I almost didn’t post this. About a month ago, I started
writing about how hard being a SAHM
is. I wrote about how I really didn’t like some parts of it, some days of it. How sometimes I just wished someone else could do this.
Then I hated myself for those words. What kind of mother doesn’t want to take care
of her baby? Especially a baby as sweet and happy as mine is most of the time?
I decided I was the shittiest mom on the planet and stuck the post in my drafts
folder, never intending for it to see the light of day.
Then, a couple days ago someone on Facebook posted a link to
this article. The author
writes that being a parent is hard, but that doesn’t mean we don’t love it. Even
if we don’t love every single second, that doesn’t make us bad parents. All the
comments made me realize I’m not the only mom that feels this way. And a weight
was lifted.
So I blew the dust off my old post, spruced it up a bit, and
hit “publish.” Here goes….
Some moments, I feel so close to Quinn. Like when he’s
nursing, I look down at his sweet face, and I wish he wasn’t almost a year old.
I don’t want to stop nursing him. I know I will miss this feeling, holding him
close and being able to simultaneously give him nourishment and comfort. I want
that moment to last forever.
Then he bites me. Or he smacks me in the face. Or he kicks
me in the larynx. Or, my favorite, he pushes
his foot into my throat! While I’m dodging these flailing limbs of
destruction, I think “Get this kid off of
me!” And I feel like crap for not wanting to nurse him anymore.
Bath time can be fun. We splash and sing and squirt water from his rubber dinosaur toys. But sometimes bath time is dreadful. He just wants to play, and he fights me when I try to actually wash him. It’s like wrestling a
giant, slippery fish. “Quinn, please hold
still. Quinn, sit on your bottom. Quinn, don’t drink the bath water.” When
it’s over, I’m exhausted and drenched.
Changing his diaper and getting him dressed also resemble a
wrestling match. I try to distract him with toys, songs and tickles, but sometimes
he just won’t hold still. At some point during the process, I usually get
head-butted in the teeth.
Occasionally, Quinn eats really well, sweetly opening his mouth like a little baby bird and eating every last bite. But more often than not, feeding him takes a ridiculous amount of coaxing. I sing and
dance and put on a frickin’ Broadway show, but he
stubbornly purses his lips and shakes his head while I chase his mouth with the
spoon. One meal takes almost an hour, and I can’t believe I have to do this
four times. Every. Single. Day.
And I’m
supposed to teach him sign language during all this? Yeah, right! I barely have enough arms to
accomplish the task at hand, let alone two more to repeatedly sign “eat” and “more.”
Sometimes, I don’t want to do any of this stuff anymore. I
don’t want to nurse him or bathe him or change him or feed him. I just want to
play with him and make up games and read books and go for walks. I want to go to the park and build forts and give piggy back rides. I want to
snuggle and cuddle and smell his hair. I want to rock him until he falls asleep
on my shoulder. That’s what I thought being a SAHM would be like. But the fun stuff seems like such a
small fraction of our days together.
How awful does this make me? Pretty awful, right? There must
be something wrong with me. Or so I thought until I read “Don’t Carpe Diem” by a woman who’s sick of being told to
cherish every moment because it goes by so fast. My favorite line is “I can't even carpe fifteen minutes in a
row, so a whole diem is out of the question.”
Even if we could savor every moment, wouldn’t the special
ones lose their value? I wouldn’t appreciate those moments when I’m nursing
Quinn and he’s not kicking me in the throat if he never kicked me in the throat.
I think we have to have some frustrating and exhausting moments so we can
recognize and cherish the sweet ones.
Many jobs are really hard, and people love them anyway. Even
if you don’t love every single thing about your job, you stay for a
reason. The same goes for the SAHM job, although I would argue that it’s harder
than any paying gig and a hundred times more rewarding.
So being a mom is hard, and sometimes I hate the hard parts.
But I love my son and I love being his mom. So I don’t live in a state of mommy-bliss
every moment of every day. So what? That’s doesn’t make me a bad mom. Just an
honest one.
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| If only every moment could be this sweet and silly. |
