Yesterday, I spoke with a new mom who’s having a rough time. She’s at home with her 7 month old, breastfeeding, doing all the childcare, night parenting, and guilt-ridden for not feeling very happy. Naturally, she loves her son, grateful for the opportunity to be with him, but she feels trapped, lonely, and like every other mom is having more fun. Sometimes it’s so bad she gets into the shower at the end of the day and just cries. She’s crippled by sleep-deprivation, her husband works 12 hours a day, and doesn’t get how awful she feels. He gets to go to work, which is by far the easier job.
Sound familiar?
A few years ago, when my kids were 2 and 4, I ran into an old friend who I hadn’t seen in 10 years. He was divorced with no kids, and was so genuinely excited to hear all about my family. “Wow, you’re a Mom,” he said. “That’s amazing! What’s it like?”
My response was a shock, like a bucket of ice water thrown at my face. “I don’t like it at all,” I said, with far too much honesty.
His face fell. His jaw dropped. And I instantly knew I had made a terrible mistake. Moms aren’t allowed to feel this way, certainly not allowed to say it out loud.
I began dog-paddled backwards,“Of course I love my kids, and I wouldn’t change a thing, but…Diapers? Mopping up vomit? Bleeding nipples and breast pumps? Being awakened repeatedly through the night and at 5-6am daily for four consecutive years?”
No, the truth is that I like nothing about the actual job, yet I love my kids more than anything else in the world. So I do it anyway, even if I hate it sometimes.
If you’ve ever felt this way, I urge you to be honest with other moms. Write about it. Go on camera and tell the truth. Perhaps if we didn’t expect that mothering would be the most joyous time of our lives, we wouldn’t feel so blindsided and guilt-ridden.
 Dear Mel,I wish someone had told me that motherhood isn't always the most joyous, beautiful, glamorous event that the media portrays. I wish someone had prepared me for the fact that it might be the most humbling, emotional experience of my life, and that I might not actually love my new role as a Mommy.
Instead, I was blindsided by trauma, plagued with incessant fears and anxieties that I was abnormal, that every other new mom was happier than I felt, and that I was therefore, an exceptionally bad, inept mom. In retrospect, I now know that there's a conspiracy to trick billions of smart, independent and progressive women into believing that motherhood is fabulous, the penultimate joy, and that we can successfully juggle our careers, parenthood and mariages, all with a cheery smile.
The truth is, some new moms don't instantly bond with their babies, many of us have extreme difficulty breastfeeding (a learned behavior that we cannot possibly learn when it's not visible for us to learn!), and more women experience crippling postpartum mental health issues than is accurately reported. I believe that this is due to unrealistic expectations, and the lack of awareness about how hard and humbling motherhood really is.
So today, as you recover from a c-section and prepare for going home with Walker, who you and Hudson will love like you've never loved before, I wonder...Should I break it down and tell you the truth, or let you find out on your own how emotional and painful this transition may be? Because I wish someone had told me, I am dedicating this post to you and Hudson, as you embark on this remarkably profound journey. May it be peaceful, uneventful, and easier than my experience.Love,Natalie
Seven years ago today, I became a mom. It was as humbling then as it is today. While I strive for a Utopian work-family balance, sometimes I feel like a miserable failure.
Reflecting back on those first days and weeks and months of motherhood, I can't say I enjoyed it much. I felt awful. I had extreme difficulty with breastfeeding; I felt overwhelmed and overly-anxious, lonely, crippled with sleep deprivation, and torn between staying home with my baby or going back to the job I previously loved. I felt plagued with guilt and fear, and suffered from severe postpartum depression. I slept about 8 hours a week for roughly 6 months. I thought I was losing my mind.
How I managed to get myself out of this is a long story, but somehow my husband and I were able to reinvent our lives from two parents with full-time jobs and a (wonderful) nanny, to two parents running home-based businesses and ample time for ourselves and our family.
Though often I feel like my family is totally out of balance (and always feel like it's my "fault" if we are), I endeavor to keep us all on track, and have ample time/space for everything, everyone, and be fully present in every moment.
It's extremely challenging to cultivate balance, and feel happy in all aspects of our lives, but I truly believe it's possible. I have a long, detailed strategy of how I balance family and work, but even with all my lists and systems and strategies, it doesn't always work.
In those moments, when everything comes unraveled, I try to not judge myself, because that's just the way it is with kids sometimes. It's a mess, and it's magic, all at the same time.
So all this is to say, keep striving for balance, people. I believe we CAN enjoy our work and family and ourselves, if we make it our top priority.
In our race to build careers, create financial security, and amass material things for our families, many of us have forgotten to strive for happiness. Often we’re so off-track, we don’t even know if we’re happy or not. Busy planning for our futures, we don’t stop to think about how our happiness—or lack thereof—affects our kids. Or maybe we think of it, then push it way down out of our consciousness, because there are more important things to do.
The things is, kids don’t care about money or the size of your home or the brand of your car. They just want unconditional love, undivided attention, and happy parents.
Ask yourself if there’s one thing you can do right now to be a happier person. Not a better parent, or a harder worker or a bigger bread winner, just happier.
Maybe you used to play the guitar but put it aside? Maybe you were a dancer but hung up your dancing shoes when you became a parent; or maybe you know (like me), that if you committed to two yoga classes a week, you would be a completely changed and happier person?
If we prioritize our own happiness, we have a better chance of actually being happy, and passing it onto our kids!
