$100 race: Motherhood Edition

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We know that certain external supports will help women adjust to motherhood better: being close to family, having support from a spouse, having time off from work. Women can do their best to line these things up, but sometimes the timing of pregnancy or birth can make a person’s best laid plans fail. Maybe you have family close by, but they have to leave to care for an older relative right as your baby is born. Or somebody gets sick. Or a sibling needs their help more. Or maybe your spouse, otherwise supportive, ends up on some kind of project at work that is all-consuming, or ends up sick, or has an accident right as baby is born, etc…

I do think that some people who have all these supports in place and all goes like a well-oiled machine…don’t realize that they have had extraordinary luck and can be a little….self congratulatory? Like “yes, I chose to live near my parents so they could help me out…I did that.” Well, you had some good luck, too, because about a million things could’ve gone sideways.

Then there are the “just bad luck” things: having a highly sensitive/high needs baby, family income (I’m putting this in this category because there are too many factors that can contribute to this and there IS a good dose of luck involved with whether you have money or not), health of baby and mother.

PPD/PPA and other postpartum health and mood disorders are like compounding interest (in a negative way) for new moms. PPD/A in addition to lacking any (or more than one!) of the aforementioned supports is like falling into a 50 ft deep trench with your baby and trying to climb out. These disorders can make the early years of parenthood absolute hell—and aside from the aforementioned supports (which are subject to disruption) there’s not much someone can do to try to predict and head off PPD/PPA before it happens. It’s a “I hope that doesn’t happen to me” situation. It comes for women when they have otherwise not had a history of mood disorders. And it is a particular salt in the wound that, culturally, women are expected to enjoy their babies and that treatments for PPD (therapy, exercise, sleep) can be limited by the baby’s very existence.

But this is life and life is not fair. Some people get cancer and some people don’t. Some people are good looking and some people are not. Some people are born into poor families and some are born into wealthy families. We don’t need to resent mothers who have had good luck because luck is random. But… motherhood is a formative experience for many. And if you’ve had a difficult time, it can feel very lonely. There are things we can do as a culture—and as a country—to help all women with this transition (but especially women who get the short end of the stick). But it’s simply not a priority in America. We have chosen not to support women in this time in their lives, and when you have a difficult experience like it sounds like maybe OP did, that feeling of being ignored is emphasized.

This is one of the best posts I’ve read on DCUM. I hope a lot of people read it and take it to heart.

[Anonymous]

Interesting question! Here are a few I could think of (though my kid is only 18mo so my experience is limited):

-having a child who has a strong immune system and doesn’t get sick too often
-having a child who is not a picky eater
-if breastfeeding came naturally and you didn’t get cracked nipples/mastitis/etc.

All of these involve a degree of luck and a degree of skill/effort I suppose.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We know that certain external supports will help women adjust to motherhood better: being close to family, having support from a spouse, having time off from work. Women can do their best to line these things up, but sometimes the timing of pregnancy or birth can make a person’s best laid plans fail. Maybe you have family close by, but they have to leave to care for an older relative right as your baby is born. Or somebody gets sick. Or a sibling needs their help more. Or maybe your spouse, otherwise supportive, ends up on some kind of project at work that is all-consuming, or ends up sick, or has an accident right as baby is born, etc…

I do think that some people who have all these supports in place and all goes like a well-oiled machine…don’t realize that they have had extraordinary luck and can be a little….self congratulatory? Like “yes, I chose to live near my parents so they could help me out…I did that.” Well, you had some good luck, too, because about a million things could’ve gone sideways.

Then there are the “just bad luck” things: having a highly sensitive/high needs baby, family income (I’m putting this in this category because there are too many factors that can contribute to this and there IS a good dose of luck involved with whether you have money or not), health of baby and mother.

