A True Mom Confession

The Huffington Post:

Motherhood didn’t hit me right away. It was exhilarating yet not quite real when I felt the first kicks in my belly…exciting yet hazy during our monthly sonograms and birthing classes. Not even after delivery, as I stared at two tiny bassinets wondering how the heck I was supposed to feed two wailing newborns at the same time, did I truly feel like a MOM.

No, my revelation occurred on a stifling summer day four months later as I scanned the aisles of my supermarket in the middle of the afternoon. There I was, looking lovely with my unwashed hair in a ponytail, wearing the only pants I owned that fit, loading up my shopping cart with the usual diapers, wipes, and monster cans of Similac. Somehow amid the elevator music and the glare of the fluorescent lights, the funk of sleep deprivation and raging hormones fell away and the stark reality hit me. Like a truck.

This is NOT what I signed up for.

How I got from that day to my current state of mind is a much longer story. But suffice it to say, I took it one day at a time. Baby steps, if you will.

Along the way, as I started to research what would ultimately become my website.

I discovered that I was not alone in my shame for feeling a bit deflated by some of the banal realities and responsibilities of motherhood. I was horrified that I wasn’t overflowing with joy (!) 24 hours a day. Isn’t that what being a new mom is all about?

The answer is a resounding no, according to family therapists and psychologists I have interviewed in recent months. That shell-shocked, overwhelmed feeling affects up to 80% of women after giving birth, according to Mental Health America, the nation’s leading mental health advocacy organization. And it is different from the clinical postpartum depression that affects 10-20% of women. But new moms are more apt to hear about mood disorders requiring medical intervention than the normal angst and insecurities that stem from the transition to motherhood.