The “Super Mom’s”...you picture a mom juggling a baby on each hip, one trying to climb her leg, she’s cooking dinner and dessert from scratch, her house is spotless, she never loses her temper, her hair and makeup are on point and she’s not wearing leggings as pants (I mean, she’s actually dressed!). Yeah, she can do it all. But what about you? A mom with only one baby, messy house, haven’t showered in days, living only in leggings or sweats and you have no ingredients to make dinner?! I want to tell you something that you should definitely listen to.
You are a good mom. Your family loves you (even if they don’t always show it). There’s always someone else who looks at you and sees “Super Mom”.
I went trekking through airports last month by myself with my (then) five month old, loaded down like a pack mule with all of our stuff and had a couple of people say “super mom”. It made me feel like I was doing a good job when my child was screaming on an airplane while I sat there shushing and bouncing him, trying not to cry myself and apologizing to everyone around me.
I thought I had been hard on myself before I became a mom but let me tell you, the mom guilt is real and intense. So many of us see ourselves as failures over tiny things, we are continuously comparing ourselves to our “Super Mom” friends, we are comparing our babies to other babies on who’s doing what the earliest, we beat ourselves up over stuff daily. Why?
Did you lose your temper with your baby and yell out in frustration for crying nonstop and you couldn’t handle it anymore? It’s ok. He won’t remember it for very long. Just step away from the situation (after putting baby somewhere safe of course) and take some deep breaths. Did you hit baby’s head on the car door frame while putting him into his car seat? It’s ok. A little bonk isn’t going to kill him and he still loves you. Did you plop your baby down in front of the TV so you could make yourself some food? Most of our generation watched TV for hours. I remember going back and forth with TV, video games and playing outside for hours at a time for each as a child and I’m pretty sure that I’m relatively normal. A little television here and there isn’t going to do damage. Did you drop you child on accident? My child rolled off of the exam table IN the doctors office. I thought the nurse was still right there and turned to set my boy’s pants on top of the diaper bag to turn back and see him land on the floor. It was like slow motion. He managed to catch himself (I didn’t know a six month old could do that) and pushed himself up immediately. The nurse was on the other side of the room. I thought she was already holding him down to get his shots and she thought I was holding him while she finished getting one of them ready. It was a miscommunication on both of our parts, but guess what? He was fine! He stopped crying very quickly, comfort nursed just fine and was all smiles again not even ten minutes later. Kids bounce.
As moms, we’re going to have days that we feel great and days that we feel like we shouldn’t have been allowed to reproduce.
I didn’t have hardly any groceries in the house but didn’t want to deal with the hassle of going out for them. So I had them delivered right to my house from my local grocery store. It was awesome! I didn’t have to leave and the delivery man brought them all in for me and set them on the counter (as someone with a bulging disc in my lower back and a torn right labrum that have me in constant considerable pain lately, this was a huge win)! Sure I felt a little guilty at first for not going out to get my own groceries but then I realized, my baby is healthy and happy, the animals are still alive and my husband and I are getting food. I may not be perfect at everything I do, but doing my best is what matters.
So don’t feel guilty. Be the best mamma you can be and know that to someone else, you are “Super Mom”!
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