You Are a F*cking Awesome Mom

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EVERYONE LIED

“It’s the hardest, most rewarding thing I’ve ever done.”

After my daughter was born, I was often confronted with the question: “How’s new mom life treating you?” For years, I had heard women utter some version of the same “hard but rewarding” sentiment, as if to underscore that the joy far outweighs the challenges. It’s a phrase that gives weight and credit to the mothers who came before while also reminding people that nothing could possibly hold a candle to the exuberance of motherhood.

You can imagine the look on people’s faces when I would respond: “Umm, it’s not that much fun.”

If you’re reading this, chances are you’ve figured out that life with a baby is a total mind bender. Of course, it’s this blessed journey you’re wildly grateful for, but it also feels like you got blindsided by a freight train. Right?

Honestly, you kinda did. The mayhem of motherhood is an experience like none other.

When I became a mom in October 2014, as a thirty-two-year-old woman with a successful, decade-long career, it completely flipped my world upside down. Prior to my daughter’s birth, I read all the standard-fare baby books recommended by friends and family; I wanted to be as ready as possible for her arrival, so I armed myself with any gadget or tidbit of knowledge that promised to make life with a newborn a bit easier.

Like most moms-to-be, I was peppered with warnings about how “exhausted” and “hormonal” I’d be while juggling the responsibilities and realities of this new role, but I wasn’t overly concerned. Women have managed to get through childbirth and infancy since the beginning of humankind; I was certain I could handle it. I mean, teen moms were figuring it out, so, how hard could it be?

Apparently… really fucking hard.

Here’s the thing: women today are more unprepared for motherhood than at any other point in history (save for, like, the Stone Age). That may seem like a bold statement, but I stand by it.

Sure, you’ve seen some of your friends and family become mothers, and they probably assured you that motherhood has awakened their soul. Maybe they even told you that motherhood has filled their heart beyond measure and that from the moment their child was born a supernatural maternal instinct began pulsating through their veins.

I’m sorry to tell you this, but people lie. Not all people, but enough people.

Look, I know you probably have that best friend from high school who always kept it real, who told you how pathetic it looked when you kept calling that guy (guilty!), but when she had a baby, she failed to mention just how hard it could be.

Lying by omission is still lying. To be fair, she was most likely trying to protect you or saying what she could to keep her own head above water, because, honestly, motherhood is gonna come at you like a thief in the night. You never had a chance, because you never saw it comin’.

As modern women, we are simply ill-equipped to transition from independent boss lady to mommy-mommy-mommy. It sounds counterintuitive because we are more educated, more successful, and more motivated than any generation past, but that’s precisely the point.

Becoming a mother is a natural life event, but it doesn’t always come naturally. Actually, it can feel really unnatural, especially in the beginning. For many new moms, it’s an upheaval of the status quo. In becoming mothers, we’re asked to give up a lot: our bodies, our identities, our priorities, our sanity, and, for some of us, our jobs. Motherhood isn’t easy, but at some point we started treating it like it is, because we just stopped preparing ourselves for it.

Maybe that’s the cost of being the “girl power” generation? Don’t get me wrong, I believe wholeheartedly in raising strong girls to be whoever and whatever they want, because for most of history that wasn’t the case. More and more, girls today are taught to aspire beyond motherhood to create meaningful, fulfilling, and powerful existences not predetermined by our gender.

Take me, for example. As a little girl, I wanted to pursue an oh-so-sexy career as a paleontologist. I carried around a Strawberry Shortcake suitcase filled with dinosaur books. I never really played “house” with my friends or pushed baby dolls around in a stroller. I don’t even think I had many baby dolls, but that was mostly because I had an older brother who found joy in destroying my toys. He once melted the face off my Ken doll with a lighter; it was a real low point.

Even in school, young people are no longer taught “the domestic arts,” which I think could serve all kids well, boys and girls. Think about it: When’s the last time you heard of anyone taking a home ec class? I sure as hell never took one. While writing this, I googled how to bake chicken (seriously, though, multitasking is my life).

Outside of school, my own mother (a stay-at-home mom for eighteen years) encouraged my studies, my sports, and even my eccentric dreams of paleontology. She wanted more for me than she felt she had as a young woman, and I don’t think that’s uncommon. For many twenty- and thirtysomethings today, our mothers were a generation stuck somewhere between June Cleaver and Katy Perry, so they wanted to arm us with what they believed we needed most: fierce ambition and unwavering confidence.

My mom never schooled me on what to do in case of severe diaper rash or the art of removing breast milk stains. (She wouldn’t have been able to help in this department anyway, because she never breastfed. To hear her tell it, “it seemed sort of barbaric.” You’ll learn more about her later. She’s actually the best—and the worst.) The bottom line is that she didn’t want to assume I’d be a mother or didn’t want me to believe that it was my life’s sole purpose, and I’m grateful to her for that. But in her attempt to raise a “hear me roar” kind of girl, I missed out on some of those important lessons that could have served me well when my daughter was born.

