It can be hard sometimes.
Feeling lonely.
Feeling needed.
Feeling loved.
It can be tiring and exhausting and just plain annoying.
I love you. I love my daughter. I love my son. I love my boyfriend.
But none of them understand the feeling I get.
The feeling that I am not enough.
That I am not good.
That I am not interested.
None of them get me when I cry in the shower.
When I stay awake despite being burnt.
When I imagine driving off on my way home from the groceries.
None of them get it, because none of them feel the way I feel.
How worked up I get when my children’s grandparents tell me how to raise them.
And how I let them walk over me.
Or how disrespected I feel when my boyfriend “takes over” while I try to discipline.
No one gets me.
No one understands that I don’t want my baby girl to cry herself to sleep. I want her to feel safe and loved when she falls asleep.
No one understands that I don’t mind holding my sweet boy in my arms even though I am nodding off. I want to cuddle and rock him as he dreams.
I am burnt.
I am tired.
I am trying.
I am a new mom.
A new mom during a worldwide pandemic that lost her friends.
A new mom that felt completely forgotten.
A new mom that is lost and scared and worried.
I’m just a new mom who needs people to stop assuming and talking for me but just listens and ask how I’m doing.
I’m just a new mom who wants her friends to truly ask how she is without rolling their eyes when she talks about how her baby girl has just started walking, or how her sweet boy is already sharing cloth diapers with his big sis.
I’m just a new mom, so please think before you speak.
Stop judging me on how I want to raise my babies.
Stop assuming what I am about to say just because you think you know me.
Stop.
Take a minute. And just listen.
Listen to how I talk about my babies, the exhaustion fading away through the joy of my words.
Listen to the hesitation in my voice when I tell you something I don’t know if you want to hear.
Listen to me, not you, me.
Because I am the mother who had a child during the pandemic.
I am the mother who had barely any support.
I am the mother that you easily pushed aside and ignored as she was going through a difficult postpartum period at the same time as being pregnant.
I am the mother that is raising your grandchildren.
I am the mother to two wonderful babies and I am trying.
