When I decided that I wanted to have kids, it was a revelation.  I came to a lot of things late in life: university;  a healthy relationship; being an adult.  When I met Hubs, I knew he was the one that I could actually be a grown up with.  And I definitely knew that we'd have kids together.

I thought that once we had our son, I would be a wonderful mom, and becoming one would be easy as pie.  It's what we decided to do: have a child, and I would stay at home with him.  It's what we wanted, so everything was bound to fall into place, right?

Without going into too much detail about the newborn fog, let's just say that becoming a mom has not been as easy a transition as I pretend it's been.  It's been hard.  Really, really, hard.


"I am your new job.  Good luck.  Now buck up and do everything for me for the next five years!"

When M was younger, I would occasionally bring up how difficult I found it.  More people than not, including other moms, just looked at me blankly.  As in: "What's hard about it?".  It would have been inappropriate for me to scream "EVERYTHING!!!", and curl into the fetal position in public, so instead I just kept my mouth shut.

Maybe parenthood and motherhood is like learning to do math.  Some people think "Oh well, that make sense", and just get on and do it.  It's effortless, or at least made to look like it is.  Then there are those of us who have to solve an equation of fractions for the first time, and are like "WHAT????  But I don't get it!  Are you sure this is real?". 

I manage to do everything that my son needs me to do, but for the most part I feel as though I would just barely squeak by with a passing grade - if we're going to keep using the math analogy.  New problems and challenges crop up regularly and I feel as though the learning curve is pretty damn steep.

Part of me mourns my old life, and that makes being a mom hard sometimes too.  I had M when I was thirty six, so I had been living my life as I knew it and the way I wanted to for a very long time.  I left home when I was eighteen, and I had done my own thing for almost twenty years!!!  To say that having M was a reality check for me would be putting it mildly.

One of the best quotes that I've heard about motherhood goes something like this: "His needs trump your wants.  And always will.  And that's what being a mother is, for the rest of your life". And to me, that is 100% without a doubt the very definition of being a mom.  And that is a really hard transition to make for many women, myself included.  I don't think that's a selfish statement - I see it as an honest statement, one that more women need to make if that's how they feel.

There's so much I had no idea about before I became a parent... issues and problems that I couldn't even imagine existed before having a child of my own.  "Hey, some toddlers still won't sleep in past 5AM!  Hey, some kids barely eat enough to maintain the metabolism of an earth worm!  Hey, I'm gonna discipline this little person who just punched me in the face!  Hey, your relationship with your partner will never be the same!"  I really couldn't have imagined any of it until I was actually IN it.  And these are only four of the reasons why being M's mom is hard as fuck sometimes.  It is without a doubt the hardest job I've ever had.

I'm not going to justify my feelings, and try to explain myself any more than I already have.  One of my biggest pet peeves when I read other Mommy Blogs is when moms say: "But it's all worth it.  My love for my child outshines anything else".  Good for you.  Have you read my "Why Are You Not Shutting Up?" post?