Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Shhhhh Don’t tell the others….




I was watching the video Ann Imig did for Listen to Your Mother and was suddenly reminded about the “validation” we lack as mothers. I wish I’d have written more way back in the day when I was new at this but as I have heard so many moms say, I just did not feel comfortable in my own skin yet. I did not feel safe or that I was doing the right things in my journey of motherhood. I felt for sure I was doing some major permanent damage to these babes. Ha, little did I know -9 years later- that clearly the damage has been done to ME!

Permanently disfigured, serious loss of brain function, limited memory skills, and endless exhaustion is what I am left with. Jaded, bloated, and frumpish (yup I made that word up.)  And I have to ask… Why do none of the others  tell us, WARN us that this would happen?  They know (I think)? I will give them this small leeway that there is in my opinion a slight bit of Mom-nesia going on here but the rest? Well that is just blatant lack of disclosure.

From the start- “Hey, I wanted to warn you that since this is your first pregnancy, one afternoon very soon you will be out walking across a parking lot and will be unable to take one more step as your hips will actually dislocate and begin to spread so that the babies head will be able to fit through. And by the way it will hurt like a mother fucker but don’t worry, it’s totally normal.” Ummm okay? Or how about this… “Yes, well I wanted to give you a heads up, people will tell you that you are glowing and that pregnancy will make you radiate beauty, but in fact you will be bloated, swollen, completely off your meds bat shit crazy with hormone flux. You will fart like a fat bean burrito eating dog. You will have horrific acid reflux, nightmares that’d scare a vampire, and will get no sleep because you will feel so uncomfortable all the time you want to chew off your arms.” Do they tell you that stuff? No! Oh yeah! How about that if you don’t do some major work on stretching out your vaginal opening that you will most likely tear from the head coming out, or that you will probably poop all over the table as you are birthing? Little sweet factoids like these are politely left out and why I ask??

This is only where the lies begin. They seem never ending to me. Lies lies lies… “Oh my kids never watch TV.”  “We don’t cuss in our home EVER.” “My laundry is always done.” “I get along so well with my in-laws.” “My child was completely potty trained at age 2.”  All lies designed to make us feel as if we are keeping up with the Jones’s but in fact we are all lying about just how impossibly hard it is to get it all done. “These cookies are baked from scratch.” “I hand sewed her communion gown.” “I made all the party invitations myself.”

Like we just want to make it all seem so perfect so that when we recruit some other poor sap into motherhood we can somehow feel secretly better knowing that she is now a part of the quiet suffering too.

Well I’m going rogue ladies. Here’s what’s up. From now on when a mommy says to me, “Oh I don’t know how you do it all?” I’m going to tell her this- Xanax is your friend- quick get some. Then that my laundry is piled to the ceiling. That at least once a week I will open the washer to the sour smell of clothes left in there for a few days. That I scream at my kids until my throat hurts, my bathtub needs scrubbing, my landscaping is non-existent. My “craft table” should be called my “crap table” as it’s piled with junk from unfinished art projects and class party leftovers. I shave my legs only once every two weeks and that “made from scratch” in my house means I took a box of something and added a few extra ingredients that the label did not call for.

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