This thing called Mom

I logged in to write a post about our ant takeover, and to share my unscientific results that lead me to conclude that ants are nocturnal. As fascinating as that topic would be to everyone, I just can't get a conversation I had earlier today out of my head.

First, some background. I'm currently saturated in Mommy things. Along with being a stay at home mom (or a work at home mom when I'm doing Arbonne things), I'm on the team that is getting the MOPS group started at our church, I volunteer almost weekly in the church nursery, and I coordinate the volunteer schedule for the nursery at church. Add to all of that the moms I meet at the park (today it was a woman I went to junior high and high school with) and my friends who are moms, and it's an understatement to say that I'm surrounded by mommy.

And as good of friends as I am with several of the moms, and as much as I talk with other moms about teething or sleeping or rough days or whatever, we hardly ever talk about our hardest mommy moments. It made me start to wonder if I was the only one who wanted to run screaming from the house some days, or go back to work just to not have to clean a poopy bum one more time or to stay in bed all day and pretend I wasn't a mom. It made me wonder if I was mom material. Especially stay at home mom material.

Then I started reading the book that goes along with the MOPS curriculum, The Mommy Diaries. The moms who write the "diary" entries are like me - they sometimes feel like they are drowning in the mommyness, they sometimes long to be alone, they sometimes are overcome with frustration, with anger, with sadness at the loss of their before mom life, they wouldn't trade their kids for anything in the world. They are honest about their shortcomings, about their growing pains, about the adjustment to being a mom. They were saying things that I hadn't heard people say to me before. I started to have faith that I wasn't the only one.

Today's conversation that has left such an impression on me was with a mom that has three girls, with a fourth on the way. She has creative ideas for her kids, she is nurturing, uses a calm voice all the time, her children are calm and complaint. Basically, she has it all together. I watched her kids at a local park this morning while she had a doctor's visit, and when she came back to pick the kids up we found ourselves chatting about the adjustment we went through when our first kids were born.

She said to me "I still worry that I haven't bonded well with her because I had such a hard time and I needed so much help. I sometimes feel like she bonded so much more with her dad as a newborn."

I was floored. Her honesty was so refreshing, and it was so awesome to hear a mom share such doubts. Such normal, human, motherly doubts.

Because really, as moms, we are so so so hard on ourselves and how we are mothering. We exhaust ourselves to ensure our children get the very best experiences, the very best this and the very best that. We lose our selves in the mix, we doubt ourselves, we beat ourselves up. All in the name of doing the best by our kids.

My conversation with her, combined with my reading in The Mommy Diaries has made me realize I am not alone in my feelings, my doubts, my guilt. I vowed to myself on the drive home from the park this morning that I'm going to start being more honest about this thing called mom. I'm going to reach out to my fellow mommys, lean on them and provide them with a place to lean. We're raising the next generation here people, and we're going to be better moms if we turn to each other for love, support, and a great big hug in times of stress and doubt.

Hug on mamas, hug on.