My husband called me after work the other night and asked me what I was up to, I said, “oh the usual just getting kids ready for bed getting teeth brushed and such”. He said, “oh good job honey, you’re a good mom”, Normally after receiving a compliment like that I might quickly respond with something like, “oh brother it’s just brushing their teeth, you don’t have to be a good mom to do that”. But this time I thought a little before I responded and then I replied confidently, “thank you, you are right, I am a good Mom”.

Playing House

As a child, the dream I wanted to achieve in life more than anything else was to be a wife and a mother. My plan was to marry young and have as many darling little children as humanly possible. It wasn’t a question of if I would be a mom it was when. I wasn’t just going to be any mom I was gonna be “THE BEST MOM EVER!” You know the kind of mom who always lets their kids have what they want, the kind who spends long hours listening to them, the kind who is patient and has never-ending fun ideas to keep them happy.

I had it all figured out in my head, perfectly planned. By age 5 my older sister and I already knew how to nurse a baby (Or I guess baby doll I should say). We had Cabbage Patch Dolls and would lift up our shirts and put them under, 2 minutes later we would take them out. (because that is what we saw our mom and aunts doing to feed our baby siblings and cousins). It was super easy to take care of my baby doll. She always did what I wanted when I “told” her to do it.

I’m not exactly sure where my initial desire to be a mom sparked from. I can only remember always only ever wanting to do so. I thought I had the perfect mother (except of course when I was a teenager because then all of the sudden my mom didn’t know anything) so why wouldn’t I want to do exactly what she was doing?

I grew up in a rather large extended family. My dad was #2 of 6 children and My mom was #4 of 12. All but 2 of my mom’s siblings lived within an hour or so of our house growing up. We spent a LOT of time together. Out of the 12 children my grandma bore, they grew up, married and eventually produced a whopping 80 kids amongst them (that’s a lot of cousins to play with).

Things were never boring around grandmas house. We got together for large family dinners quite often. The adults would talk and all of us kids would explore, imagine, laugh, play, and fight, non-stop. Sleepovers with cousins happened regularly. In fact, I would dare to say some of my cousins slept at our house more than their own.

life was easy.

life was happy.

life was good.

Watching my grandma, mom, and aunts be mothers I could see that it wasn’t that hard (I mean how could it be they had pretty great kids;) I mean we would get a little unruly at times but with a little disciplining, and some extra chores we were as cooperative as ever. (at least so it was from my perspective)

Years later…

As the years and decades went on I found myself married to the man of my dreams. I didn’t get married as early as I had planned but that was ok because in my head I still had plenty of time to have all the children my little heart desired.

From my husband’s perspective, the family was extremely important still, but he had one brother and one sister, and 2 cousins that he occasionally got together and played with.
During our engagement, I told my husband my dream of having at least 12 children (like my grandma) his eyes seemed to grow as big as dinner plates.
In his mind, he could not even possibly imagine having children let alone a dozen or more.
Ultimately we came to an agreement on having 1 child at a time and taking it from there.

We agreed on waiting a year after we were married to start our family. Almost exactly 1 year and 9 months later our oldest daughter was born. After being induced, (because I was 2 weeks past my due date) and a long hard 24-hour labor, our beautiful baby girl was in our arms.
Labor proved to be a breeze compared to nursing. This was nothing like nursing a plastic baby doll. My baby never seemed to stop crying she wanted to nurse for hours on end. Over the weeks she lost weight instead of gaining.

Cracked and bleeding nipples were not in my game plan.

Finding out I would never hormonally be able to produce enough milk for my child was not in my game plan.

Supplementing with what I read to be “forbidden formula” was definitely NOT in my game plan.

But with that being said, that is exactly how it happened for me.
I was still of course smitten with her tiny fingers and toes and seeing her contagious smile made all those hard moments somehow worth it. Being a mom was proving to be just as rewarding as I had dreamt it would be, as the months went on she proved to be a beautiful, sweet, enchanting little baby.

12 months later on a drive to a new city to move into a new apartment, I broke the news to my husband that we were proudly expecting baby number 2! I was pregnant again! Somehow, after I told him this exciting news his reaction didn’t match mine. He said, “oh really?”. I could feel the weight of the stress in his words.
But nonetheless, After a long nine months of pregnancy our oldest son made his appearance. His beautiful olive skin tone and a huge mouth, he was a natural at nursing (it was nothing like the experience I had with my first.) He was the most somber, tender baby determined to reach milestones quickly. 12 months later baby number 3 was in utero. And so this process seemed to naturally repeat itself until we had our last baby #6. Realizing 12 children was not in my logical or desired future I was happy with the little family we had created together.

