A Message To Moms: Lower Your Expectations

If you are anything like me, before having kids you went to college, worked for enough years to constitute a career, have friends, hobbies, a gym membership, a loving relationship with your husband, a home decorated stylishly from knockoff finds at Homegoods, and heck, maybe you were even in a “book” (aka wine) club. What a nice little life! Then, woohoo, you got pregnant! So you thought to yourself wow, my life is getting better and better and I am going to be complete!

Well ladies, let me tell you something, times they have a changed. Gone are the days of generations past where the expectation was to raise kids and care for your home. We were brought up to be well rounded, motivated career women and then blam! A baby (although, totally amazing) knocks a lot of that right out from under you.

When your wondrous bundle of joy finally arrives you are all, I got this! My baby is the bomb.com and once I get this sleeping thing down I will do everything I was doing before and I will have my sidekick along for the ride in an adorable outfit from baby gap.

And then you realize, nothing is going as planned. Your baby is 6 months old and stinks at sleeping. You went back to work but your productivity blows. Friends? Those are a memory you are too tired to conjure up. You wear sweats every day but certainly are not stepping foot into a gym. It looks like babies r’ us vomited in your living room with baby gear made only in painfully bright colors. And as for your husband? Let’s just say you told a teeny weeny fib to him about the ability to have sex 6 weeks after baby.

You start to feel overwhelmed and that you are trying to do everything you did before but you realize you aren’t doing any of it well. You cry. You eat a lot of stuff right out the jar with a spoon (for me its peanut butter). You feel lonely. You question your every move and thought. You finally realize, as you should, that it is literally impossible to do everything you were doing before baby.

So here is the takeaway — LOWER YOUR EXPECTATIONS. Your #1 priority is your child and everything else has to fall into place behind that. It is ok to let the other stuff go for now. You will get it back eventually (that is what I keep telling myself anyway). Give yourself a break, you just created a human! Make a list of priorities and cut yourself some slack if it still isn’t going well.

And remember, you are allowed to cry when you are totally exhausted from baby and are driving home from a crappy day at work when the Verve Pipes “Freshman” comes on and reminds you that you miss being young and carefree and then you look down to discover your pants have been on inside out all day. (This may or may not have just happened to me). [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKbDyL93r2E]