PPD/PPA and other postpartum health and mood disorders are like compounding interest (in a negative way) for new moms. PPD/A in addition to lacking any (or more than one!) of the aforementioned supports is like falling into a 50 ft deep trench with your baby and trying to climb out. These disorders can make the early years of parenthood absolute hell—and aside from the aforementioned supports (which are subject to disruption) there’s not much someone can do to try to predict and head off PPD/PPA before it happens. It’s a “I hope that doesn’t happen to me” situation. It comes for women when they have otherwise not had a history of mood disorders. And it is a particular salt in the wound that, culturally, women are expected to enjoy their babies and that treatments for PPD (therapy, exercise, sleep) can be limited by the baby’s very existence.

But this is life and life is not fair. Some people get cancer and some people don’t. Some people are good looking and some people are not. Some people are born into poor families and some are born into wealthy families. We don’t need to resent mothers who have had good luck because luck is random. But… motherhood is a formative experience for many. And if you’ve had a difficult time, it can feel very lonely. There are things we can do as a culture—and as a country—to help all women with this transition (but especially women who get the short end of the stick). But it’s simply not a priority in America. We have chosen not to support women in this time in their lives, and when you have a difficult experience like it sounds like maybe OP did, that feeling of being ignored is emphasized.

This is one of the best posts I’ve read on DCUM. I hope a lot of people read it and take it to heart.

Agree! Loved this post.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There’s always someone who has it harder than you, including those who aren’t able to have children at all.

Yeah but saying stuff like that doesn’t help anybody.

If you’re having a hard time for any reason, you need to get yourself in therapy. Your feelings are valid and there’s help available.

Being grateful for what you have does help people - it’s a way to reframe your negative thinking.

Constantly comparing yourselves to others, feeling sorry for yourself - stuff like that is what REALLY doesn’t help anybody.

+100 "comparison is a the thief of joy" my favorite saying, practice gratitude, not comparison

+1000. I can't imagine looking at my life and feeling pity and envy. And I am not DCUM rich and my kids aren't perfect. You live your own life as it is and handle it with stride and grace, without comparison. Be your own person on you're own path. I actually hate "toxic positivity" so I am not saying you need to go that route, but you need to embrace what you have been given, embrace it, and if it is not satisfactory? Make changes.

[Anonymous]

I don’t know. Have you ever driven yourself to the grocery store to buy diapers with a fever of 102 because your husband was deployed and you were new to the area, had no family there, etc? No? Probably not. My point is that “having a positive attitude” or whatever other platitude is being offered up (be grateful! Enjoy these years because they go so fast! Blame yourself for deciding to marry this person and to have a child) isn’t actually going to alter that situation which objectively sucks. Or the fact that at that moment other people’s lives suck less. It is worth it to ask people who don’t find themselves in those situations to be aware that others do. Sorry it makes so many of you uncomfortable to be asked to acknouthat others may experience poverty, loneliness and other challenges.

[Anonymous]

Money makes all those steps move forward.

Cleaning service, lawn service, NANNY, housekeeper who cooks. This is the complete drudgery of parenthood. My wealthy friend loves being a parent. Her nanny takes care of the kids 8-9 hours a day. Mom gets to come home from work to a clean house and healthy food already cooked for her. Someone who does the dishes the next morning. I would love parenting more too if I had the time to have as much of the fun stuff with my kids and less of the treadmill drudgery.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Money makes all those steps move forward.

Cleaning service, lawn service, NANNY, housekeeper who cooks. This is the complete drudgery of parenthood. My wealthy friend loves being a parent. Her nanny takes care of the kids 8-9 hours a day. Mom gets to come home from work to a clean house and healthy food already cooked for her. Someone who does the dishes the next morning. I would love parenting more too if I had the time to have as much of the fun stuff with my kids and less of the treadmill drudgery.

I had a live-in nanny who did all this and it was indeed amazing! I was living overseas (where it was much cheaper) and her help, plus the low cost of living, made up for not having any family near us. However, emotionally it was still hard to be far away, no grandparents coming to sporting events and plays, no aunties and cousins to play with. There are very few lucky people who really get to have it all!

