Is This Modern Mom Life?

Being a stay at home mom is one of the hardest jobs that I have ever done. When I was sitting at my desk in my office 8 months pregnant, I had these delusions that being home with my daughter would be easy, peaceful and stress-free. I would have tons of free time around taking care of her and be able to complete all of these personal projects before going back to work full time. Well, I was wrong. Really wrong. I mean seriously where did I get these visions of motherhood from? I really thought I was going to be my best self at home, that chores would be done and I would be done up with hair and makeup and get my workouts in and my pre-baby weight would just fall right off. Maybe it was really ignorant of me for having these kinds of thoughts but coming to terms with the actual reality of staying home I think is more disappointing than the job itself. First, I really had to learn to stay away from social media and went as far as removing the apps from my phone because I felt like it was slowly contributing to my mental decay. Social media when you are a stay at home mom is like living in a house and looking out the window to a cardboard cut out of a sunny day. Everyday is a pretty picture but its not what's real and after awhile you miss seeing the rainy days and the snow storms because that is what's real. I got tired of seeing moms who supposedly have their shit together and maybe they actually do. Kudos to them. But now that I have two children under two years old I can barely get my shit together. My hair is lucky its washed most days and I have had to buy clothes several sizes up from what I was used to wearing. My hair is mostly gray at the roots and just pulled back in a messy ponytail. I barely recognize myself when I look in a mirror. My glasses are on instead of contacts and I am mostly exhausted and less ambitious than I used to be. As far as house work, it feels like I am Sisyphus. Constantly rolling that boulder of chores only to watch it get undone each and everyday. There is no end to laundry and dirty dishes and even when you think you got ahead the hamper is full of dirty clothes yet again. When I started working out and preparing healthy meals I used to eat, I only found myself juggling too much as the babies needs are always first and rightfully so. I have no resentment for that. But when I tried having parts of the life I used to have before children I only grew disappointed in myself for not being able to balance everything. I found that having absolutely no expectations for myself during the day made me a nicer mom instead of a mom who felt like she was always failing. Now I work part time and thought that this would help me recover a sense of self. Not having many adult conversations and absolutely no time for breaks to think single mental thoughts instead of multitasking many thoughts can eat at your soul. There are days that I wake up and forget that I am an individual with my own personality; instead I am constantly computing mentally what everyone around me needs to function and neglect myself. This kind of mom stress lessens over time, so I hear when your children get older and they no longer rely on you for everything. But this period of adjusting to motherhood is a hard one and I think we owe it to one another to admit it. I don't think that having a hard time being a mom or adjusting to being a mom is something we should be embarrassed to talk about or admit. In fact, we should be able to swap war stories with one another and talk about how we dealt with it or are dealing with it. It is something I find that we cannot really talk to our husbands about either. It is hard for some to understand all that we do and have sacrificed when they still get to keep their individuality in tact. It is like they just add "dad" to their resume where we have to basically dump ours in the trash. When you are home everyday it is easy to forget all that you were and all that you did before you had children. I know that this stage of motherhood doesn't last forever. I am sorry if I sound ungrateful for all that I have because I am not. I love my children and am thankful everyday that I get to stay with them and grow them up the way that I want to. It is a beautiful thing for me to see them grow and develop in each stage of life while learning about their own likes and dislikes. Their little kisses and smiles are what makes me keeping getting up everyday and repeating the monotony. Maybe this is a generational mom struggle and has everything to do with the fact that we as women are not grown and bred to just marry and make babies. We had lives before we have children now since we are having them much later in life than other generations. We have careers and educations and we are able to choose not to be stay at home moms if we don't to. Not all of us are great with children and we don't have to be these days, we can choose to show our children what our strengths are and just as importantly what our weaknesses are too. We do not all have to be June Cleaver. And it's about time we assure ourselves that we don't have to be. That we don't have to live up to a fake picture of motherhood.