And life was a breeze,

and motherhood was the easiest thing I have ever experienced, just like I had imagined ever since I was a little girl.

And my marriage and children are perfect.

And we all lived happily ever after…

The End

wait, wait, wait…

let’s back up a little bit (cue the rewind button).

HA! HA! HA!

Hopefully, I made you smile and you realized right away that this was not at all the end of my story.

Reality Check

I mean looking back at my Mom’s experience from a child’s eyes, she had it pretty easy. She was a natural mother. Yes she worked hard and occasionally I saw her sad or experience difficulty but overall she seemed to have it together. And I never really thought about exactly how to be a mom I just figured it would come easily for me as it had for her.

Many years later as she was visiting me and my 3 kids, she apologized to me for being a crazy mom that made a lot of mistakes. Immediately when she said those words to me I was taken back. I thought to myself, “what is she talking about? I never looked at her like those words she identified herself as being”. “Mom I don’t know what you mean, you were the best mom to us”. She laughed a little and quickly said, “Well I am glad you have forgotten so easily the many mistakes I made as a young mother”.

After our conversation, I began to think back to my childhood, was I completely oblivious? Was I forgetting all the many things my mom had done wrong raising me and my siblings? I could remember her yelling at us, and occasionally lecturing us and teaching us what we should or should not be doing. I called my sister and she reassured me that I was right, Mom was amazing and she did her job as our mother to us perfectly.

So if my mom who I thought was the best mom in the world thought she was a lot less than that, how was I going to be able to be half the mom she was? How was I going to be the best mom in the world to my kids? Was this even a possibility?

I am sure I am not alone when I say that being a mom is extremely rewarding and at the same time the hardest thing I have ever done in my whole life.

When the kids are little it is physically demanding they need your every second every minute. When they start talking they start to need you emotionally too. All of a sudden you are responsible for not just your own happiness and success but for every other human in the house.

This gets exhausting!

Some days I want to run away,

somedays I want to scream,

some days I want to be invisible and not to be needed by ANYONE!!!

But every day, no matter how I feel, I do the same thing over and over again because I love them.

I am always needed, always wanted, and sometimes, after all, I do for everyone it can feel like I am hated because I didn’t end up making every single person happy.

It can seem as though as soon as I get one person taken care of, another person needs my attention. Usually, they all need my attention at once. If one of them is acting out while we are in public I can immediately feel the piercing judging eyes of those people around me thinking, “what kind of a mom is she?”, or “why did she bring her kids here?” Or even, “she should learn to discipline her children better”, or “she should do things this way and then her kids would not act like that”, ETC, ETC. (You get the point right?)

Having come in contact with a multitude of mothers over the years I have come to find out that there is no one RIGHT way to be the BEST MOM IN THE WORLD,

Each mom who is doing her best to keep her head above water and loving her children (notice I didn’t say always liking them) day in and day out is automatically doing that naturally. It comes with the territory.

YOU and I ARE the BEST MOMS IN THE WORLD to our own children, in our own individual unique ways.

News Flash! -A common courtesy reminder

It wasn’t by chance that you ended up with the children you did, and It wasn’t by chance that they were sent to you to be their mother. God doesn’t work like that.

There is no coincidence in God’s plan.

The children you have need the unique qualities that you have within you to learn the things they need to make it here in this life.

They need your personal love that only you can distinctly give them.

They need your one of a kind perspective.

They need your inspired guidance and continual yelling motivation to learn the difference between right and wrong.

The only thing your child needs is YOU, just the way you are.

Now to help you out a little I have compiled a list of a few things that your child and/or children DON’T need… It can be easy to get sucked into a reality that we are not good mothers if we don’t live up to a certain checklist.

They don’t need a mom who is put together from head to toe daily

They don’t need a mom who always gives them what they want (unless it helps you keep your sanity)

They don’t need a mom who is always happy, and always has a positive attitude

They don’t need a mom who makes a homemade dinner every night

They don’t need a mom who is a size 4 and looks identical to their 16-year-old daughter

They don’t need a mom who never yells

They don’t need a mom who keeps her house clean 24/7

They don’t need a mom who always uses her imagination and makes every day a fun-filled adventure.

