All Mothers Are Liars
The bow makes sense. The jeans?! Ugh.
Admit it: you love to give advice. You see a pregnant woman suffering in maternity skinny jeans and all you want to do is re-dress her into the Yoga pants she’ll come to know and love. You want to buy her a 10lb can of Metamucil and encourage her to start stockpiling frozen maxi-pads. Because with the gift of bearing children, there comes a deep desire to share the motherly knowledge you have acquired along the way. And also, with ‘the gift of bearing children’, you sometimes get ‘the gift of losing your filter’: The ‘inner voice’ that tells you to shut your face and leave that poor pregnant woman alone. Let’s be honest here. She doesn’t want to hear about the benefits of perineal massage in the Starbucks as she blissfully sips her latte in one of the few remaining peaceful moments she has left before Hell is unleashed.
Of course, 97.5% of mothers have their heart in the right place, meaning that, yes, 2.5 percent of mothers are complete assholes. That is a scientific fact. There is nothing that can be done about it except to break up with them immediately, if you happen to be ‘friends.’ (And don’t worry, asshole people eventually get really wizened and horrid looking like in The Picture of Dorian Gray. This is scientifically unconfirmed. It sounds about right though.)
But even those of us with their hearts in the right place can sometimes say the WORST thing possible. Let us provide the following example and translation:
You: “Oh, your son isn’t sleeping through the night? That must be awful. My daughter has always been a good sleeper. She sleeps like, 12 hours now. It’s kind of crazy.”
Your intention: I want this person to know that sleep IS possible. That one day it’s all going to work out and she’ll have a fantastic night’s sleep. We’re all in this together!
How she’s taking it: I’m a failure. I’m never going to sleep again. My life is over. I hate myself. My roots are growing in and my footwear is horrendous.
See how easily your good intentions have been misunderstood? But here’s the thing you’re forgetting:
You’re lying.
You don’t mean to. And yes, we do believe that your child is sort of sleeping but it took you a hell of a long time to make that happen and you forgot to mention that. You crossed out that little tidbit of info in your maternal memory bank because you don’t want to remember how you lost clumps of your hair and consistently told your husband that he was a douche face. You were stressed! Not sleeping is a form a torture. Look what happened to Lady Macbeth! Who wants to remember how hard it was when you can focus your energy on how awesome you feel that you only wake up once or twice now (which technically isn’t sleeping through the night, but never mind.)
So here’s the up side: Anytime another mother gives you information about her life that in turn makes you feel like you are FAILING MISERABLY as a parent just whisper under your breath: “she’s lying”. Because it’s true. She is lying. But not just to you, also to herself. And she doesn’t even know it. (And even if she’s not – who cares – you’ll feel better) So forgive her for not remembering what really happened and find comfort in the fact that there is a chemical in our brains that eliminates pain memory.
Because one day it WILL all work out. You will go to sleep and you will leave the house without Cheerios in your hair. You will once again find the matching socks to wear instead of matching a pair that just look kinda sorta similar. And, yes, you will one day wear a bra without flaps on the front – a bra that keeps your boobs pointing UP and not DOWN.
But at this point you should probably just offer to buy her a coffee because, seriously, you both deserve it. Just think how different life would have been for Lady Macbeth had someone just given her a hug and offered to buy her a mocha latte. A lot less drama that’s for sure.
xo S and A
As I’ve always suspected, any mother who seems to have it completely together is either on meds or is so tightly-wound that they are hanging on by their perfectly-manicured fingernails. No one has perfect kids or a perfect life – it just can’t be possible!! Children are too irrational (not in a bad way – they’re just learning to make their way in this world), and life is just not the smooth sailing we’d like it to be. If we’d all just be truthful about the challenges we feel everyday, and have a good giggle and maybe share a hug and a tear about the crap that we all go through, then we might just feel a little better about the job we’re doing as mothers. Samantha and Allana – you rock! You say it as it is and see it how it should be. Bravo!
Wow… sounds like my mother in law…
This is awesome. Being 16 weeks pregnant with my very first baby, all I get is unsolicited advice. While I try to think that its well intentioned, sometimes, I just want people to SHUSH. This was hilarious. Thanks for sharing it. :)
This was so needed. I’ve receives SO much advice recently that made me rethink my ability to be a mom.
This was great, I love how you guys tell the real story. It is encouraging to hear that we are all going through the same things even if that is not always the face we see.
Thanks for helping me keep my mouth shut. I am not typically an outgoing person, but when I see someone my age who is pregnant, I think “Wow, we are SOOOO much alike” (even though I’ve been pregnancy-free for 9 months now) and I want to tell her all sorts of “tricks”. I’ve been pretty successful in keeping my mouth shut so far, but this article should keep me quiet for the next few months. Yay for you guys!
Love it! I remember sobbing when my first wasn’t rolling over yet and the women in my yoga class blithely said all of their kids were genius rollers. Or something like that. ;) So silly!
