Things I wish I had known before I had kids Part 1: Lone Ranger

My husband has a co-worker whose wife just had their first baby together in October.  She stayed home for 6 weeks, went back to work only to be laid off the same week she was back.  So now, she is home with their son full-time.  My husband can't believe how many times a day she calls her husband while he is at work.  I can!  While my husband is sure that I never called him that much when we had our first child, I am sure that I did.  There is nothing like the feeling of being alone 90% of the day.  Before you say,"you aren't alone", let me say a newborn/infant does not equal "real" person!  They do not talk, wipe their own butts, wash their own hands, put away their own laundry, burp on their own, feed themselves-they do nothing but lay there, fart, poop, cry, eat, sleep, eat some more, sleep some more, eat some more, cry some more, eat some more, poop some more, eat some more, fart some more and lay there.  They rely on you for EVERYTHING!

I never knew how lonely it would be to be home with an infant.  Sure, my husband was home in the evenings and helped out at night when the baby was up but he wasn't with me and our infant 2/3rd's of the day. It is hard to be alone, to only hear your own voice, to never feel like you accomplished anything that day.  It is hard to be someone's everything.  Which is funny to say because isn't that what we expect from our spouse, for them to be our everything?

Even now with 3 kids, almost 6, 4 and almost 2, I am lonely for adult company during the day.  I crave the weekends when my husband is home to balance our family.  Everyday my husband comes home and asks me the same thing: "Did you talk to anyone today?" Sure honey, I talked to the kids today (I talked to myself too).  But what he is asking is if I talked to another adult, someone who can actually carry on  a conversation with 7-letter words, someone else who knows what multi-tasking means, a 3-letter word, MOM.  I talk to one other adult  everyday, at the same time, over coffee, each of us in our jammies and I thank God every chance I get for her, because if she wasn't there, oh boy oh boy, I would be locked up in the looney bin, in a white-padded cell.

Motherhood (especially when you have young kids) is one of the most isolating times in life.  Before I had my lovely, adorable, perfect little monsters (do you hear the sarcasm dripping from my voice?) I had plans on how it was going to be.  I was going to have playdates everyday, crafts waiting for us to do and five-star dining for every meal.  I would have taught my child to read by 2, be self-sufficient by 3 (read that as being able to wipe ones own butt and make their own lunch) and able to put themselves to bed every night by 7pm.   I was also going to work 22.5 hours a week all while my husband was home watching the kid(s), feeding them breast milk that I had pumped just for them.  In short, I was going to be the perfect mom, WHAT WAS I THINKING????  You can't have playdates everyday-kids need to nap-they need a schedule and your house needs to be relatively clean and picked up so that it is habitable, 6-month olds can't do crafts and by the time dinner roles around you are just hoping that whatever you make is edible and isn't mac and cheese again.  There is no such thing as the perfect mom and I am certainly not one, not even one little bit.

What I do know thought is that we were not made to live life isolated and alone.  We were made to live in community with one another, to lift each other up, to help each other through each day.  Not to judge another mom who might not be dressed to the nines that day because she is tired and not feeling well and might have been up all night with a sick kid yet again.  Not to judge another mom whose child is absolutely melting down in Target because you are sure that your kid would never do that and God help him if he did.  We are constantly comparing ourselves, our own mommyhoods against every other mom we come in contact with and that does not make a community, in fact it just tears it apart and quite frankly isn't going to help anyone from being alone.

Was it Hillary Clinton, who said it takes a village to raise a child?  Whoever it was, was right because we can't do it alone and because it takes other moms to help make you a mom.