing, that as much as I always knew I wanted children, that maybe, just maybe, I was not cut out to be a mom and was going to ruin my child's life.

So armed with this new knowledge that I was not alone, I embraced the suck. And truthfully this made being a mom much easier and fun. There are so many days when being a mom is beyond hard. Toddlers who all want the only red cup that exists because that literally is a life and death situation. Preschoolers who will fling themselves on the floor screaming when you have to leave the house to arrive on time to the one appointment you have that week. School-aged children who are perfect at school and you wait for them at the bus stop and they come home and throw fits for hours because they are exhausted. Tweens who retreat to their rooms and don't reemerge for years. And we all go through it because embracing the suck is so worth the cuddles, the love, the hugs, the laugh, the giggles, the sticky finger mommy kisses.

So find your tribe, share your pain, your challenges, your wins and your struggles. Know that you are not alone, it's not just you. And ultimately, this, too, shall pass.

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Hey, Mom! Has Anyone Told You You're Doing A Great Job?

I was recently traveling alone with my three kids, and since they're tween/teens, this does not seem like such a Herculean effort as it did a few years ago. As we were exiting the shuttle from the rental car place to the airport, a guy looked at me and said "Hey, Mom! Has anyone told you lately you're doing a great job?" My face lit up, I felt a huge glow inside and thanked him profusely. He may as well have told me I had won the lottery.😁 This got me to thinking, why was this such a big deal? Probably for the one truth that most moms I know live. We think we suck at this parenting thing every single day. We beat ourselves up for every little thing. We read social media and play the compare game. We are not enough insert whatever crapola thing comes to our mind or is hot in the media at any given moment. And here's what the truth looks like. Most of us are doing a pretty amazing job. Our kids are loved, fed, clothed and housed. They feel secure enough to ha...
Post a Comment
Read more

Sugar and Tech Time Does Not Make You A Bad Mom!

Sugar and tech time does not make you a bad mom! Gasp! My younger-soon-to-be-mom-self would have been shocked that I was writing this and likely would have thought, "Well maybe for you, but I'm going to follow the guidelines." Remember when you felt the same way?😜 For those of you who are working hard to be an amazing mom but may need self care once in a while (read - all of you), I'm sharing a great gift with you today - perspective. My eldest is now almost 17, so I have plenty of it! Max when he was 2 - happy as can be. When Max, my first son was born, I was working full time and followed the books' and doctor's recommendations as closely as humanly possible. I'm a first born, a rule follower, and type A. I followed the rules of no bottle feeding until six weeks (what a nightmare when I needed to give Max a bottle), no solids until whatever time frame it was then (I was exhausted and Max was hungry), feeding on demand (see prior parenthesis), and...
Post a Comment
Read more

Do You Think All Bricks And Mortar Businesses Are Dead? Think Again!

We hear it over and over again - bricks and mortar stores are dying. Don't start a retail store because everyone is shopping on line. Recently I met a mompreneur who would beg to differ. Megan Giltner, a self-proclaimed professional bra fitter and accidental entrepreneur, became the owner of a lingerie boutique a few years ago and says the business is thriving. Like many of us moms who pursue entrepreneurship, Megan always knew that being a mom was something important to her, and at the same time she needed to feel professionally productive and engaged. She had been working in lingerie for several years, initially as a part-time way to earn some extra spending money. When Megan was four months pregnant, the owner offered her the opportunity to purchase the business where she was working, and although timing may not have seemed ideal, she jumped in with both feet and has not regretted her decision. What Megan loves most about entrepreneurship is the ability to do something sh...
Post a Comment
Read more