I'm No Super Mom

“You cloth diaper, you breastfeed, you let your babies sleep with you, you have HOMEBIRTHS, you are Super Mom.  You don't know what it's like.”

This is what my neighbor said to me last night.  She has a 2 year old that doesn't talk and a 2 week old baby.  Her husband is out of town for 3 days.  Both babies are up at night.  She is struggling.  She didn't realize how hard it would be.  She asked me when babies started sleeping through the night.  I chuckled and told her I'd let her know when it happened.  She is struggling with breastfeeding.  With her first baby, she was all alone.  She had no support, no one to help her.  Her husband was in school and she lived far away from her family.  She stopped breastfeeding after 1 month, it was too hard and too time consuming. 

She has told me on various occasions that she wanted to breastfeed longer with the next baby.  I promised her that she would not be alone this time.  We have talked about the benefits of breastfeeding.  We have talked about why she wants to nurse longer this time.  We have talked and talked and talked about it.  I am ready, I offer support.  I tell her she can do it.  She tells me last night that she can't imagine doing it for longer than 3 months.  It is just too time consuming.  Breastfed babies don't sleep through the night.  She's tired of smelling like milk and leaking all the time.  She's just plain tired.  She's not me.

I don't want her to be me.  I want her to be her.  I want her, and all Moms, to make educated choices and be ok with them.  I want for them to do their research, believe in their choices and say them with a smile.  Regardless of what you say, say it with a smile.

“Yes, I am having a homebirth”
“Yes, I'm sending my son to public school”
“Yes I am not circumcising”
“Yes I am breastfeeding and cosleeping and cloth diapering”
"Yes I shop at Walmart"

These are all things I have had to say in the last 6 years of being a Mom.  I haven't always said it with a smile.  Some of the things I don't say with a smile are:

“Yes, my oldest daughter died.”
“Yes, my baby is not sleeping during the day, or at night for that matter”
“Yes my children throw repeated fits in the store that make me want to sit down and cry in the middle of the produce aisle”
“Yes, some days I feel like a complete and utter failure”.

That last one is the great secret of Mothers.  No one tells you that there are going to be days when you feel like a failure.  No one tells you how hard it will be.  No one tells you that when you watch 20/20 and hear about a little girl who is outside for 90 seconds alone and gets abducted, that you will run into your children's room and snuggle up in bed with them.  No one tells you how much it could hurt to lose one of those children.  No one tells you that you will be watching your heart walking around outside your body.  No one tells you that when your child throws a fit in the grocery store for the umpteenth time you will want to sit right down in between the potatoes and onions at Smith's and cry because at that moment you feel like a complete and total failure.

No one tells you because you can't fully understand it until you have a child.  It's not easy.  We all show what we want to those around us.  My neighbor thinks I'm Super Mom.  She thinks this because of the choices I've made and she hasn't. 

It is just about what I choose to let the world see.  I told her that I cry, I yell, I lose my cool (a lot), I am anything but Super.  I am human.  She doesn't believe me though and I think I know why.

We are all so hard on ourselves.  It doesn't matter if you are the best parent in the world, you will find faults with yourself.  You will beat yourself up.  It reminds me of Jr. High.  You know the girls who were “perfect”?  The girls that you would watch thinking that everything went great for them?  The girls that you tried so hard to be like because you knew if you were, if you were friends with them, if you could be like them, your life would be so much better? 

Sometimes I don't feel like things have changed much.  We are constantly searching for ways to make it better.  We believe that if we could be like this person, or have the following of that blog, or get the offers from those companies, that our lives would be so much better, so much easier.  This simply isn't true.  And even though it isn't true, somewhere in our heads we believe it is.  This is when attacks on other Mothers and Women take place. Someone got jealous because someone else was having more success, their life was seemingly easier, or whatever the case may be.  Someone decided that if they could be mean about someone else, make them feel worse about themselves through their so-called superiority, then things would improve for them.

It's high time we grow up.  It's time we realize that none of us are Super Moms.  We each do the best we can with what we have.  As women and Mothers, we need to be more gentle with ourselves and with those around us.  We need to slow down, step back and take a good long look at our lives.  If there is something we don't like about it, we have the power to make that change.  No one else can do it for us.  We need to be who we are and do it with a smile.  We need to remember that we are all in this together and that we can't do it alone. 

I'm no Super Mom and I doubt you are either, and that's okay. 

This is an original Rocky Mountain Moms post.  Kim may homebirth and cloth diaper, but she doesn't clean and spends far too much time on the computer!