Many of us grew up believing that motherhood wasn’t the only thing we’d do with our lives. That’s not to say we didn’t have an aunt, a mother-in-law, or a grandmother who routinely asked passive-aggressive questions about our childbearing decisions or who made off-color comments about our age, but, for the most part, it was generally accepted that we could be multifaceted. Motherhood was just one of many life buckets to fill, not the only one.

The bummer is that in creating this “new normal” for women—which is important—we’ve forfeited much of that generational passing down of knowledge. And that’s a real loss, because no matter how evolved we become in society, we’re still the only sex with the ability to push human life out of our lower torso.

All this raises the question: How the hell are women today supposed to know what to do when a baby does come along? We expect ourselves to tackle motherhood with the same self-sufficient gusto we exhibit in our pre-baby lives and, therefore, when shit hits the fan (or, in my case, the bookshelf, rug, rocker… basically anywhere in a three-foot radius of the changing table), we don’t think to ask for help. We have long embraced the “I can do it all” mentality and anticipate motherhood being just another trophy in our armoire of impressive, fought-for accomplishments. Those are some pretty ambitious expectations for any woman to have of herself, let alone a new mom.

For many women with strong personal and professional identities, becoming a mother causes a complete restructuring of their life. Those early days are a total whirlwind cloaked in sleep deprivation, tear stains, and constant second-guessing. Minutes somehow feel like hours, but days often come and go so quickly we have no idea whether it’s Tuesday or Friday. Time itself becomes entirely subjective, and defined edges cease to exist.

Having a child is an incredibly fulfilling life experience, but that’s not a conclusion many come to overnight. Truth? Caring for a baby can be a struggle, especially in the beginning. I’ve always loved my daughter, certainly, but I didn’t actually enjoy her until she got a bit older. It’s hard to enjoy something you feel like you’re failing at. Saying that may make me sound like an asshole to some people, but it also is honest… and when it comes to motherhood, I don’t think my putting on a pretense helps anyone.

Every moment of my new existence was about Tallulah: she demanded all of my attention, all of my energy, and even my body was a vehicle for her well-being. It’s not just that my needs took a backseat to my daughter’s; they weren’t even allowed in the car. No longer was I an individual; I was a mother. And somewhere in the dark recesses of my brain, I became resentful. I was someone before I became a mom, but as days became weeks, and weeks became months, I couldn’t always remember who that was.

I found myself reminiscing about life before baby: impromptu movie nights, weekend hikes with my husband, reading a book that wasn’t about sleep schedules, having a second glass of wine without having to strip to test the blood-alcohol level in my breast milk. I even fantasized about work! What I would have given to spend a few hours away from the mind-numbing routine of feed, clean, change, rock, repeat. And in the dark fog of the long nights, I found myself wishing for something a new mom could never possibly admit out loud: my old life back.

To make matters worse, from where I stood, it truly seemed like I was the only new mama struggling. Every time I scrolled through social media, I stumbled upon countless photos of moms who seemed to be relishing new motherhood. Each image was a version of the same: a beautiful mama, her hair pulled into a chunky boho braid that revealed flawless skin, resting in a fluffy bed of pillows and gazing down at her sleeping newborn.

Platforms like Facebook and Instagram yielded to this new parenting superbreed: the unicorn mom, the picture-perfect women who appear to be thriving in their new roles and whose photos always seem to say: “Don’t mind me, folks. I’m just over here owning motherhood. What? Like it’s supposed to be hard?” And for whatever reason, these women have unjustly become the measure by which all new mamas grade themselves—and one another. It’s propagated a social media culture hell-bent on holding women to unrealistic standards. This is where shit can go from difficult to dangerous.

I spent my days covered in spit-up and sweat stains, not hazy, dreamy, blush-toned filters. My child went through a super adorable baby acne phase, and my unwashed topknot didn’t nail that “messy glamour” look. Bearing witness to the seemingly authentic experiences of other new mothers left me feeling devalued, anxious, and unsuccessful.

Only one thing was certain: when it came to mom life, I was totally blowing it. I was failing my daughter; she deserved better. The moment she arrived I fell madly in love with her (which isn’t actually very common; I attribute my experience to the morphine), which made my feelings of inadequacy and self-doubt that much worse. I wanted the best for my baby. The more difficult my struggle became, the more defeated I felt.

I mean… how did those “teen moms” do it? Even though these girls shouldn’t necessarily be the barometer of sound parenting, I’d venture to guess that their lack of worldly experience actually works to their benefit in this particular arena. Of her own experience as a young mother my mom said, “Having a baby isn’t all that life-changing when you don’t have much of a life to give up.”