It took me a loong time to forgive the mothers of the world for not telling me the truth about this whole birthing a child, living with a baby thing. Then I realized, denial is the only defense we have against losing the tiniest sliver of sanity that remains. Denial and wine, of course. They are forgiven.
I DO wish someone had surreptitiously slipped me a note about what can (and, in my case, did) happen to those muscles “down there” and how every time you sneeze or laugh too hard or run for whatever, you wish you were wearing a maxi pad, never mind panty liner!
For the rest, however, my lips are sealed ever since, decades ago, I asked a friend of a friend when her baby was due to be told, with a glare and icily — remarkably at the same time, that she wasn’t expecting.
So now, when I see a pregnant woman, I simply smile.
i love the tagline “eating over the sink” – This sums up my past 6 years – except one little thing – you can still be fat even if you eat over the sink …Anyways – I just posted about how much I enjoy lying – especially to my kids :)
We all do it.
The best pre-birth advice anyone ever gave me was that all new mothers lie their asses off. Best advice I ever got because let me tell you, the first year is so hard and it’s so easy to feel like a failure. Thanks for sharing.
I think the post-partum chemical wash that leads to lying about child-birth and child-rearing is nature’s means of guaranteeing the continuation of the species. If women knew the truth before pregnancy, it would never happen and the ants would take over the planet.
I LOVE your blog! :)))))
Not sure how much is intentional lying and how much is selective memory. If someone asks me about breastfeeding I can tell them my son & I had a very successful nursing relationship for 18 months. But it’s easy to forget that the first 3-4 days were the hardest part, and while the occasional nursing strike caused all kinds of panic at the time, I’ve practically forgotten when they happened and how long they lasted. I can tell you that my son, who is now 3, has gotten very good about using the toilet. But if you don’t ask how long it took to get him to this point I may leave out that it took him 8 months before he’d even consider pooping in the potty instead of his pants. And I’ve been a mother for less than 4 years. I can easily see how a mother of adult children could tell people her kids hit their milestones beautifully, without any serious problems, because 30 years later there are so many memories crowding out the frantic attempts at getting them to latch on, or how many pairs of poopy undies you had to debate throwing out or washing out.
well said chloe!! i nursed my daughter for 13 months, i wanted to nurse at least 1 1/2 years but i had to wean because i was prego. i remember it being painful during the first couple weeks its time consuming, hard work but only i can nurse my daughter and it is the best feeling in the world nursing her to sleep. and all honesty she was so easy to wean. I just gave her a couple of bottles of milk instead to put in place instead of nursing. i cant stand if a mom acts like motherhood is oh so perfect or if her kid never makes a peep when normaly a baby would cry. Hey , its a baby they cry. its a competitive world for some but i love my daughter, its tough to have every little thing clean all the time but i know my daughters well being is what is most important.i love nap time because i’m her one and only mommy it feels good that we put her to sleep , she goes to sleep on her own. i also get my mini mom time like now.
I recently had lunch with a friend I hadn’t seen since we both had kids, and as we took turns trying out to out-lie each other, I realized I was winning. Then I felt both wonderful and horrible at the same time.
I also realized we’d never actually get our kids together for that playdate we kept promising. I couldn’t risk the truths of my son’s dirty fingernails and fondness for Barbie dolls ever actually being exposed.
Turns out, it’s a whole lot easier just to lie to myself.
OH! YES. We lie. My poor lie is to my 2 1/2 daughter, that I will always come back. In context I just mean to the YMCA childcare after my treadmill battles…but the reality is I cannot guarantee her I will always come back and that quietly breaks my heart. I lost my mom when I was thirteen…so many echoes of missing her ‘could have been’ in my motherhood.
@Heather, I feel exactly the same way whenever my 2 1/2 yo daughter needs to be reassured that I’m coming back. I lost my mom when I was 12 and I know that sometimes mommies don’t come back. And so it quietly breaks my heart realize that she may have to experience that someday…I hope not until way, way after I had to learn that lesson. But you never know.
AWESOMESAUCE!!! You are the best. And now I know I’m not the only one who considers a night with only two or three ‘awakenings’ a full night sleep. Ha!
The follow up to this post should be ….And All Fathers Are Delusional. I remember after my second son was born, the child WOULD NOT SLEEP. After one particularly rough night, my crazy, sleep deprived brain thought, “pediatric ambien??????” Then, I went to work only to meet 2010′s Father of the Year who asked if my child was sleeping through the night. After replying, “No, my child doesn’t even try,” he responded that his child had been sleeping through the night since 4 weeks old. And then I realized, I bet my husband would say the same thing. Since my son was breastfed and slept next to me, my husband never got up. Never dealt with the baby. Just slept soundly and blissfully unaware that his son woke up 8 bazillion times a night to nurse. It wasn’t that the man was a liar. It was that he was just DELUSIONAL.