Increasingly, I’m hearing from more and more parents who aren’t sleeping. At all. Or if they’re sleeping, it’s a crazy musical bed situation where parents are hopping from bed to bed to couch, in a futile effort to get more sleep. Dads get displaced. Moms are chronically exhausted because they take on the night-time sleep battles. Kids are increasingly more cranky and tantrum-prone because they’re overtired, and marriages are suffering – if not totally falling apart – all because of SLEEP!
Does this sound familiar? Are you happy with the status quo? If not, make a change. Now. Get help if you need help, and be consistent.
Regardless of your parenting values, sleep is not optional. You cannot live without sleep, any more than you can live without food or water!
Today I want to honor my colleague-partner-client, Sara Frohlich, who recently joined the New Mom Club with the birth of her son, Henry. Sara, this message is dedicated you, and all Newborn Moms:
You have crossed into an unknown land, one that you’ve heard spoken of, but have never before entered. Now that you’ve arrived, it may be a much nicer terrain than you imagined, but it may also be a surprisingly dark and scary place. You may find breastfeeding difficult. You may not instantly “bond” with your baby. You may cry more than your baby does. You may wonder whose idea this was, or feel angry and helpless and alone. You may feel totally in control one minute, and then completely out of control the next. You may stare at your baby for hours and forget to brush your teeth. You may berate yourself for all the aforementioned things, especially considering millions of women do this every day. How can this possibly be so hard?
Now, I want you to hear this loud and clear: Every new mom feels these things. Every new mom struggles. Every new mom wonders if they’re doing it right; if they’re good enough for this job. Every new mom feels guilt, and fear and doubt. Every new mom cries. Every new mom wonders why other moms look more “together” than they do. Every new mom is sleep deprived, and it’s a bitch. Especially when you hit that two week mark and you’re so tired it feels like a bottomless pit.
The good news is that the coming days and weeks and months are all revolving PHASES. It will get easier, and you will sleep again, I promise. If you can make it to 6 weeks, you can do anything. Meanwhile, let people help you. Accept food from strangers, let your friend do your laundry, and if you need anything at all, I’m here!
Crazy things happen when you become a mommy. You may experience an excruciatingly painful, unconditional love that brings you to your knees. There will likely be a roller-coaster of hormones, many sleepless nights and tears, breastfeeding challenges, potential postpartum depression; you name it, it’s all happening. And while you may be one of the rare few who (honestly) finds it all very natural and easy, the vast majority of us are scratching our heads thinking, Oh, crap, now what? And we figure it out, one way or another, in a process of trial and error. Usually at about the six week mark, new parents start feeling more confident and in control. The baby starts sleeping longer stretches, you get a few smiles; it all starts to feel somehow more manageable. These are things we can all anticipate on some level, right? But did you know that if you have a baby who sleeps through the night early on (I’ve heard as early as 5 or 6 weeks), that you absolutely must NOT talk about it with other new moms? Trust me on this, just don’t. The rest of the sleep-deprived mommies will hate you. It will make them feel like failures, and they won’t have a sense of humor about it. Believe me, I’ve been on both sides. If your baby sleeps through the night a freakishly early age, be smug in private and lie to the other moms.
I suspect that everyone reading this already knows that breastfeeding is best for babies; that the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends breast milk exclusively for the first six months. No disrespect to La Leche League and other organizations who work to raise awareness about the benefits of breast milk, but enough already! I think we got the point. The pressure to exclusively breastfeed our babies has become so strong, that women who CAN’T breastfeed are shamed into a horrific amount of guilt if they’re unable to nurse their babies. There are hundreds of thousands of new moms worldwide who aren’t able to breastfeed for one reason or another. Adoptive moms. Surrogate moms. Moms who've had medical complications. And then there are regular new moms like me. I personally found breastfeeding so stressful and painful that I struggled with milk supply, and went through ridiculous hurdles including nighttime pumping, gallons of tea, and daily calls to a lactation consultant, to avoid any formula at all. Looking back, I feel silly for being so stressed about it, and realize the stress was likely the biggest problem, but I didn’t know any better. The lactation consultants all wanted to keep me breastfeeding. I seemed to be the only one in my new moms and breastfeeding support groups who was struggling with anything (everyone else looked so perky and happy!), and I didn’t have any veteran mom friends to give me permission to give my baby a bottle of formula so I could loosen up a bit! Instead, I pumped every two hours, often through the night, and made a ritual of calling my lactation consultant daily at 9am, as well as making a pot of special tea that I would then chill and drink throughout the day. And this was all just to keep my milk supply up. A dear friend of mine, after thorough planning for a natural childbirth with a midwife, ended up with an emergency C-section, followed by an infection to the incision, followed by IV antibiotics for the infection, then mastitis, followed by more antibiotics, etc. The result was a crippling case of postpartum depression (PPD) and an inability to produce enough breast milk to feed her baby. Her depression was so bad, that her mom had to come care for her and the baby for six months. On her first excursion out of the house, she actually got scolded by another mom at the food co-op for feeding her baby a bottle of organic soy formula. The woman smugly said over her sling, "Breast milk really IS better for your baby." Can you imagine? The self-righteousness is shocking, but I truly believe this kind of behavior, and the cultural pressure to exclusively breastfeed, is a significant contributing factor to the high levels of PPD in the U.S. So please ladies, give new moms (and yourselves) a break! A bottle of formula every now and then is not going to kill your baby. Why not have a glass of wine with some other new moms once a week, and leave bottles at home with the dads?!? Let them bond, while you loosen up with the girls. That seems far more healthy to me...
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