It appeared that my success was my downfall. I was so established and rooted in who I was as a human that motherhood upended everything I had ever known about myself. This new world was nothing like the one I spent all that time building for myself, and it appeared to be a very lonely, unfamiliar place. I was like a castaway trying to survive—without the emotional shoulder of a Wilson volleyball.

It’s clear to me now—with the benefit of hindsight and a full night’s sleep—that what I desperately needed was support. I needed to feel the compassion and honesty of other women, not the judgment or burden of impossible expectations. I needed to know that my struggle was not singular. I needed the safety of a community there to guide me through this time. And, mostly, I needed my own mom. But like many of my generational peers, I had moved away from home when I set off to pursue my career. Even though I was just ninety minutes north of my parents’ house, I didn’t have that “she’s just around the corner” comfort many new moms crave.

Think about it: members of today’s nuclear family are more likely to be farther geographical distances from their kin—or comparable community—than at any other point in history, which in turn leaves many first-time mothers without the inherent support we need during our transition.

In many ancient cultures, people would band together to help new mothers recover from pregnancy and delivery and to comfort women as they adjusted to their new life. It’s why people say, “It takes a village.” It’s a cliché, but clichés exist for a reason. Even through the mid-twentieth century, extended families remained neighbors, sometimes living within blocks of one another, like my mother’s family on the South Side of Chicago, where four sisters lived on the same street, along with their own mom.

Traditionally, new mothers relied on the other women in their tribe to encourage them, comfort them, and help them. The absence of such communities has, in part, contributed to the rise in popularity of antepartum and postpartum service providers—like doulas, pregnancy coaches, and night nurses—particularly in urban areas, where more women tend to be farther removed from their families.

Sufficiently terrified? I swear there’s a payout, but before going further, let me say this again: I love my daughter to the ends of the earth. My baby girl is the best thing I’ve ever done. When she was small, I’d often cry to my husband (after a glass or three of wine) about how I’ve never done anything that has made me worthy enough to deserve her, and I truly believe it. The next morning, she’d shit in my hand and our cosmic balance was restored. (For the record, yes, this actually happened. Every single anecdote in this book is 100 percent real, no matter how far-fetched.)

At the end of the day, my apparent mental collapse wasn’t really because of my sweet baby. She was an innocent little human going through some major adjustments of her own as she got familiar with the world around her and her own small body. This craziness was about me and my struggle becoming a mom.

Recognizing that was the first step in managing it all.

As I write, my daughter is four years old and has grown into this amazing little girl I absolutely adore (save for the occasional toddler meltdowns that most recently included a pair of salad tongs thrown at my head and a roar to “get out” of my own home). Since coming through my daughter’s infancy, I’ve spent countless hours with friends, family, and even the sister of my favorite Starbucks barista, talking to them about this transition. I can actually see the relief in their eyes when I say something they never hear: “It sucks sometimes, right?”

We’re made to believe that feeling overwhelmed or ill-prepared isn’t allowed. As if it would somehow reflect poorly on us if we were to admit that having a child is more demanding than we ever thought possible; therefore, no one talks about it. We bottle it up—our anxieties, our fears, and our feelings of self-doubt—and hide behind a forced smile. We save our breakdowns for the moments when we’re alone. We’re convinced that other new moms aren’t struggling as much as we are, and that must mean we are terrible mothers.

Mamas, rest assured that no matter the day you had, someone has walked that path before and someone will soon follow. I can say with certainty that some other mom has forgotten to buckle her newborn into the car seat before jumping on the freeway and that some other mom has had to call the pediatrician because she threw up in her baby’s mouth. I know for a fact that some other mom has gone to pick up Chinese food, only to return to a screaming infant that she accidentally left alone, and that some other mom inadvertently used breast milk to make her husband’s smoothie (my husband questions just how “inadvertent” this mistake really was). I know that some other mom has piled up newborn diapers on the driver’s seat of her car in order to relieve herself, just to avoid having to go back into the mall with a fussy infant.

And I know without a doubt that some other mom has poured herself a glass of wine, well before noon, and retreated to the garage to weep loudly while listening to Taylor Swift (only to be interrupted by a neighbor who decided to investigate the source of “those alarming sobs”), and once you find a way to manage this incredible transition, you’ll discover that being a mom is, yes, the hardest, most rewarding thing you’ll ever do.

Having a baby is a soul-defining experience that will forever change a woman’s life. So, I have to wonder, when did we ever start believing that something so monumental could ever be so easily managed?

While walking the crazy motherhood tightrope, I believe it is fundamental that we, as women, understand what a shit show new motherhood can be. But I am here to assure you that things will get easier, that you will absolutely get through it, and that you are not alone. There is great comfort in knowing that you can have a hard time—a really hard time—and still be a fucking awesome mom.

And… you are.

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