I remember getting ready to have Jase. I knew that it was
okay to accept help; that I would need the help the first few weeks, and that
was okay. I welcomed the meal train my friends had planned. I welcomed the help
of my mother in keeping up with housework and watching Jase when I needed to
rest or shower. I knew these were things that I would be extremely grateful for
when Jase arrived. I am the oldest in my family and have been around kids since
before even I could remember, I was aware of the care having a newborn would
demand and I knew the help would be needed. I knew all of these things.

Then I had Jase and something changed.

I had an unexpected C-Section with Jase. I was down a lot
more than I thought I was going to be after having a baby. I couldn’t get up
from a laying position without help. I wasn’t supposed to lift anything but the
baby. I couldn’t really lift Jase out of a crib and I wasn’t allowed to lift
him in the car seat. All these unexpected restrictions paired with this desire
to be super mom made me feel incredibly defeated. I cried on a daily basis,
maybe even on an hourly basis, to my husband because I couldn’t do “what I was
supposed to do.” I am the mom, I should be the one who picks up the baby, who
gets up in the middle of the night, gets him out of his crib and walks to
another room to nurse leaving my sleeping husband to rest. I thought that was
what I was supposed to do and because I couldn’t do all of that I felt like I
was failing as a mother. I felt like I was failing as a wife.

In my conversations with new moms, no matter how their labor
experience went, they all come home with the pressure to be super mom. The need
to be the one who takes care of every need the baby has and in doing so they
are fulfilling their duty of being a mother. So many new moms are feeling
discouraged and exhausted because they are unable to measure up to these
standards they are placing on themselves. And it doesn’t stop with the first few
weeks. It continues into every stage of motherhood, this pressure to be
everything, to do everything, to somehow succeed in juggling everything on our
own. The pressure we put on ourselves to measure up to this super mom.

The reality of motherhood is you cannot do it on your own.
Saying that you need help, accepting the help that is offered, it doesn’t make
you less of a mother. It doesn’t even make you a failure of a mother. It makes
you a great mother. The reality is motherhood gives you a lot of things to
juggle, having a newborn in itself is a lot to juggle, and at the same time you
have to give yourself time to heal and time to recover after what your body
just experienced.

Super mom isn’t the one who does everything on her own; I
would like to think that is more like an exhausted and overwhelmed mom. Super
mom is you. That’s right, you. You are super mom because that tiny human in
your hands, your birthed him. You carried that child for nine months, gave the
majority of your body’s nutrients to that child so that he may grow and be the
healthy little baby he was meant to be. You gave sleepless nights, aches and
pains, joy and tears, countless amount of energy, you gave everything. You
pushed and persevered through labor and gave birth to that child. I don’t care
if you pushed for hours or if you endured surgery, you birthed that child. You
are super mom. Super mom isn’t created because of what she does; super mom is
in fact, every mother. What every mother has gone through to bring a child into
this world, that makes her super mom. What every mother does to continue to
keep her child alive in this world that makes her super mom.

So, to all mothers everywhere. You are super mom. It isn’t
what you do that makes you super mom; it simply is because you are a mother.
Being a mother is a big job. It takes all your emotions, it takes every ounce
of your physical body, and it takes all of your time. If you didn’t manage to
keep the house in complete order, feed all your kids, bathe them, and even take
of yourself today, you are still super mom. If you have to ask for a little
help so that you can shower, or maybe just brush your teeth, you are super mom.
Keep on doing what you are doing, super mom.