At work I had a poster above the whiteboard that said

The struggle is real.

But where there is struggle, there is strength. 

It was a very crude piece of decoration in my classroom. I heard the phrase somewhere and quickly took marker to poster and slapped it up there for the next day. Yet, my students LOVED this poster, and would point to it sometimes when I gave them challenging tasks.

Sometimes, I would even give impossible tasks. I would tell them at the end that the point was the struggle, not the answer. Some teachers thought this was cruel, but my students didn’t. They loved it. Some were often unconvinced that the task was truly impossible and asked to keep trying as part of their homework. This always made my heart smile.

Anyway, this quote and the lesson I was trying to impart on my students, is one that I keep trying to remember as a new mom. Because the new mommy struggle IS real.

See, being a stay at home mom has a horrible reputation in our culture. It is not always valued. But that is not the road I am going down right now. I knew it wouldn’t be easy and that’s all that mattered. As a matter of fact, I knew it was going to be terrifyingly hard. Now there was no one else to blame, no nanny or other caretaker. It was all on me. I had to make all the decisions and I BETTER be good at this because I left my career for this. My husband now has all the pressure of providing for us financially, for this. Our nanny is jobless, for this. My students have the emotional turmoil of switching teachers midyear, for this.

I was going to be home.

I wanted to be, I had to be, awesome.

And it was hard.

I am not even talking about the sleepless nights and constant, I mean, CONSTANT attention you give to your little bug. Because the feeding and changing and playing and feeding and nursing and changing … is hard.

For me though, it was the stress. Again those feelings from when he was first born began taking over. The feeling of “am I doing enough?”

• Am I stimulating him enough?
• Am I taking him to enough places?
• Am I giving him enough attention?
• Am I reading enough books?
• Am I singing enough songs?
• Is he hearing enough music?
• Are his toys enough?
• Are we going on enough walks?
• Am I giving him enough opportunities to socialize with other babies?

I was definitely putting this pressure on myself, because I really felt like I needed to be the best. I guess all of my life, I’ve felt the need to be the best at whatever I did. Maybe it’s because I was the youngest in my family and felt I needed to prove myself? Maybe it was being a huge daddy’s girl, with a dad who was an engineer? Maybe it was that my parents always pushed me so hard so I now push myself? Maybe it was because I turned away from engineering to become a teacher and felt I needed to justify this by being great?

I’m not sure but that feeling is always there. With the hormones and emotional rollercoaster of having a baby, leaving my baby, and quitting a beloved job, the feeling was there and it was being amplified.

It’s more then wanting to be a good mom. I think most want to be good moms. I remember hearing or reading a quote once, or maybe it was in a movie, that said something along the lines of:

parents never try to be bad

they try to be good

but sometimes their good isn’t good enough

This really resonated with me. What if my good… wasn’t good enough?

Luckily, I am an avid reader. When I am stressed or unsure about anything, I take to articles and books. I did so throughout my pregnancy with the usual What To Expect When You’re Expecting and Dr. Spock’s Baby and Child Care. So I again dove into the world of online information to find out what more I can do, to be ‘enough’. What I found was more information, which only caused me more stress.

Stress over language development:

I found that in order to develop and reinforce speech development, I needed to expose my son to a certain (ridiculous) number of words per day. This, depending on what source you use, was something like 30,000 words per day. I became preoccupied with making sure my husband and I were talking to him throughout the day. There was never to be a quiet moment.

Furthermore, to ensure Franky knew more words by the age of 2, I should be reading to him frequently from the moment he is born. This made me crazy about books, which is not necessarily a bad thing, unless you start counting how many books you are reading every day just to meet a quota, which I did. Then there was the pressure of also promoting the love of books. So even though I was being anal about how many words I was exposing him to and that I was reading enough, I also needed to make sure he was enjoying the experience of reading. What’s not to enjoy about someone continuously disrupting your play to read you yet another book?

Stress over playtime:

I was worried about Franky’s playtime! As if something so natural and organic as play should need any intervention.

I would play with him all day long, picking up his toys, showing him what to do with each different gadget, entertaining him as best as I could. The moment I saw he was ‘bored’, I would quickly worry about what else I should be doing. Should I find another toy to stimulate him with? Should I take him out for a walk? Does he need me to sing now?

I honestly don’t know if other moms felt this way when playing with their babies, because it felt so incredibly unnatural to me. It was weird. I felt weird that I had this need to make sure he was playing with every toy every second of the day. I felt weird that I couldn’t sit in silence with him so I would fill the room with baby songs. I felt weird picking him up and placing him all over the place so he would not get bored.

Yet, I pushed on because every book I read, every show I saw, every podcast I listened to, and every family member in my life told me this was how babies play. It was my job to entertain him. It was his job to lay on his back or his tummy and watch me play for him or hand him toys that I believe he wants to play with.

Stress over things:

I needed toys that develop fine as well as gross motor skills, and other toys to develop motor planning. As if the marketing world for baby toys was not bad enough for targeting emotional mothers, I had to make sure the toys were sufficient for his development too!

Even friends and family berated me about specific things to buy as well.

• At 3 months old:
  • friends kept talking about mats for the baby to be entertained when we set him down on the floor
  • As new parents, we rushed out and bought a play gym similar to this Fisher Price one.
• At 5 months:
  • family asked if we had one of those little baby seats to place him in
  • we went and bought this Mamas & Papas seat with an activity tray.
• At 6 months – the ‘bouncer and jumper movement’:
  • brothers, sisters, friends, parents of friends, sisters of parents of friends, all kept asking us if we had a bouncer
  • Someone ended up buying this Sassy Jumper for us. Peer pressure is a powerful thing!
  • Luckily, my husband was strong enough to continuously question me about keeping it or not. And since I had read to him several articles online that suggested these were not the best for the baby’s hips, we ultimately decided to return it.
• Now at 8 months:
  • my son is pulling up on things and taking a few steps while holding on to furniture
  • What is my family asking about now? Walkers. We should be buying walkers to facilitate his walking, right?

 

But none of this felt right… why does my son need all this junk to entertain him or help him sit up or walk? It didn’t seem right to me, but everyone I knew had these things!

So what is the takeaway from all of this?

the new mommy struggle IS real

or

I am just crazy for stressing over things that should be beautiful and natural such as playing with my son or reading to him