I once read a post written by a mother who shared about how nobody had ever told her certain things about motherhood, which in her case was that her body could be so badly damaged from having a baby that it would take over 7 months post partum before she could “Reconvene the Procedure.” She mentioned how she had looked all over the internet to see if she was normal or a freak or what, and all things pointed to her being very, very abnormal. This prompted me to send off an email to let her know that my first birth and the wretched episiotomy that went along with it did some pretty bad stuff to me as well, so she wasn’t entirely alone. (I’m all better now, though, so don’t cry for me, Argentina….)

All of which got me to thinking I should make a list of the things they never tell you about being a parent. I’m tempted to start the list, but I’m realizing that there are REASONS why nobody tells this stuff.

Nobody tells all the stuff because

-they don’t want to sound like a bad person, an unloving parent, or a selfish jerk

-they think they might be the only one who has these experiences, and therefore nobody will know they are not the above bad/unloving/jerk

-they don’t want the people without the kids to hear this stuff because it might scare them off from having kids, and the trick to all of this is that yes there is a lot of untold (negative) stuff that can go along with parenting, but there is also some pretty incredible wonderful stuff too and if you don’t already have the kids you can’t really imagine that the good could outweigh the bad

I am reminded of when Oprah had a show where women came on and basically said stuff about being a mother like, “It isn’t worth it.” I didn’t see the show but did read some chatter about it on a bulletin board. A lot of responses were things like GET A LIFE LOSERS! and about how crappy and pathetic the women were that came on the show and just whined about motherhood being hard and thankless and such. But then there were some others who said, “well, maybe nobody tells this stuff because of the kinds of comments you are sharing here.” Hmmm.

There seems to be a lot of pressure on women/mothers to always wrap up any negative garbage in a pretty bow. You know the ones. It’s like:

The horrible, terrible birth story where the mom got totally abused by the medical personnel, yet she ends her story with the obligatory, “But at least I got a healthy baby. That’s all that really matters.” Yeah, right–it doesn’t matter that you got abused.
OR
A rough experience with a sick child, a rebellious child, or just a rough life with the kids she has for whatever reason. She has to end it by saying, “But I wouldn’t trade any of them for the world.” I guess we just think we better make sure nobody thinks we’re going to sell off the kids or trade them in for a motorhome.

I recently read an excellent book by Anna Quindlen. The title is Loud and Clear, and it is a collection of essays and speeches. In one essay she states something like, “Motherhood is a decision made in great ignorance.” Let that sink in for a second, mothers. I think that is SO TRUE. SO true. Because there is NO way that you can be prepared. I don’t care how many books you read, how many kids you babysat, how many friends you have who went before you and told you all about it. You CAN NOT KNOW what it is to be a parent until you are there. You cannot know the depths of love, fear, pain, expectation, anticipation, and worry that come with it until you are in it.

So, I’m sorry. I’m not going to tell you the things they never tell you. You wouldn’t believe it if I tried.