Babies have the best propaganda machine in the world. Look at this:

Who could resist this stuff? Who could resist THIS?

Meet Willow! She is the darling baby of my wonderful friends. Also, she’s a star recruit on the baby propaganda squad. 

Every time I see this kid, she’s either sleeping angelically or making feather-soft coos while she rolls her little eyeballs around and checks out the world. In the four times this little cherub and I have hung together since her debut 6 weeks ago, I’ve seen her cry exactly once, and even then it wasn’t a cry cry – more of a, “Hey, I could use a latch over here.”

She is an all-around all-star baby. Aka, the most dangerous kind of baby, because seeing a tiny human this sweet and content and seemingly trouble-free reinforces the baby-baby-baby-NOW primal drumbeat that so many of us feel. Once you’ve tapped into that it’s easy to forget, ignore or just be blissfully ignorant of the full reality of baby-dom. Which auto-corrected to “baby doom” and while that’s putting it a little strongly, my computer is nonetheless onto something.

Babies are like Everything Human: Extreme Edition.  There is nothing, and I mean nothing, more emotionally triggering than a baby. I remember rocking my daughter to sleep, and feeling such fierce love that I felt like my heart was about to grow arms to wrap around her. I also remember looking through bleary eyes at her tear-streaked little face and silently begging her to stop crying. 

I remember feeling frustrated that the nurse brought her back in my hospital room as a newborn, because I was desperate for sleep and she was wailing again. I remember feeling terrified that some dark force would hurt her, and like I had to run away from this thing, whatever it was, and protect her. 

And then there are the emotions that aren’t about the baby at all, but about how other people treat new mommies. Like the friends and family, who seem to subscribe to the “mommy can do everything!” narrative and didn’t want to so much as hold her when I went to the bathroom, because “she wants mommy!” Yes, and mommy wants her, so very much. But mommy also wants two minutes with the porcelain god, in peace. Hands up if you, too, sometimes felt like a failure of a mother for NOT living up to the self-sacrificing idea of what a mom should be, literally opening up your body & soul to this sweet little human on demand 24-7.

Granted, I had a rockier transition into motherhood than most. I had a near-crash, and I’m lucky to have made it safely out the other side. But, I’m not the only mom who veered into dark territory in those early weeks of figuring out how to care for a tiny new human, plus myself. More like, I was one of the noticeably struggling new moms within an often-silent struggling majority. And yet it felt like so much of the outside world expected me to smile beatifically amid the screaming and relax in sun rays with my baby, when I wasn’t whistling while doing laundry or posting adorable baby-and-me selfies or endlessly breastfeeding. (And by the way, La Leche League? Y’all mean well but you need to drop the extremism, gf’s. BREASTFEEDING IS NOT FOR EVERYONE AND THAT IS TOTALLY OKAY.)

The world supported me way more in talking about the fun gooey aspects of new motherhood than it did on the ones where I actually needed help. “The topic today is toys!” chirped the Gymboree instructor at our trial lesson. I grimace-smiled and immediately tuned out. I needed someone to talk to about stuff like my extreme anxiety over the baby’s safety, recovering from a manic episode and a childbirth while caring for a newborn, and eventually figuring out the transition back to work. Stuff like re-jiggering my schedule and all my priorities, re-adjusting my husband’s whole life and mine, and re-calibrating extended family relationships around this new little member (and my newly acknowledged struggles with mental health). I had zero interest in even pretending to care about which overpriced plastic monstrosity I was supposed to be saving up for. And yes, before you call for an intervention for my daughter, I completely get that toys and play are vital for kids. I just couldn’t focus on building a fancy toy wish list while desperately trying to figure out so much else. 

This was all going-on-eight years ago, and here’s the thing: it hasn’t changed. Earlier this year, an extended relative of mine became a mom, after trying to get pregnant for years. I was thrilled for her, and a few months later, I felt my heart crackling when her sister’s voice dropped as she shared that the new mama was struggling “and she feels like she’s the only one”. 

You are never the only one. There is still a soft pastel conspiracy around society’s vision of What It Means to Be a Mother. Then you actually become a parent and find yourself on the other side of that curtain.

It takes awhile to find other moms that you click with inside the curtain. And you need those mom friends – and your family and neighbors and partner and just about everybody else on board – because being a mother is more incredible than anything you could’ve imagined and more everything than anything you could’ve imagined. In the words of Willow’s mom, who is one of the best humans I know, “This is fucking hard.”

Eventually you find your rhythm. You get it. “It” looks a little bit different for all of us, but you will figure it out, for you and your kid, with your support system. It’s okay, even admirable, to ask for help if and when you need it. Do not pay attention to people who think you don’t or shouldn’t need help. Obviously, something is wrong with them. You should refer them to a therapist, immediately. 

But seriously – maybe your kid will thank you someday for giving them the chance to build relationships with other adults while you were modeling healthy behavior and prioritizing your own sanity. And if not? I’m thanking you now! Look at us, healthy parenting all over the place!

I mean really. Parenthood is wonderful and incredible and absolutely the best and biggest gift in my life. And also, fucking hard.