Dear Mothers #7

For June Cleaver Wannabe

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Dear Mothers,

I don’t know about your journey into motherhood, but I had a very specific plan for how mine was going to go. 

I was going to be the happiest pregnant woman you ever met. I was going to have morning sickness exactly one time, and I was going to have a perfect little basketball belly. I would have an aesthetically-pleasing nursery to bring my bundle of joy home to. Labor and delivery would be hard, but my husband was going to look at me afterwards like I was a warrior queen, cry tears of joy at the life we brought into this world, and wait on me hand and foot. I was going to nurse (because obviously breastfeeding comes naturally). I was also going to immediately fall in love with my baby as soon as they were placed in my arms. 

Soon after I became pregnant, all wasn’t going according to plan. I hated being pregnant. I was sick the entire time. While I did get the basketball belly I always wanted, it was super uncomfortable. I would’ve paid money for an extra six inches of hips. My nursery was a mess. Labor and delivery were traumatic to say the least, and my husband fell asleep shortly after being moved to the maternity ward. Nursing does NOT come naturally. And the love for my child came, but not immediately after they were placed in my arms. 

For a long time I felt like I was living an out of body experience watching someone else become a mom because not one thing went according to plan. 

I have two children now and have come to peace with the fact that my idealized vision for how motherhood was supposed to begin was just a fantasy. But my planning for myself and my family still suffers from a case of perfectionism. Logically, I can tell you how unrealistic my planning is. Yet, I still sit scheming some perfect schedule for how my house will be spotless, dinner will be ready and on the table at 5, my kids will be well behaved, and my husband and I will go on a date once a week. 

I can’t be the only one who does this, but how do I make it stop? How do I live in the moment and just enjoy my family? How do I enter into each new season of life without having it pre-planned out in my brain for how it is “supposed” to look? I don’t want to look back on my mothering journey and think of all the ways I didn’t measure up to my own unrealistic expectations. 

Love,

June Cleaver Wannabe 

Dearest June Cleaver Wannabe,

I, too, had a wonderful plan for motherhood that—half a dozen children later—has panned out about as clean and neatly as a pack of rabid raccoons leaves an uncovered garbage bin raided at midnight. At least that’s what it feels like sometimes. My Pinterest board had a clean white kitchen, and my real life got raccoons. Bless. 

It’s your last line I’ll begin with, because I think the heart of the struggle lies there: I don’t want to look back on my mothering journey and think of all the ways I didn’t measure up to my own unrealistic expectations. I get this. You don’t want to regret, well, your life. What I want to ask you is, where did those expectations come from?