The dream begins early for many of us. We make “dinner” with plastic food in our play kitchens and proudly serve the offerings to an assembled doll family. We cuddle our baby dolls and carry them around the house. We put our dolls to bed and change their clothes. We may even change their diapers if we are lucky enough to have a doll that “eats” and “poops.”
We watch our own mothers closely as we sit in our high chairs and booster seats, possibly still sucking a thumb or fingers. When little sister or brother arrives, often we are asking to hold the protesting sibling. Sometimes we are enlisted to entertain our little siblings as they cry for mom’s attention. We watch, sometimes jealously, as mom soothes our little sister or brother.
Grandpa or Auntie may also be part of the daily scene. We watch them too. We accept their hugs and kisses - their ways of mothering.
Then it’s off to school. Years when we watch mom making lunches, driving us around town and nursing us back to health from the flu. We see the mothering moments in these years more distantly, maybe. We have other things on our minds.
Middle school and high school come along. These are years when we watch mom and think that surely we could do this job better. Mom is embarrassing – possibly most of the time. She’s so out of date. And she’s always just there. We may start to babysit during these years. Here, in someone else’s house, we get the first taste of what it’s really like to be a mom.
We may start to look more like mom even as we are trying to prove to ourselves and others that we are not like mom. We may grow taller than our moms. We may secretly be glad during these years - sometimes at least - that mom’s there. But certainly we would not want the girls from the middle school lunch table to see that. Pointing out how we’re different from mom becomes our mission. As we brush against mom’s rules and expectations, we vow that we would never be that kind of mom – no way.
Before long it’s off to college, or we’re moving out and starting to work. There’s a boyfriend or two in the picture. The lessons of health class are a little more real suddenly. The idea of actually having our own baby, to cuddle and spoil, seems within arm’s reach. We dream of our perfect families as we search and find our perfect mates.
This goes on UNTIL - until we actually have a baby of our own.
All those years, even though we watched closely, we didn’t really see it. We didn’t see just how hard it really is. When we have a baby of our own we suddenly wonder how we could have missed this part.
We did not see how hard mom worked. How she was tested to push just a little bit more at the very moments when she felt spent with nothing more to give.
We did not see mom brush back tears when she was having a tough day.
We did not see the exhaustion that we now feel. How did she do it, we wonder?
We may beat ourselves up a bit. We may think there is something wrong with us, that we are not a good enough mother, that this is some cruel mistake and we should never even have had a baby in the first place.
Some of us may have an additional challenge that mom didn’t: postpartum depression and anxiety.
It’s hard to face. And hard to ask for help. But it’s the first step towards becoming the kind of mom we imagined we would be.