5 things you should never say to a mother

Motherhood is sacred in a way.

Each has their own and you’re not allowed to touch it. You can only talk good about it or the not good better be going to the judge.

Mothers try hard everyday to … survive, and to keep things … — to keep them; keep plates, keep widows, keep neat floors, keep clothes, keep food in the fridge, keep the bills small, keep the kids happy. It’s all about surviving and keeping, or keeping and surviving.

They’re hard workers.

Let’s make one thing clear. Most of them would not be that hard workers if they had a choice. They don’t try so hard out of their altruistic nature — they just have the child or the children and they have no choice but to take care of them.

Let’s not romanticize motherhood and let’s not make mothers into saints. If she could afford a nanny or a house keeper, she’d have one, that’s all I’m saying.

But let’s be respectful and reasonable. Here’s 5 things you should never say to a mother:

1. “Why don’t you…?” Anything starting with these three words is most likely not a good idea. E. g. “Why don’t you clean while the baby sleeps?” “Why don’t you just put him to sleep?”
2. “Have you fed him?” There are only three plausible answers to this: a) yes, b) tried it & c) no, he isn’t hungry, and forcing her to explain that to you is unreasonable waste of her time.
3. “I think he’s too small.” That’s just another way of saying you don’t think the mother is taking proper care of her child, and 99.99999% of the time that person has no way of knowing that anyway. She’s just talking out of her hat.
4. “He doesn’t look at all like his father.” Need I explain? The parents don’t actually care that much about who the child looks like. It’s not a competition. Please don’t make it into one.
5. “Cherish this time while he’s still small.” This one’s a real guilt tripper. There are times and days and even weeks that are hard to cherish and moms would rather just forget about, even if you insist they long to go back when the child has grown up. They might long to go back, but that’s mostly because of the beautifying effect that time has on memories.

We should take realistic view on motherhood. Moms-to-be do not benefit of being scared by horror stories and warned of years of agony, and they also don’t benefit from motherhood being romanticized to them into being nothing but quiet cuddles, cute pictures and compliments.

Photo by Johny Goerend on Unsplash

When I was expecting our first child the social media told me about a number of very cute and amazing things I was to experience with my baby and that I would no doubt cherish and take a lot of cute pictures about to later cry over that sweet time that passed…

Things like the so-called “newborn scrunch”, gazing at the baby in the hospital after giving birth with a loving, peaceful gaze (those women must have had one of the strong epidurals), or gazing at the baby while he sleeps peacefully in his beautiful 1000$ cot at home.

I did see the newborn scrunch — it simply wasn’t so cute at 4 am when I was waking up for the fifth time during that night, nor was I amazed by it the next day as I was trying to change a blowout diaper without getting feces all over myself. I just didn’t have the time to cherish it, let alone take a picture of it.

As for gazing at the baby in the hospital, that I did. And I did love the baby, but my feelings of love were mixed with the terror of having to go home and take care of that baby for the next 20 years while I actually wasn’t quite sure of what was the right way to change the diaper.

I did also stare at my baby while he slept, sometimes even with love and affection, but the majority of the times that I checked on him sleeping, I was just checking that he’s still breathing, because I’ve heard that babies sometimes …. just stop breathing while they’re sleeping.

So is it possible for us to keep it real?