To My Fellow Mamas on Mother's Day

Mothering is not for the meek, weak of stomach, or those with a fearful heart. It takes a lot of guts to be a mama, and if you want to be a good mama, it takes even more than that. As I sit here on my second Mother’s Day, I yearn to give a few shout-outs to my fellow mamas. The biggest joke that I’ve learned in motherhood is that the world still insists on referring to women as the “weaker sex”. I’ve seen my husband care for our daughter, and if women are the weaker sex, society as a whole is completely fucked.

Here’s to all the mamas out there who got that rude awakening once they became mothers, when they realized that none of those helpful parenting books covered topics such as: So You Want to Sleep and Shower All in One Day, Free Time, What the Hell is That?, or How to Keep Your Spouse from Running Like a Coward at the First Sign of Poop. Remember that terrifying moment when you were lying there looking at your baby and the reality hit that the baby was YOUR baby, and was going to be your baby for the rest of your life? I spent that whole night with the words, “Oh shit, what do I do now!” running through my head.

Here’s to all the mamas out there who got used to gross things very quickly. The first piece of advice I gave all of my expecting friends was; when you change the diaper, breathe through your mouth. Our society has us so used to watching death and dismemberment that looking at a whole batch of new baby poop isn’t that gross, but the smell is what churns your stomach. I would tell my friends to cut their nostrils out of the scenario at the first rip of the diaper Velcro, and get that tiny bottom cleaned as quickly as possible.

Amongst the things I never thought I’d get used to was being vomited on, holding someone while they vomited, bicycling tiny legs during the crapping process, boogers, boogers, and more boogers, and Five Alarm diapers. A Five Alarm diaper is one that’s so bad that you just want to take the kid and hose them off in the yard. Every mama (and even some papas) have been there, done that, and for the record, we never quite got used to it.

Here’s to all my mamas out there who have managed to keep marriages or relationships alive with their significant other even after they realized that they did the bulk of the work. Sure, these modern guys promised it would be a 50/50 workload split, but that didn’t happen, and it didn’t happen really quickly. When the kid has a Five Alarm, or is disagreeable, or later in the toddler years when they take off their clothes and refuse to put them back on again, does your spouse try and work through the problem? No, they yell for you. Remember the good ol’ days when you looked at this person you loved and thought; this is the most accomplished, capable person I’ve ever met. Yea, me too.

Here’s to all my mamas out there who have taken the kids on a trip and managed to get through airport security with a stroller, pull suitcase, diaperbag, and an infant, quicker than the schmuck businessman with the expensive laptop in front of you. We mommies are resourceful, yet we constantly get the bad rap. We are directed to a certain security line at the airport, and like clockwork, you can see collective rolling eyes from everyone directed to the same line standing behind us. However, what the impatient bastards following us don’t know is that we have it all down to a smooth move science, and have the amazing ability to load multiple bags, while collapsing a stroller, taking off our shoes and keeping a toddler in jammies from running through the metal detector all in a two-minute timeframe. Yet, we get no credit for our multi-tasking abilities, and continually get blamed for the one parent who takes forever at airport security.

Lastly, here’s to all my mamas out there who manage, on a daily basis, to be fantastic moms, while keeping a shred of their own identity. It is so easy to settle into the role of being your kid’s mom, and nothing else. The world makes us feel guilty for wanting some free time or needing “mommy’s day off” or basically, about anything we do that isn’t waiting on our child hand and foot, but we see through this guilt and realize that it’s just a means of manipulation to keep us from the identity we deserve. We can be our kids’ mommies, but we can also be wonderful, passionate, creative, intelligent women that make the world go around, and keep everything together through this shit storm we call a culture. And to think, they still refer to us as the weaker sex.