is it really helpful?

I have been thinking about something a lot lately, and I am curious to hear others opinions on the matter. I have been contemplating the phrase told to many young mothers ‘enjoy your children’ and wondering, is this really a helpful thing to say?

I have heard this phrase a lot in my few short years of motherhood, and even more so now that I am about to have my third. So many people, mostly seasoned mom’s, whose children are now gone out of the house, feel the need to remind me to enjoy my kids.

The first few times someone said it to me; it didn’t really bother me at all. Mostly I was so in love with my new baby, I couldn’t imagine enjoying him any more… and then, I wasn’t so impressed with the phrase anymore. Why? It wasn’t because I wasn’t completely in love with my new baby. No. Instead of making me enjoy my child more, it would freak me out that I wasn’t enjoying them enough. Like maybe, I was missing something. Maybe, I was doing something wrong… Was I doing something wrong?

Every new mother feels like we’re not doing it right. Every thought we ever had about motherhood, about caring for a newborn, about how things were going to go, has probably been smashed to pieces within the first couple of weeks if not days. You’re tired; your baby won’t stop screaming. That song that you planned on singing to them to comfort them, you now hate, because you have sung it so many times and it doesn’t do a dang thing to quiet their poor screams. You’re wondering if you’re eating something bad and if it’s getting into your milk, or maybe you just aren’t nursing right. And, now that I brought up nursing, I mean, seriously, it can suck. Not only suck, I mean, it can HURT. LIKE. HELL! And not to mention that your baby might have thrush, or maybe you might have mastitis, or baby isn’t latching right, seriously, for some new mom’s, it just is miserable at first. You wonder if you’re doing anything right.

Of course, you love this bundle of joy, who may or may not be eating away at your nipples and making them bleed, and is keeping you up for hours at night screaming for some reason you just can’t figure out, but you love them. You snuggle them, you smell that fresh baby smell, you sing to them, rock them, and inside, it feels like your heart is going to burst with the love you have for this little human. You enjoy them like no one else can.

And then, someone comes along and says ‘oh, make sure to enjoy them.’ Or sometimes it’s ‘enjoy the difficult moments with them’ or ‘they grow up so fast, enjoy every single moment!’ Every single moment? Really? Is that possible? Because if it is, I am failing miserably.

People seem to say these phrases in one of two moments. The first, they say it to you when you are already so in love with your child in that exact moment that you couldn’t imagine loving or enjoying them anymore. The other moment, always seems to be when your child is throwing a fit, you’ve had a long day, you are wearing their spit up, throw up, or maybe even their pee or poop somewhere on your clothes. That moment when you are using every ounce of your strength to hold it together because you had a whole 2 hours of sleep the night before and you would rather sit down with your screaming toddler and scream with him then to remind him, yet again, for the umpteenth that day that whining does not help. That moment, like your worst parenting moments, is when people seem to say ‘oh, don’t forget to enjoy your children!!!’

I’ll tell you the issue I’ve had with both these moments and maybe what (I think) would be more helpful to say in those moments. The first moment, when you don’t think you could love your child anymore, when someone says to enjoy your kids, you start to think ‘oh… am I not enjoying them enough?’  or ‘Can’t they see how much I am in love right now? Maybe I’m not showing my child enough how much I love/enjoy them.’ Or ‘Maybe something is wrong with me if I’m not loving him enough but I think that I am… obviously they see something missing that I don’t.’ The phrase in this moment, although meant well, often causes the mother to question herself and create unnecessary worry that they aren’t doing it right (believe me, they already worry enough about that!).  Instead, what would be a nice thing to say would be ‘wow, what a great Mama you are!’ or ‘You are doing such a good job with him/her’ or some other words of encouragement or compliments for the parents or baby.