They don’t need a mom who never gets tired, and who at the end of the day always has long personal conversations with them individually.

They don’t need a mom who has a perfect storybook relationship with her spouse

They don’t need a mom who packs their lunch and puts a personalized note in it every day.

They don’t need a mom who LOVES Diet Coke but doesn’t drink it because she cares what the neighbors might think.

They don’t need a mom who doesn’t take time to do the things she personally enjoys doing, such as exercising, shopping, getting hair done, hiking, tanning, (you get the point)

They don’t need a mom who always asks their opinions and always does what they want.

They don’t need a mom who wears a bra all day every day.

They don’t need a mom that doesn’t let them watch a cartoon or movie so you can get a much-needed nap

They don’t need a mom who does the dishes every night before bed.

They don’t need a mom who always says the kindest words and never lets a swear word accidentally slip through her lips.

They do need you just the way you are.

The way to be the Best Mom in the world is to JUST BE YOU!

But get rid of that mom guilt, it doesn’t come from God. God doesn’t prompt mothers to be better by sending them constant messages of guilt.

He doesn’t help us become the person we long to be by constantly nagging us that we are not doing everything or being everything all the time.

He doesn’t work that way. He works by way of love, he speaks to us by peace, he guides us gently and sweetly.

He is proud when you do the best you can with what you have personally been given to work with.

What does a great Mom look like

Some days being a great mom that looks like staying in your PJs with peanut butter smeared down your shirt, the house a disaster with 27 loads of dirty laundry to do, and 5 loads of clean laundry that never got put away still crumbled up on your bed.

Somedays that means lunch came from Mc Donalds and dinner came from Pizza Hut.

Somedays that means you put your kids to bed at 7 and tell them not to come out of their rooms or they are going to personally meet the wicked witch of the west.

Somedays that means that you let them crawl all over you in bed after you slept in for 2 hours later than you planned.

Somedays it means you spent hours on end on the phone catching up with your sisters who you miss like crazy.

Somedays it means you let them watch cartoons all day long.

Somedays it means you take off for a few days on a much-needed girl trip to relax and get rejuvenated.

Somedays that means you take them to Chuck E. Cheese and spend way too much money on ongoing entertainment for them so you can just sit down and watch them have a blast.

Somedays it means the only thing they had to pack in their lunch for school was saltines, pretzels sticks and the heal of bread that was at the bottom of the bread bag.

Somedays that means that you yelled too much and said sorry at the end of the night when you realized they were already sleeping in their bed.

Somedays that means that you did their science project for them for the 3rd year in a row and they won again.

Somedays that means you got dressed and wore makeup and rocked that new pair of Gap jeans you could finally squeeze into after working your butt off and eating healthy for weeks on end.

Somedays that means you told them you had to poop but really just sat in the bathroom on the toilet and browsed Instagram and Pinterest for no reason at all.

Somedays that means you played with them and laughed and laughed and imagined with them for hours on end.

Somedays that means you do everything to perfectly celebrate birthdays and holidays and everyone has a blast.

Somedays that means you forgot to buy your son new underwear that fits him and he is still wearing his old ones that are three sizes too small.

Somedays that means you snuggled with them on the couch and read all 47 library books they picked out at the library earlier that day.

Somedays that means you made a fancy dinner and even got the table set so they could sit down and tell you it was the most disgusting thing they have ever eaten in their whole lives.

Somedays that means you kiss your husband and show your kids how much you love him by the way you treat him and serve him.

Somedays that means you lose your temper with every other word that comes out of your mouth, only to retract those words moments later.

Somedays it means hugging your teen daughter and letting her cry uncontrollably in your arms because of girl drama at school.

Somedays it means spending all day cleaning and working putting together a killer Birthday party exactly the way they wanted it.

MOST days that means that when you look at them as they sleep you are filled to the brim with love and appreciation that you are so blessed to get to be their mom.

Whatever your days look like they need you and only you loving them the way only you can.

And that is how it is done, that is the way you are already achieving “great mom” status, moment by moment, day by day doing what you already do.

So CONGRATULATIONS!!!!

YOU ARE THE BEST MOM IN THE WHOLE WORLD!!!!

xo

Sara

What inspires you as a mother?