OF COURSE WE LIE. if parents told the truth to each other, about how balls-ass-hard it is to take care of a baby, there would be no people here to pay into social security for us when we are too old to drive, but are still insisting that we’re totally safe behind the wheel unlike *some* people. but i think you nailed it, it’s not so much the lies we tell each other as it is the lies we tell ourselves to keep from losing our damn minds. it isn’t malice, it’s just what you need to make it through the day. okay fine, sometimes it’s malice. mostly, i think it’s a misconception/myth that anyone has the first damn clue what they’re doing: we are ALL making this up as we go. some people have babies that sleep through the night, and then end up with a teenager who sniff glue, and some of us have babies that never stop crying no matter what, and then end up being valedictorians. or glue-sniffers, in which case, there really is no justice. but the point is, we all have to fool ourselves at least a little bit, in order to keep going.
http://shouldbethebeginning.com
Oh yes… you had me at “frozen maxi-pads.”
Wish I had known about the lying when I started out in the mother-hood!
Now 31 weeks with #3 I know better. And try really, really hard not to lie (too much) to those first-timers.
So glad I found your column.
I keep my mouth shut unless directly, specifically asked for my opinion or experience. (Well, plus, I have a blog, so I get it all out there.) Because I know I will sound like an a$$hole at some point. It’s inevitable.
well said katie!! i cant stand “moms who act like they oh their life is just oh so perfect.. i want to say who are you trying to fool. you couldn’t have said it better. i love my daughter more than anything but she does stress me out at times. nobody said parenting was going to be butterflies and giggles all the time. that is there is a thing called “me time”, that didnt come from nothing. i like real people/moms. it is incredibly annoying to act like you have no trouble in the world. everybody has issues. some more than others and some people are just better at hiding it. lol that is a good saying. and totally agree with what you were saying about not spending a fortune on birthdays. it isnt the $ that makes the birthday it is the time when your kids know how much you love them by getting them whatever or just by showing them what you put together for their special day.
I don’t have to lie about my kid. When I came home from the hospital my husband let me sleep (because the nurses would not) and he kept our new born baby awake for most of the day, Every time she tried to fall asleep he woke her up, the very first day she was home. That night he put her down to bed around 6 pm, and she slept through the night except for feeding times. That’s no lie, that’s foresight, effort, team work, and planning. It’s always easier for people to accuse you of lying than to think that you else might have found a way to get the results they want. It’s the standard “Hater” mindset that runs rampant here in America these days. “Oh, you MUST be lying, your life can’t be that good”… that’s fine, you can say I’m lying all you want. If you put in the effort that I put in, you wouldn’t have to lie either. Does that make me or my kid perfect? Not by any means what so ever, but to tell people not to listen to someone who hurt their feelings because “they’re probably lieing anyways” So great, now, instead of trying to get their secrets and do it for yourself, you just blow them off, and say “they are lieing,” so you don’t have to work harder and you can still feel good about being mediocre. Great Defense Mechanism BTW,
all i can say is – omg, this post is true and amazing.
here is a story of babies sleeping through the night that mirrors Sarah’s comment. I was approached by a gentleman when my second child was a few months old. He asked how it was to have the baby sleeping through the night. I looked at him as if he was from outer space and replied he isn’t sleeping through the night. I realized my husband had been telling people the babe was. Both children were breast fed and my husband had very little to do with them until they were toddlers, he had no clue.
hilarious! i make the effort , when asked to tell the whole story, it makes every victory even sweeter:) breast feeding , potty trainning, teaching to read…. its hard work and its NEVER easy.
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WOW! AGREED, and that WAS needed…..I am going throu a very tough time recently and it leaves me consistently judged and rejudged, and all the time, CONSISTANTLY CONFLICTING and it is very difficult to remember the good things as a Mom I do, or Did, as the case may be. It is easier sometimes to be the Judger of other people, Woman, Mothers, and to make a one way or the other idea or approach, easily forgetting that A.) you have NO idea WHAT or HOW you would act because you have NOTHING to relate it to, so that means your just guessing or B.)you as you said, we as mothers, forget, about how hard it was to get to the place where we can grab that little bit of happines, i.e, glorious sleep…..before we move on the next challenge or hurdle. It was excellent to read someone make sense of and ok, to be, normal. That it is OK to NOT FIT into a specific cookie cutter mold. I think most mothers, maybe not all, ok, but MOST, are just doing the best that they can, when they can. Thank you for reminding me about the normal, or being a Mom. :) You guys are fantastic and had me crackin up. :)
Why is this site so full of manicure haters?
So true! Love it.
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[...] No problem. It took one stern conversation with you and BOOM! Potty trained. New Flash: YOUR MOTHER IS A LIAR. Full blown lie. Forgive her. It’s not her fault that she’s a super huge liar, it’s [...]