All the commercials & all the reality shows & all the magazines make motherhood look so absolutely adorable, perfect and happy. It is actually NONE of that. And I’m not exaggerating. I mean, NONE. It’s not adorable, it’s not perfect and it’s rarely happy. It’s stressful, hectic and insane. Arguing with a 3 year old is the definition of insanity. And I find myself doing that DAILY.
Wanna be a mom?? Let’s review some facts …. Gone are the days of sleeping in. GONE. Despite what your husband promises you. GONE. Gone are the days of perfectly coiffed hair, adorable, stain-free outfits & languid lunches, with giggling girlfriends. GONE GONE GONE.
BUT, if you like frazzled, sleepless nights and hurried showers followed by mismatched outfits & no time for eating your own breakfast, well, you’re in luck! Perhaps motherhood is for you. Do you like poop, piss and puke? Oh, you do? Well, then, sign up right here – because we have plenty of that to go around!
We’ll skip right past pregnancy where shit, piss & puke are a regular occurrence, and we can fast forward to you having the baby & having a gaping hole for a vagina, (well, unless you have my OB/GYN who will stitch you up with an extra “virgin” stitch if you ask real nicely, or your hubby slips him a fifsky.) Or, perhaps you’ll be lucky enough to have major abdomnial surgery and get a c-setion! Good News: Your baby will have a nice, round head! Bad news: You’re connected to a catheter for 3 days & you can’t laugh or roll out of bed without feeling like your intestines are going to fall out for 14 days post surgery!!!!
No seriously, there are some upsides to being a mother …but, hmm … right now, I’m at a loss. I’m sorry, I’m looking through the Victoria’s Secret catalog at udder covers for my 36D’s!!! Before I gave birth I had B’s. Perfectly pert B’s – the kind that looked perfect in every shirt WITHOUT a bra. They swelled to C’s in my pregnancy & then The Boy claimed them as his own when they became full of milk and turned into D’s. They deflated after he finished nursing, but not without my warwounds: STRETCH MARKS. Yippe freakig skippee! No stretch marks anywhere else but on my boobs. I cried many nights about that, but I guess I should be thankful because every time I look at them I’m reminded that I was lucky enough to have a child and nurse him. A fleeting moment of gratitude, but gratitude nonetheless!
Now back to my poop, piss and puke rant … So, if you still need reasons to NOT get pregnant, here are a few more:
I thought that I had already experienced the grossest part of motherhood back when The Boy was nearly 3 months old. It was Christmas morning and I had us both all dressed in adorable Christmas outfits, (because motherhood is adorable, remember?!?) And I was playing with the baby and laying on the floor, holding him above my head and giggling at him as though we were in a Johnson & Johnson commercial, when SPLAT! All of the sudden, he spit up, or down, rather – ALL OVER ME — IN MY MOUTH, ALL OVER HIMSELF – All over EVERYWHERE! How much breast milk did this kid drink!?!? It was so gross – I gagged and thought I was going to lose it. So, I thought that had to have been the pinnacle of gross mom stuff I’d deal with in his early youth. Oh, how wrong I was …
Cut to Wednesday, after his swim lesson … when he crapped in his swim diaper & in an effort to clean it up I proceeded to, as gently as possible, pull his swim diaper down. This swim diaper is not the disposable kind – it’s the reusable kind, but for a moment there, I thought about trashing that thing since this was the 2nd time in a week this had occurred. I’m pulling it down and out plops the warm, wet poop right into my hand. Gag reflexes kick in and I’m in shock. WHAT DO I DO WITH A HANDFUL OF SHIT??????? Well, what would you do? Probably what I did. I freaked out! I said a few choice curse words under my breath – not the bad ones, (well, depending on who you are – but they weren’t any of the top 5 ones that the FCC banned.) And then as calmly as possible I walked that handful of poop over to the trashcan. I tell you … THAT right there, folks, THAT is the grossest thing I think I’ve ever done in my life. Carrying someone else’s poop in my hand.
Holding poop was by far worse than being spit up on, or being puked on (I forgot to regale you with that little story of the stomach flu,) or having a booger wiped on your arm, (which oddly enough happened to me today.) Oh, the things we do for love.
So my point here is this: Motherhood is a dirty job, baby. A dirty job with crappy pay and no vacations or sick days. The perks are where you find them … in the hand-picked flowers that are held out by a small, chubby little hand attached to a three-year old who says “Here mama, it’s ‘just because I love you day.'” Or the out of the blue, impromptu kisses and hugs … or the long gazes with the sweet smiles. Those are actually worth it, and now that it’s been a couple of days, I can say yeah, it’s worth holding someone else’s shit in your hand in order to get the sweet little perks of motherhood. 
the fairly good mother 
