Moms Are Sharing The ‘Hardest Pill To Swallow’ About Motherhood

After I had my first baby, I came to a stark realization in just a few days: I would, for the rest of my child’s life, always be worried about them in some capacity. Even when they were tucked safe into their beds and sleeping soundly, I’d have anxiety for their wellbeing and their future. Motherhood comes with a baseline of anxiety.

It was a hard pill to swallow — and now other mothers are sharing theirs. Over on Reddit’s Mommit forum, parents are sharing the tough info that dawned on them once they had kids. The things that are hard to accept even though they are givens of parenthood.

“What's the ‘hard pill to swallow’ about motherhood,” the original poster asked. “For me it's that: no one is as interested in your kids as you are. You have friends that got excited when you were pregnant and still love you dearly. But you are the one who's the most interested in everything that is your kid. Yes they'll want to hear the occasional update but overall their lives didn't change dramatically when your kid was born, yours did.”

The answers were relatable, but also sometimes hard to read.

Here are some of the ones worth sharing:

“You can love your child more than anything and still need time away from them to recoup. But then mom guilt sets in.”

“For me it was parenting while sick! That was tough when I first got sick with my oldest. Like, what do you mean I still have to parent? Where is my mom to come take care of me?”

“With our parents’ health collectively declining and having young kids, we are suddenly The Adults in every situation. No matter whose home we were at, we’re now The Adults everyone looks to for solutions to their problems, and we feel entirely unprepared for this level of responsibility!”

“As a very type a person, mine is that nothing is ever going to go perfectly when there are kids involved lol, and life is more fun for everyone (including you) when you accept that.”

“If you are not careful about who you have a kid with, you’re stuck with that person for the rest of your life. I will see my child’s father at the birthday parties of our grandkids. I don’t get rid of him after 18 years.”

“Heart is outside the body now.”

“Sleeping in is not an option for the foreseeable future.”

“The fact that I can’t truly protect my children. My control over their safety is so small and I want to lock my doors, never let them leave and curl up in a ball and cry.”

“That they grow up. I’m constantly trying to hold onto the little things and trying to appreciate how small she is now because I know one day she won’t need me as much.”

“If you have PTSD from your own childhood trauma, you will be facing ALL of that again as your kid grows.”

“There is no real break. I am on the carousel for the next 20+ years. I’m exhausted.”

“You can have many friends with kids, be surrounded by other moms, have your ‘village’ and still feel isolated and lonely.”

“You can’t have it all. I want to be a working stay at home mom who gets breaks from my kids but also is always with my kids who makes a lot of income but also my only job is to focus on the kids. I want to exclusively breastfeed and give formula bottles so I can get away easily sometimes.”

“You can do everything ‘right’ but your child is still their own person and will make their own choices and mistakes. Something I'm really having to come to terms with as my first born gets older. I want to protect him from making the same mistakes I did as a kid but ultimately I can't control everything he does.”

Whew — some of these ideas and thoughts are so heavy. But also, coming to some of these revelations only makes parenting easier. If you know, you know.