[Anonymous]

Ugh it’s hard. We are stretched very thin and barely save to have a full time nanny and three kids (our second was twins) but it’s the only way we manage. Others choose to have less paid help and have a nicer house/bigger retirement. It’s sometimes a trade off.

[Anonymous]

What has set me back in motherhood is having a traumatic childbirth and postpartum PTSD (just getting properly diagnosed took a year!), having permanent birth injuries that have badly impacted my quality of life and mean I can’t do impact exercise, wear tampons, or have good sex anymore, having children with unanticipated health issues and special needs, and having kids who don’t sleep so my sleep deprivation has lasted years, literally. And then the massive impact all of these things has had on our marriage.

It’s a painful experience to get together with other friends who have more typical parenting experience without these challenges and for them to look at you cross eyed like, “oh parenting isn’t that hard.” Or who just cannot relate to you at all - like the girlfriends that don’t understand why I haven’t lost my baby weight and can’t just run a 10K with them. Like, sorry Karen, having kids broke my vagina and it’s falling out of my body - literally. They just don’t get it at all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don’t know. Have you ever driven yourself to the grocery store to buy diapers with a fever of 102 because your husband was deployed and you were new to the area, had no family there, etc? No? Probably not. My point is that “having a positive attitude” or whatever other platitude is being offered up (be grateful! Enjoy these years because they go so fast! Blame yourself for deciding to marry this person and to have a child) isn’t actually going to alter that situation which objectively sucks. Or the fact that at that moment other people’s lives suck less. It is worth it to ask people who don’t find themselves in those situations to be aware that others do. Sorry it makes so many of you uncomfortable to be asked to acknouthat others may experience poverty, loneliness and other challenges.

This! I am surprised at how many people are jumping on OP. Of course some moms have it easier than others, I find is ridiculous anyone would say otherwise. And the responses that are like "just don't have kids" if you don't have all the stuff that will make it easy? It's classist and offensive. Agree with the PP (with the long post) talking about how we as a culture have simply decided not to support women on the transition into motherhood, which means we leave it to individuals to satisfy all their needs themselves, and of course some people are less able to do that because they started out with less family support, less money, etc.

No one is asking you to feel guilty or loan out your nanny or your housekeeper or whatever. All OP is saying is hey, could we not JUDGE the moms who struggle more and instead acknowledge that some people are running a harder race and be encouraging and kind?

And while we're at it, could we not keep raising the bar for what it is to be a "good mom" all the time? Every time you turn around there is something else moms are supposed to be doing or are supposedly failing at. It's ridiculous.

I am fully on board with just cutting moms some slack, OP.

[Anonymous]

I think this thread was confused by this early reply, which I at least attributed to the op:

"A preschool mom asked me the other day if I would be on the preschool board next year. “Perfect position for a stay at home mom”. F&3k you. No. I have zero help. My husband travels constantly. I have 3 kids under 8 including one with special needs. No no no."

It's one thing to acknowledge that there's a lot of inequity at the motherhood starting line, as the op did. I agree with that. But it's another to be appalled at the suggestion that a SAHM would find a preschool board position perfect, bc this particular SAHM is struggling.

[Anonymous]

If you have only one or two kids, you are ahead in the motherhood race. Having 3 pr 3+ kids is very hard. I keep seeing frazzled moms and yelly moms when they have 3 kids. Also, these mothers expect the world to become their village.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think this thread was confused by this early reply, which I at least attributed to the op:

"A preschool mom asked me the other day if I would be on the preschool board next year. “Perfect position for a stay at home mom”. F&3k you. No. I have zero help. My husband travels constantly. I have 3 kids under 8 including one with special needs. No no no."

It's one thing to acknowledge that there's a lot of inequity at the motherhood starting line, as the op did. I agree with that. But it's another to be appalled at the suggestion that a SAHM would find a preschool board position perfect, bc this particular SAHM is struggling.