The second situation, when you are having a miserable day/moment, and someone says ‘oh enjoy it’…. Is it just me, or does anyone else just want to smack the well meaning person across the head? You already want to pull your hair out, you’re pretty sure your child has become possessed, and you are counting down the minutes, nay, seconds, to nap time so you can FINALLY have a break from the screaming/fighting/throw up/poop/pee/bathroom interruptions/constant questions/or from playing candy land for the 30^th time that day. In that moment, you may not even like your child so much; you love them of course, but like them? Well, that might depend on the level of pitch their screams have been at all day. Either way, in that moment, you need a break! And then someone comes along and says, with their far too chipper attitude, ‘enjoy it’ and you just want to lose it. Believe me, in that moment, it really does not help to hear ‘enjoy it’. Rather, something along the lines of ‘I know how you feel, but stay strong!’ or ‘you really are doing a good job Mama, just remember that this too shall pass’ or the best one ‘would you like me to help you?’ The Mama in that moment doesn’t need to be reminded to enjoy her children, she needs help, and putting pressure on her to enjoy their screaming fits when she really wants to pull her hair out is probably not going to help anyone… and it might get you smacked in the process ;)

I’m not saying that this phrase is rude or that the people saying it don’t mean well. Usually it’s quite the opposite. I know they mean well, I know that they don’t want me to regret not enjoying my children enough when I get older and my kids are gone. I know that. But, maybe it’s just me, it doesn’t help.

I’ve been hearing this phrase more and more lately. And, often times, in the middle of my day, when I have to tell one of my boys ‘oh sweetie, can you hold on a minute, Mama’s got to go potty, again’ or ‘I just can’t right now, Mama hurts too bad’ or ‘no you can’t ride my back, I have a baby in my belly and it will hurt’ or even ‘no, Mama’s going to burn supper if I come right this second to read you that book, you’re going to have to wait a minute,’ when I say one of these things to my kids, I start to feel guilty. Those ‘enjoy it,’ ‘spend every second you can with them before the baby comes,’ ‘make sure to pay extra special attention to them since the baby is coming’ comments run through my head because I had to say ‘no’. And it makes me feel guilty.

Believe me, I already feel guilty. People whom have great pregnancies, or whom have only had one pregnancy, and don’t having any issues at all carrying a child for nine months, they don’t understand. People who don’t have kids obviously don’t understand. And even moms who have had kids, and it was hard on them to be pregnant, well, they seem to forget. And some people think they understand, but in all reality, they really don’t. Sometimes, pregnancy sucks. Sometimes, pregnancy hurts. And the fact that I have to stop playing with my kids to go to the bathroom, again, for the 20^th time in the last two hours, makes me feel guilty. I can’t go on long walks, or even shorter ones, because I know how badly my SI joint is going to hurt if I do. I can’t let them jump on me or sit on me a certain way or my PSD will slip. I can’t sit on the floor with them for an hour to play a game or lego’s because of my PSD, SI, and hip issues. I constantly tell them to be gentle with my stomach because if it’s been a rock hard ball all day, guess what? It hurts to even be touched! I get crabby because I can’t sleep from the pain in my hips or from having to get up to pee. I get crabby because I’m sick of being in pain all day, every day. Pregnancy sucks, and I feel guilty. I feel guilty because my kids don’t understand why Mommy has a large list of ‘can’t do’s.’ I feel bad that I’m not as fun right now. I feel bad that I can’t lift my 5 year old when he gets hurt. They don’t understand. No one knows that better then me because I see it in their eyes when I have to say ‘no’. And then someone says all those comments, and it just makes you feel guiltier. You’re already doing everything you can, and usually more then you should, and you know that you have a lot of crabby days from lack of sleep or from being in pain, and then you are being pressured to do more, to enjoy more, when you are already at your max.

Now, maybe it’s just me. Maybe I look at it wrong and it just makes all my insecurities of being a Mom surface and I question everything. But I don’t know if I can remember a time when someone said that to me and it actually helped… am I the only one? Do other people actually find this helpful to hear? I’m honestly curious. Does hearing ‘enjoy it more’ help you to actually enjoy it? Or does it make you feel guilty for needing a break, or question everything like I do? 

 Us, goofing around and enjoying it the only way we know how :)