Transcript:

Within five hours of becoming a mama, I had already declared myself a failure.

My oldest daughter was born at 12:48am on a Saturday morning. She was whisked away from me and we were reunited three hours later. She, her dad, and I fell asleep together and then I tried to nurse her. 

In the breastfeeding class I had taken months earlier one key piece of information had remained impregnated upon my brain. “The baby will know exactly what to do. In fact, if they just lay the baby on your abdomen it will crawl right up to your breast and begin to eat.” That sounded both astoundingly amazing to witness and clearly meant that breastfeeding would be an easy task. Spoiler alert: It wasn’t.

After our cozy family nap this new little baby was ready to eat, but neither she, nor I (nor her dad) knew what to do. She had no idea how to position her lips, her tongue, or how to pull the milk out. No matter what angle I sat at, no matter how I held her, or how many pillows I propped behind me, this baby could not get the milk out. 

I begged the nurses for the lactation consultant, but was told she would not be paged until we had tried nursing for 48 hours. Formula was an option, continued attempts were an option, pumping and bottle feeding was an option. Help however, was not an option. 

My exhausted brain immediately told me I was failing at being a mama, “I mean, clearly if I can’t do this simple task that is so easy a newborn can just do it independently, I must be a failure.”

Five hours into this role, instead of reveling in joy, I was starting what would become a very long list of how many ways I was and could fail this child. 

“If help is not an option it must be because help should not be necessary,” said my (newly born) Inner Mean Mama Voice. 

Yikes! Five hours into this gig and I was already labeling myself a failure. How often do we mama’s do that? How often do we internalize the very false notion that motherhood, because it’s supposedly natural, should be second nature to us? How often do we punish ourselves when it is hard? 

Six weeks and two days later my daughter and I finally mastered breastfeeding. While I don’t remember each of the pages upon pages I logged into my mental Book of Failures by then anymore, I know it was already a fairly thick tome by Day 44 and it has only grown thicker with each year. 

Recently our family incubated chickens. When we moved them from their cozy and foodless incubator to their new brood I sat marveling at the miracle unfolding before my eyes. These little chicks, some of whom were less than 36 hours old, knew to immediately go to the food and water dishes to begin nourishing their bodies. They just knew and they just did it. I sat there staring at them and thinking, “What if, instead of feeling like a failure, I had been able to simply see, believe, and know that mothering is hard in many ways and that is the normal, the truth, and the okay? What if I had not decided I was a failure before my baby had even had her first diaper changed? 

What if as mama’s we could reject the cruelty we level at ourselves and what if instead we embraced the truth of it being normal and okay that it is hard? Are you ready to do that with me? Are you willing to throw away your Book of Failures? Are you ready to start writing a new book? One where you marvel at your capacity for so much hard. One where you demand help for the hard? One where you accept the hard as normal?*** One where the truth fills the pages, the truth that we are not failures?

Beautiful Mama, I see you struggling. I see you crying, screaming, raging desperate to not feel alone. I see you labeling and judging yourself. I know, I know. And I am here to tell you, to embrace you from afar, to tell you, YOU ARE NOT A FAILURE. 

You are beautiful, you are succeeding in so many ways day after day, hour after hour. I believe in you. I know this is so hard and there is so much in this world and society that does not support us. And I know you are doing your best. And that best of yours? It is enough. I promise. 

***A note: When I say to “accept the hard as normal”, I am really saying, to accept that it is normal that this is hard.