Even before you’re expecting, you’ll hear from parents that your expectations around pregnancy and motherhood rarely line up with reality. From your prenatal workout to your birth plan to the way you’ll feed or sleep with your L.O., you quickly learn that going with the flow beats trying to stick to what you thought you’d do. A mom in the Beyond the Bump subreddit summed this wake-up call in a post entitled, “Goodbye to the mom I thought I would be.”:
“I thought I would keep up a strict organic vegan diet during pregnancy.
I went back to eating meat, shoveled family size bags of Doritos in my face and made urgent 2am runs to 7/11 for a half gallon of Slurpee.
I thought I would be a fit pregnancy.
I didn’t workout for 39 weeks and thought the week of walking at the end would make a difference to get the baby out.
I thought I would tough it out with nitrous and turn down the epidural.
I took the epidural as soon as it was offered.
I thought I would be good at breastfeeding immediately.
We exclusively pumped and bottle fed for the first two months because breastfeeding was so damn hard to figure out.
I thought I would cloth diaper.
We buy disposables.
I thought as a SAHM my house would always be clean.
My laundry room has almost all of our clothes clean right now, exactly none of them folded. Good luck finding two socks in laundry mountain.
I thought I would put effort into my appearance for my husband.
My average daily ensemble is flannel pj pants, no bra, and a t shirt with breastmilk and/or spit up stains on it. There is now an acceptable amount of spit up before I will change. Hairstyle- the “I didn’t look in a mirror when I put my hair up” ponytail. He tells me I’m beautiful anyways.
I thought I would do everything “right” and “by the book” and never bedshare.
My daughter sleeps in my bed because it is the only way we don’t wake up six times a night.
I thought I would make homemade baby food.
She eats Gerber.
I thought I would find mom friends.
I currently have the least amount of friends that I have had at any point in my life.
I thought I didn’t need my family’s help.
I called my mother in tears at 4 weeks to come help.
I’m not the mom I thought I would be, but I have quit holding myself up to that standard.
I have a happy six month old and that is the standard by which I now judge myself as a mother. Not how she got here, what we eat, the clothes on our bodies or how we sleep.”