After spending yet another long weekend hanging out at the playground and taking long family walks together, I feel like I’m in mama-heaven. Looking at my kids — who are currently and inexplicably playing with a large piece of styrofoam because who needs real toys? — it occurs to me just how drastically my life has changed since I was promoted to “Mommy.”
Gone are the days of weekend-long camping trips with friends and more beer and hot dogs than anyone needed. Gone are the days of cocktails at ungodly hours and mini skirts that were more “mini” than “skirt.”
A few months ago, my friends and I were discussing our possible New Year’s Eve plans together over nachos and drinks. I have a distinct memory of this otherwise unremarkable night: as I watched my friends order another pint of beer or bottle of wine while I checked my phone for messages from my husband about my babies for the 7,019th time, I realized their idea of a fun night out no longer matched my own.
Pre-motherhood, a night out generally began well beyond the setting sun and ended with me flopping onto my child-free bed in the early hours of the morning; exhausted but carefree, and in for a short but blissful night of uninterrupted sleep.
Now, an evening out starts around 7 — assuming that I can’t convince people to meet up earlier — and involves going out to a place that doesn’t crank the music too loud for my old-person ears. These evenings, which are few and far between, typically come to a close with me bowing out early so that I can sneak into my kid’s room for a goodnight snuggle.
Come to think of it, I’m rarely out after sunset anymore; evenings are for bedtime stories, cuddles, PJ pants and herbal tea in my vintage cup and saucer. I’m a 70-year-old hipster, evidently, and I’m not even a little sad about that.
On this particular night — the one with the nachos and me missing my kids as we discussed New Year’s Eve plans — my inner twenty-something self was looking forward to ringing in the iconic evening with my old friends, with whom I have not celebrated New Year’s since before the birth of my first baby…who is now 7. The plan was to spend the evening at a friend’s house, which admittedly suited my homebody-esque lifestyle quite nicely. After lamenting the fact that childcare would be nearly impossible to find, my husband and I were graciously invited to bring my kids along.
That’s when the seemingly wonderful idea started to give me cause to pause.
I’d never taken my kids to an adult party before. I envisioned them falling asleep under a pile of perfumey coats in someone else’s unfamiliar bedroom while grownups in the other room would, presumably, become increasingly rowdy as champagne flowed freely, and I felt a hefty twinge of mom guilt.
I wasn’t completely deterred, however, until I found out that the party itself wouldn’t even start until after 9. As per my previously mentioned ideals for a solid night out as a parent, I don’t have to tell you how unappealing a 9 pm start time is. My body is absolutely not conditioned for staying up past 10, and as for bringing my kids out that late?
That’s a hard pass.
It was at that moment, the moment I politely declined yet another night out, that I realized that I’d changed a lot more than I thought I had.
The “Ball and Chain” of Parenthood
There are some things that my wonderful friends, most of whom are childless, just don’t understand about being a mom — and that’s okay. They mean well: they’re amazing people, they love kids, they are super flexible when it comes to group get-togethers, and I love the snot out of them — but they aren’t parents.
They don’t get how real the struggle is when it comes to keeping overtired, cranky kids happy in unfamiliar territory, with no other children to distract them from their boredom — which, as every parent knows, reaches catastrophic levels pretty fast under those conditions.
They don’t get how hard it is to actually enjoy having an adult conversation when you’re secretly wondering where your younger, wilder child has wandered off to in this big, non-child-proofed home full of oh-so-many breakable things or creative ways to accidentally kill himself.
Or how exhausting it’s going to be when you get home, where you will then have to wrangle your kids unwillingly into their cozy pj’s and coerce them to go the heck to sleep.
Or how early those overtired kids will wake up unfairly early the next day with their crankiness renewed.
While I love my childless friends, it’s hard for them to understand how tethered parents are to their children’s every waking (and sleeping) need. It’s an experience that you just can’t grasp until you join the parenting club.
It’s okay though, it’s not much of a club. None of us have time to meet up for bowling or anything anyway.
Growing Up
It wasn’t until recently that I realized that the lives my friends and I live are actually vastly different from one another. It happened so slowly and sneakily, evolving over years and years of differing life choices, that I didn’t really notice it until the New Year’s discussion. It was then that I looked around the table at my friends and couldn’t remember how I’d gotten there. When did I get old? When did I stop being fun? I wonder what my kids are doing right now?
It’s not like my life changed and theirs didn’t — they’re not still taping Backstreet Boys posters to their walls or buying outrageous bongs or overpriced bottles of vodka in the shape of a skull or ANY of the silly things we all did in our twenties. We all grew up.
We just grew in different ways.
While I was feeling like I never really fit into this big, scary world until the second that I became a booger-wiping, owie-fixing, monster-shooing mommy, my childless friends were out there too, fitting in and growing up in a totally different but awesome way.