I think the point of the preschool board thing is more that no one really wants to and the person tasked with recruiting members will find a way to tailor the pitch to every member. OP is mad that they used the SAHM thing but I can guarantee they did not only ask SAHMs or look around for the parents who seemed to have the most extra time. OP probably accidentally appeared sane and competent to one of the board members and was reliable about her co-op job or something and so they put her on the list.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We know that certain external supports will help women adjust to motherhood better: being close to family, having support from a spouse, having time off from work. Women can do their best to line these things up, but sometimes the timing of pregnancy or birth can make a person’s best laid plans fail. Maybe you have family close by, but they have to leave to care for an older relative right as your baby is born. Or somebody gets sick. Or a sibling needs their help more. Or maybe your spouse, otherwise supportive, ends up on some kind of project at work that is all-consuming, or ends up sick, or has an accident right as baby is born, etc…

I do think that some people who have all these supports in place and all goes like a well-oiled machine…don’t realize that they have had extraordinary luck and can be a little….self congratulatory? Like “yes, I chose to live near my parents so they could help me out…I did that.” Well, you had some good luck, too, because about a million things could’ve gone sideways.

Then there are the “just bad luck” things: having a highly sensitive/high needs baby, family income (I’m putting this in this category because there are too many factors that can contribute to this and there IS a good dose of luck involved with whether you have money or not), health of baby and mother.

PPD/PPA and other postpartum health and mood disorders are like compounding interest (in a negative way) for new moms. PPD/A in addition to lacking any (or more than one!) of the aforementioned supports is like falling into a 50 ft deep trench with your baby and trying to climb out. These disorders can make the early years of parenthood absolute hell—and aside from the aforementioned supports (which are subject to disruption) there’s not much someone can do to try to predict and head off PPD/PPA before it happens. It’s a “I hope that doesn’t happen to me” situation. It comes for women when they have otherwise not had a history of mood disorders. And it is a particular salt in the wound that, culturally, women are expected to enjoy their babies and that treatments for PPD (therapy, exercise, sleep) can be limited by the baby’s very existence.

But this is life and life is not fair. Some people get cancer and some people don’t. Some people are good looking and some people are not. Some people are born into poor families and some are born into wealthy families. We don’t need to resent mothers who have had good luck because luck is random. But… motherhood is a formative experience for many. And if you’ve had a difficult time, it can feel very lonely. There are things we can do as a culture—and as a country—to help all women with this transition (but especially women who get the short end of the stick). But it’s simply not a priority in America. We have chosen not to support women in this time in their lives, and when you have a difficult experience like it sounds like maybe OP did, that feeling of being ignored is emphasized.

This is one of the best posts I’ve read on DCUM. I hope a lot of people read it and take it to heart.

+1
Thank you, first PP, for taking the time to write this out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There’s always someone who has it harder than you, including those who aren’t able to have children at all.

Yeah but saying stuff like that doesn’t help anybody.

If you’re having a hard time for any reason, you need to get yourself in therapy. Your feelings are valid and there’s help available.

Being grateful for what you have does help people - it’s a way to reframe your negative thinking.

Constantly comparing yourselves to others, feeling sorry for yourself - stuff like that is what REALLY doesn’t help anybody.

+100 "comparison is a the thief of joy" my favorite saying, practice gratitude, not comparison

+1000. I can't imagine looking at my life and feeling pity and envy. And I am not DCUM rich and my kids aren't perfect. You live your own life as it is and handle it with stride and grace, without comparison. Be your own person on you're own path. I actually hate "toxic positivity" so I am not saying you need to go that route, but you need to embrace what you have been given, embrace it, and if it is not satisfactory? Make changes.

Yes, but some people are up on their high horses judging others for not being perfect mothers or successful working moms, and I think the point is that these women often fail to recognize the privileges and advantages that have made their success possible.

Sheryl Sandberg is the perfect example.