The day is long and from the moment your husband walks out the door you already find yourself counting down the minutes until he walks back through that door. You have barely had time to allow yourself to wake up and your toddler is already screaming for a meal and your baby is ready to nurse. There are diapers to be changed, messes to be cleaned, and wait a minute have you even brushed your teeth?

You keep pushing through the day like you do every day. You wash the dishes, you pick up messes, you set the toddler in time out more than a dozen times and you do it all over and over. Shouldn’t you feel like super woman by now? Shouldn’t you have it all together? Shouldn’t you be snapping your fingers like you’ve been doing this your whole life?

You do this enough on a daily basis, you should totally have the hang of it.

But instead, here you are at nap time and you finally have a chance to breathe. All the kids just happen to be napping at the same time and you settle into the peace and quiet. But instead of feeling like super woman, the tears just start flowing. Is this what you’re going to be doing every day? Every. Single. Day.

Are you really going to spend every day putting a child in time out for the same thing over and over with seemingly no light at the end of the tunnel? Will there ever be a day that you perfect the balancing act? This isn’t how you pictured these days at home with your babies. Sure, you knew it was going to be hard, but this hard?

You sit there with tears streaming down your face and think, “I have no idea what I am doing. I just can’t do this anymore.”

I’ve been there. I’ve been exhausted. I’ve been worn out. I’ve been stuck in the middle of the mundane wondering if anything I was saying to my child was even sticking. I have been there with tears running down my face thinking I just want to quit, I can’t do this anymore.

This job we do, it’s hard. There isn’t immediate results. Our children don’t stop throwing fits over night, they don’t remember to say please and thank you after the first time we tell them, these things take time. We don’t see all our hard work, all the mundane, we don’t see it all make sense at the end of every day as we tuck our precious babies in to sleep.

But we are making a difference. We are growing. Each day we get a little better a this, we learn a little more, we grow a little more, we figure things out a little more. We may not have it all figured out right now, and we most likely never will, but we are growing and learning more each day.

I know you want to quit because you think you can’t do this, but don’t give up. Those little steps you’re taking each day, one day you will look back and realize just how far you’ve come. It’s okay to feel like you want to quit, we will all feel that way, but don’t give up mama. You are doing good work, in all the mundane there is good work happening.

Keep it up. You keep fighting. You keep going. Whether there are tears on your face or your smiling ear to ear. This motherhood thing isn’t easy, but it’s worth it. Oh, mama it is worth it.