MOM STORIES: Marriage, Motherhood & Mismanaged Expectations
/There I was, sitting on my couch at 4 am with a 7-week-old screaming his poor little lungs out and as my eyes filled with tears, I was frozen and didn’t know what to do. I felt so alone despite the fact that my husband was sound asleep 100 feet away, I was struggling and I didn’t understand why. Before our son was born, we had this unrealistic view of what parenthood would look like for each of us and unfortunately, the very essence of my motherhood was affected the hardest when reality hit.
Being a stay-at-home mom was never in my plan. In fact, I didn’t quite understand how women found happiness in choosing that route. But here I was, a stay-at-home mom, whose husband worked full time and whose family and close friends lived over 400 miles away. Before giving birth, I had this preconceived idea of what motherhood was going to look like for me. I understood that I wouldn’t have the luxury of dropping the baby off with a grandparent when I needed a break, but that was okay. I had envisioned schedules packed with perfectly timed naps, tons of mommy and me classes and AT LEAST two date nights a month with my husband. I just knew that I was going to rock motherhood while still being a pretty good wife. I saw myself becoming the master of multi-tasking, picturingmyself cooking dinner while the dishwasher ran and a load of clothes entered the spin cycle with my son either strapped to me or asleep in his crib. I imagined my husband walking in and greeting me while taking over baby duties as I took a shower or went to the gym. I could do it without family and friends because I mean, women did this all the time and sometimes completely alone!
I QUICKLY learned that I had mismanaged my expectations to the point that they were almost unrealistic. My reality looked a bit different than I had planned for. My days were spent accumulating laundry piles that would either need to be folded or washed. I barely had time to cook a meal, let alone remember to eat. I had a husband who would be so drained from working all day that I would feel guilty leaving him alone with the baby. I couldn’t remember the last time I had stepped foot in a grocery store and we either ordered the groceries online or my husband would just make a quick food run to Chipotle or someplace comparable so that we would have dinner. I slept when the baby slept and when he was awake I was more like an overly emotional zombie (I know, that’s an oxymoron). And don’t even get me started on date nights.
I was with my son 24/7 because even when it was my husband’s turn to take over baby duty, I didn’t trust that he would do it correctly. Even if I did try to step away, I was bombarded with a hundred different questions. I wanted to explode. I felt like a single mom who just so happened to have a roommate. Imagine that… I felt so unsupported that I had minimized my husband’s roles as a father and my life partner, to a roommate. Realistically, my pride has caused me to set unrealistic standards for myself and for him. I refused to ask for help out of fear of adding more to his plate, I refused to seek advice and support from family because they were 400 miles away, and in my head, could do nothing for me. Even the friends that I did have locally, couldn’t help because my post-partum anxiety had convinced me that no one could do the house duties or watch my son like I could. Life humbled me. My mental health humbled me.
What motherhood really looked like was daily Facetime conversations with my family and close friends back home. It was my husband not complaining that the dishes had accumulated and there were no clean cups to drink out of. It was a baby who was extremely gassy for the first few months of his life which required taking extra steps before each feeding. It was acknowledging that I wasn’t going to be able to breastfeed like I thought. It required me to accept that my mental health was important and that my husband would be fine for 30 minutes while I showered and washed my hair. It was accepting the help and assistance from the friends that I did have locally because we had no one else. It was me giving myself grace because I had kept my kid happy and healthy without losing my mind.
You see, my expectations of motherhood and marriage after a baby were skewed because of the images that we are completely drowned in. Whether it’s the Instagram moms who make this sh*# look easy, or it’s the Facebook mom group guilt tripping you about screen time because you let your kid watch Paw Patrol in exchange for 30 minutes of your sanity. How many of us walk into new situations with all these preconceived notions because we have based our expectations on fantasies and fallacies? Or worry and fear out of being judged according to the expectations and standards of others who came before us or are doing it simultaneously? The real reality and real expectation should just be that motherhood looks different for EVERY SINGLE WOMAN. There is no cookie cutter way to do it. Each baby is different, each mom is different, each situation is different and we should all just be honest with ourselves about how we would like motherhood to look but also give ourselves enough grace for when motherhood doesn’t look like that
From Kay Davis, the Creator of KayNowWhat.com