Sometimes I lay in bed at the end of the day and ask myself the inevitable Question of The Night: What did you do today? What did you accomplish? Sometimes it makes me want to cry. I don’t have a good answer. I draw a total blank. What did I do today? What can I point to as something of value? I lay there totally exhausted, totally touched-out, I don’t even have any words left to try and have an adult conversation with my husband, I can only eat the bowl of ice-cream propped in front of me while I scroll houses on Zillow, imagining maybe there’s a home or a yard that would magically stay cleaner or keep my kids from fighting. I want an external solution to this internal problem. And the problem isn’t my kids.
It’s my own belief that I should have DONE SOMETHING today. Something besides getting that one errant bathtub toy back to its home every time I kept finding it in the hall. Something besides shutting THE SAME CABINET fifteen times because the baby likes to pull out the cereal boxes whenever my back is turned. Something besides rattling off ten different disjointed text messages to friends to try and keep some kind of relational connection going.
Because in my mind none of that “counts.” It isn’t really meaningful. It’s nothing worthy of attention or admiration or respect.
I know there are a million pep talks I should give myself (and you) right now about the worthiness of this mothering we’re doing. It matters. I fully believe that or I would have just outsourced it or not embarked on this journey at all. I think raising humans is one of the most important jobs that exists in the world, it’s just also one of the most mindless, repetitive and oddly dehumanizing ones when you’re parenting a very smallish person. In what other job would people just cry at me if I didn’t immediately meet their needs or accidentally scratch me in the face in a gesture of pure exuberance gone wrong, or throw the meal I served them on the ground, or scream when I put them down and then accidentally kick me in the gut when I pick them up? At some point it becomes easy to compartmentalize and stop being a person and just start being a caregiver.
I’m not going to tell you that the days are long but the years are short because you already know that. You already wish you could freeze time and you’re pre-grieving that someday this precious child won’t think you’re the center of their world anymore. I’m not going to tell you that you’ll miss this someday because I know that’s cold comfort when someone decides that 2-4 a.m. are their favorite hours to be awake. Truly, honestly, I will not miss that as much as I might miss some of the other aspects of this age. We all know these days are precious. I can look at a picture of my baby that I took literally yesterday and already feel sentimental and wistful about how fast this is speeding by. Having older kids makes that feel even more poignant.
And the truth is, when we just had a crew of older kids, I didn’t feel quite so useless. They needed me to do things for them that were easier for me to value. Helping with homework, having deep talks, spending time with other parents as we wait for our kids to finish activities– these felt like meaningful activities. But I’m back to spending a lot of my parenting energy on tiny people and I’m reminded of how hard this stage is. And it’s not the physically taxing parts that are my struggle. It’s my own search for meaning and value when I’m feeling so limited by their needs and expectations.
Maybe the pep talk isn’t my area of expertise. But empathy is.
Exhausted Mom, you are not alone. You are not doing something wrong because you feel so tired and sometimes you daydream about driving to the airport and taking an unplanned vacation for a week. You feel frustrated because THIS IS FRUSTRATING. Not being able to walk fifteen steps in less than 10 minutes because a tiny person is pinching you in the back of the thigh in an effort to get your attention is a genuinely frustrating experience. Trying to pretend that this is so fun and fulfilling will create a cognitive dissonance in your life and your brain that will be hard to untangle. It’s okay to LOVE being a mother and LOVE your child and also wish you could use the bathroom without a tiny audience or fingers poked under the door while someone cries until you open it. This mom business is HARD.
But mothers who prioritize meeting the needs of their children, being present through the mindless and repetitive seasons of parenting a tiny child, we are a countercultural reminder that we don’t need to be defined by a checklist. Our value is not in our paycheck. When we sit in bed and draw a blank about what we did today, we have to learn to be our own affirming voice. What we did was important because it created a place of safety and stability for a child. That’s what all the big and small moments add up to. And it matters.