This is a phrase that gets repeated a lot in our house. It started when Taelyn was a baby and has gotten used several times since we've been home with Lillian.
Let me digress a bit. I've found it interesting how many comments I've gotten on my past few blog posts and my honesty about our life when Taelyn was a baby. Other mom's need to hear that everything isn't all sunshine and baby laughs every single day when you bring a new baby home. However, we, as mothers, have a tendency to want to give this impression to others. I think the reason is because it makes us look like we have it all together as a mother. That we know exactly what we are doing and do not ever have a down day, or a day when we are just frustrated, or melt into tears every time our darling angel melts into tears.
When we came home with Taelyn and I was a complete mess (as I've described in previous posts), I needed to know that there were other mothers who were going through what I was going through. I would call the other moms that I knew who had delivered around the same time that I did. I would ask how nursing is going and I would get a, "Great! We haven't had any problems at all," while I had mastitis 3 times. I would ask how the baby was sleeping and I would get, "Doing so well. He/She started sleeping through the night at 3 weeks," while I was a complete zombie waking up sometimes 5 times a night with Taelyn. It seemed like all of the other mothers had it all together while I was the only one seriously struggling with life with a baby. It made it so much worse not having someone else to be able to sympathize with me or tell me how to handle what I was going through.
I would vent to Scott about this and complain that God had given everyone else these perfect babies while we had one that didn't sleep and wanted to eat every hour and a half. And Scott's answer to me was always, "Casey, they are lying." My nature is to trust people until they give me a reason not to, while Scott tends to be... skeptical... of others. So, I automatically just believed all of the other moms that were saying that baby was sleeping through the night with no problems, never cried, and never had dirty diapers (okay, that one was never said). But it just made things worse for me. I finally got to where I knew Scott must be right... New Moms Lie. I couldn't figure out why, but after a lot of thought I came up with what I mentioned earlier - just to make themselves look like good moms. But I wish that we, as mothers, could see how hurtful this is to other mothers. If things are going great, then it is fine to say that, but I do think we should be HONEST about what we are experiencing. I remember talking to one mother who had her little boy 2 weeks after Taelyn was born and asking her about nursing. This was in the midst of my extreme pain with mastitis. She said that everything was great! I remember having a conversation with her almost a year later... after we had both finished nursing, and she told me that she had also had mastitis. Now, I would have greatly benefited from hearing that when I had it. But she chose to keep that information hidden when I needed to hear it.
There was one wonderful family in our sunday school class that was honest about their trials with their first child. I completely attached myself to this family and loved hearing them tell their hilarious stories about what they had done in the middle of the night when up with baby. From this I learned how to laugh at the situation the way they did. Nothing was ever funny in the middle of the night, but the next day I realized that I could laugh at how ridiculous I had acted. Bless this precious family for being honest and letting me see that there were other people out there that weren't blessed with perfect babies! I will never, ever stop appreciating them for their honesty at a time in my life when I truly needed it. They continue to be great friends of ours and I continue to love their honesty about life!
All that to say that this is why I choose to be brutally honest about our difficulties with new baby. If you need someone to sympathize with you, please call or email me and I will listen or tell our new baby stories or whatever you need from me!
For now I have to get lunch served so that I can go get a nap to catch up from a lack of sleep last night while Lillian grunted for hours!!!
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