The Ultimate Motherhood Report Card

HA, yeah that doesn’t really exist.  I’m so sorry, that was total click bait designed to get you to this point.  Hopefully you can move past this slightly nefarious move and continue reading.  The truth is, there is no ultimate motherhood report card and this has proven to be extremely problematic for my personality.  You see, I am the type of person who requires metrics, who thrives on meeting and yes beating deadlines.  I may have been one of the few children who awaited school progress reports with the same anticipation and glee that a five year old child awaiting Santa on Christmas Eve feels. As far as color personalities are concerned, I am as green as they come, as in HULK green. 

When we brought home my first-born child I was certain motherhood would be just like running a project in my former career.  Like any project, I would expect there to be a few delays, a few minor hiccups but nothing I couldn’t master with proper planning and scheduling.  When my nurse handed me the medical baby book with vaccinations and fact sheets I quickly picked out the charts and graphs marking his height, weight, head circumference, etc. These things even put your child into percentiles! I knew right then, that I was going to be OK if not stellar at this motherhood thing.  I was after all the master of all things charted and graphed.  I was definitely one of those people who said, “when I have kids I won’t ever. . ." Oh my, how things quickly went awry.

The very first problem I ran into was that my child’s weight was in the bottom 20^th percentile and his head was in the top 90^th percentile.  Had I still been wearing the hat of project manager, I would have firstly fired someone and then made the proper corrections and got my “project” back in line.  I was however no longer a project manager and the only person in the room to blame was me.  My “project” was also not going to be pushed into any sort of line.  As a matter of fact as he grew into the beautiful child he is today he made sure to keep things interesting by bouncing every where but on his growth chart lines.  So, from the very beginning I was quickly realizing that I might have underestimated motherhood and overestimated my own abilities.  I would eventually learn that children are the master of humbling a person.

My two "off the chart" boys

Unfortuantely, as quick as I was to realize that I may have been off on my assumptions about the similarities between my current and my past profession, I was not so quick to find a solution for disconnecting my happiness from metrics.  In fact, I still struggle daily to accept the fact that I will never have a progress report, a report card, a mid year review, or any other form of evaluation.  Because there was no reporting system, I managed to create my own metric system based on Pinterest boards, Instagram photos, and Facebook feeds. This was a system created on unrealistic expectations, falsehoods and misrepresentations but at the time, it was all I had to compare my "output".

As mothers and as women, we seem to have a compulsive need to compare ourselves to others.  Sometimes, this can be a healthy thing, a positive thing.  It may motivate you to lose weight, or spend more time away from screens.  Most of the time however it is damaging, destructive, and just plain wrong. When we use our social media, we tend to portray ourselves in the best possible light.  We post pictures of the kids with their kale smoothies on the way to church.  We don’t post the picture moments after when the toddler pitched his smoothie all over big brother because. . .  Kale Smoothie! We choose selfies that show as few of our wrinkles and other perceived flaws as possible.  We rave about our husband doing some mundane house chore but never share pictures of the clothes he laid NEXT TO, not in the hamper.  My point is social media is what we want others to see, it is the best of you but it’s not all of you and yet as women, we are comparing this best to our worst.  We are setting ourselves up for failure.  I realize that with my personality, I may take this to the extreme but as a mom who has surrounded herself with some pretty amazing moms and women, I know this is something all personalities deal with to some extent.

That being said, I am here to tell you that if you love your child, if you would lay down your life for your child, if you would give him or her the last breath in your body then you are passing motherhood.  You my dear, sweet, momma are doing it right.  You may not have kale in the brownies, your floors may be littered with cheerios and legos, and your husband’s jeans may be in the washer for the third time because you keep forgetting to dry them before they stink.  All that can be going on in your home and you are still rocking this thing called motherhood.  I write this because I know so many of us are constantly aiming to live up to unrealistic standards leaving us feeling unaccomplished, unhappy, and unfulfilled.  The truth is as mothers we’ve already done something no man could ever do, we have given birth, we’ve grown a human and delivered it into this world.  We love this human more than we could ever express and it is time we show ourselves a little of that love.

Take a moment to look in the mirror and say to yourself, I am one AMAZING woman and mother.