While I was at home, concernedly Googling the complete colour spectrum of newborn poop, they were out sampling charcuterie boards and $20 dollar cocktails at trendy bars I’d never heard of.
While I was spending my Sundays playing house or trucks with my kids, they were having brunch in the mountains, discussing their yearly European vacation plans and comparing the latest financial trends over mimosas.
While they were chatting expertly about the ins and outs of Bitcoin, I was quietly Googling the term in the corner.
We all have savings and stocks and goals in life, but while my childfree friends spend their time and money travelling, learning, and exploring the world, I spend nearly all of mine changing diapers and reading the same board book over and over.
I’ve never been happier, though. I hope they’re just as happy as I am; I wouldn’t know. It’s so hard to find the time to see them these days.
Moms Just Wanna Have Fun
There was a stretch of time when I was frustrated about no longer being invited out to things that, as I reflect now, I would probably have said no to in the first place. After all, I don’t drink anymore and while I love cheese, a charcuterie board is really not much without a nice wine to pair it with. I no longer really enjoy, nor can I afford, lavish trips around the world and expensive brunches every weekend.
When these invitations started to wane in my early days as a mother, I was admittedly more than a little putout.
But when it comes down to brass tacks, I’m happier chasing my pyjamaed kids around the “lava” floor in the living room on a Saturday evening than I ever was sipping overpriced cocktails in a noisy club or sitting in a stuffy airplane with strangers.
Parenting just changes you. Parents always tell you that before you have kids, too, but you can never fully understand it until you become one. I knew before I had kids that I was never going to be Edith Bunker — you’re still “you” as a parent, but everything else changes.
Literally everything.
Being a mom is all-consuming, and I do it willingly, but it’s exhausting. My childless friends have the energy and time presumably to do things like getting up to go skating on New Year’s Day after whooping it up in a noisy, vibrant party the night before. My New Year’s Eve, on the other hand, was spent eating take-out with my little family, watching Ghostbusters for no reason at all, and conking out at 11:30 pm — which is mega-late for a mom with young kids.
And it was one of the best evenings of my life. Who’d have thought that would be me one day? I sure didn’t.
Time and Money
There’s no question that my childless friends have more time to themselves: more time for self-care, more time for following their dreams, more time for their careers, more time to sleep in, more time to work out, and more time to travel.
More time for their friends — I miss having time for my friends and am plagued with guilt that some of those friendships have weakened over time.
As much as I love being a mother, I think not having children is also a freaking fantastic way to live life, partly because of the free time that you never know you’re missing until it’s long gone, but also because of the incredible opportunities that time must provide for self-discovery and personal achievements. I applaud anyone who makes this decision, and there’s not enough praise for people who choose to serve their communities and the people they love over having families.
I often think about what I would be doing if I had chosen a different path in life. I have a secret, ever-fading dream about living alone in a tiny studio apartment in Manhattan, where I survive off of my exciting nightlife and a diet of ramen noodles, and where I earn a meagre income writing novels that feed my soul.
As I grow older and my children grow along with me, that unrealistic dream feels further and further away. When I was younger, it was my idea of having it all in life; freedom, fulfillment, friends, and excitement.
It was my idea of perfection. My idea of perfection changed, however, the second I looked into my first baby’s perfect little face for the first time.
Predictably Imperfect
My evenings now may not be filled with excitement or extravagance, but they are peaceful and predictable. I end them every night by quietly slipping into my sleeping kids’ room, where I brush the hair from their faces and straighten out their blankets. I restore their well-loved stuffies to their rightful places beside them. I sit for a minute just breathing them in, knowing that this time is short and one day I won’t be permitted in their rooms at all.
In these moments I’m so grateful for them, and for the incredible gift it is to be a stay-at-home mom, and any stress I felt during the day melts away. In these moments, I’m absolutely in love with my daily routine.
We live in a world in which theoretically, women can have it all. We can have fulfilling, lucrative careers, we can raise beautiful little families, and we can do both. For some, this works out great. I tried the lucrative career path, but in my heart, I always knew something was missing.
Now I know what my heart was missing.
Becoming a mother changes you to your very core. Your body changes, your mindset changes, and you will be gifted with superpowers that you didn’t know you could possess or harness. It’s okay to mourn the loss of your old life, your old dreams and aspirations. It’s okay to wonder and put out those “what ifs.”
Sometimes I don’t recognize the woman looking back at me in the mirror. But I do admire her — finally. These days, I am more interested to see where she is going to go next than I am in where she’s been. Motherhood changes everything, but who you become when you have children will surprise you.
The new, tired face looking back at you in the mirror might seem like a stranger, but she’s capable of so much more than you ever thought possible. It’s okay to mourn your old life — just don’t forget to embrace your new life.
Love it — with abandon.
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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.
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