Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Why doesn’t anyone tell you just how hard it is to be a mommy? Seriously. I mean perfect strangers are more than happy to share the story about the time they put little Susie in the Johnny Jump up and there was an unfortunate diaper explosion…they will tell you about the time they went into little Billy’s room and found he was a budding artist and what a wonderful painting he did with his own…well you know.


But no one ever says…Darn it being a mommy royally sucks sometimes! Are we as women not secure enough in ourselves to divulge this wicked little secret? Yes we all love our children – they are a part of us…whether they grew in our bellies or from our hearts they are our pride and joy. But sometimes you wonder how much you can get for them at your local flea market.

Almost every new mom to be has this pretty little picture painted in her head about how great and wonderful it will be to be a mommy and about how perfect their child will be. I know I did – until that one fateful day when we saw two little blobs on the ultrasound machine. I don’t think I ever saw my husbands face so white as when he gandered upon that screen – as I turned to look and came to the full realization at exactly what I was looking at I started to shake uncontrollably. The ultrasound tech tried to calm me by telling me “honey, God doesn’t give you more than you can handle” – my response “I think he got the wrong womb on this one”

FATE – it had caught up with me…see I spent most of my life being told my sister or I would have twins, as twins run in my family. This little tidbit even factored in discussions with my husband about how many children we wanted (for the record he wanted 3 - I only wanted 2). I told him in no uncertain terms that I had no desire to tempt “fate” and wind up with 4 children should we try for #3 and let’s just try for 1 and go from there…

We told our family and they were ecstatic…even if I wasn’t. So many things running through my head – I had done all the preparing for 1 baby…I could do 1 baby…but TWO. See here is the thing about me – I’m lazy…I am a procrastinator…I pray every night that the angels above will send me an “easy” button.

But over time I grew excited over the prospect of being a mommy…after all I still had those wonderful visions in my head of two perfect babies…ones that breastfed like champs and slept through the night. Why those visions, because nobody told me the truth.

Nobody told me

  • how much my hormones would go crazy after the birth of my babies
  • how I would cry at the drop a hat, for no explainable reason at all
  • how my boobs would turn out to be for decoration purposes only
  • how loud a babies cry can be and that earplugs hardly stifle the noise
  • how something so little could produce enough gas to power a small city for a month
  • how babies like to sleep during the day and play at night
  • how radically different my life would be

Those moms who told me about the Johnny Jump-up vs explosive diaper and Little Billy’s painting forgot to mention the fact they probably bit back curse words or got so frustrated they saw stars…because when you are a mommy you forget.


Those tiny hands…those little feet…the first word…the first step…they make you forget the times when being a mommy frustrates you so much you lock yourself in the bathroom and scream into a pillow or rip apart our childrens stuffed animals….

I guess us mommies don’t remember the bad times or else we would be telling those new mommies to be that sometimes it just sucks….

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hard to believe that my life will turn 'not mine' when I have a child. Hope the happiness that motherhood brings is overwhelming and there won't be any frustrations about it.