Not too long ago, I wrote about 5 things I didn’t expect about becoming a stay at home mom… but recently (this last month or so) another has crept up on me, and judging from what I have heard from some other moms I know, I think some of you may be able to relate.

I feel like a failure. Pretty much daily.

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I’m not sure how it happened. I have always been confident in my ability to do my job, whatever job it was. I started babysitting when I was 10, and have worked with kids almost daily since then, in every form possible. I loved my teaching career. I felt like I was good at it. I relished the days where a kid who worked so hard would just “get” something. Sweet notes from parents and drawings from students showing their appreciation would make me glow, inside and out. A boss once told me long ago that I was “someone who would achieve excellence because you expect it of yourself.” Those words stuck with me, because they are so painfully true.

But now here I sit… with a precious 8 month old who can’t tell me whether or not I am doing a good job. It is just me and him most of the time, and I take the bumps in the road very personally. Baby won’t nap? Fail. Baby cries for no apparent reason? Fail. Baby falls over for the 100th time and hits his head on the hardwood because he is learning to sit on his own, and I didn’t catch him quick enough? Fail. Fail. Fail.

Maybe it is because my love language is words of affirmation and, well, LL can’t speak yet. Maybe it is because every single day my “job description” is different, and I really thought we would have found our groove by now. Maybe it is the pure and complete exhaustion that comes from not having a single night of uninterrupted sleep in 8 months. Who knows. But I have been feeling pretty darn low lately. Feeling like maybe LL would be better off at “school” all day. Like maybe I wasn’t cut out for this after all. Sometimes I am not sure how I am going to get to 5:00 when Mr. Lion gets home, because I am so. very. tired. And of course, LL picks 4-5pm to pretty much just scream since he has decided afternoon naps are overrated. Every day. So there’s that.

So, fellow tired Mommas, I just wanted to share. Whether you stay at home all day or whether you have to leave your precious baby in the care of another while your full time job leads you elsewhere, we all have our own set of struggles, and we are all doing the best we can. We will feel like failures at times. And then we will see that little one smile at us…and even though they can’t say it with words yet, that toothless grin will remind us that everything we do, whether it is wrong, or right, or some crazy combination of the two, we do it for them. That there is incredible joy in this new and ever-changing job description…and that it is okay to figure it out as we go.  They are well fed. They are warm and safe. They are thriving, in spite of our perceived failures. And when we pull ourselves up from the overwhelmed haze we will realize that, despite the exhaustion, and despite the feeling of defeat when the day doesn’t turn out as we had hoped, that maybe, just maybe, we are thriving too.