Super Mom Doesn’t Exist: I Made Her Up

When you decide to have more than one kid, you’re not just affecting the family dynamic or your financial future, but you’re also determining what kind of parent you get to be.

When I was the mom of one, despite being a full-time working mom, I was also a class parent. I scrapbooked his every milestone. I took him to library story time on my lunch hour, and borrowed Raffi CDs to listen to in the car. I spoke a second language to him, and kept the TV off save for “educational programming” like Baby Einstein or “musical theater,” such as “The Wiggles.” I made his organic baby food from scratch for both home and daycare. I kept an up-to-date vaccination record, and scheduled his well visits months in advance. I read him stories every night and sang him to sleep. I knew what color his poop was and how many times a day he made it.

I was that kind of mom.

Until I decided to have a couple more kids. Now, I consider my kids lucky that I remember to pack them lunch.

The endless papers home in backpacks. The endless homework or projects to oversee. The endless forms to fill out. The endless laundry. All this daily “stuff” that gets in the way of me being the kind of mom I often wish I could be.

You know: The mom who remembers stuff. The mom who sews homemade costumes. The mom who makes pretty fresh-baked pastries for the class holiday celebrations. The mom who frames her kids’ artwork and hangs it on the wall in custom, playful frames. The mom who has an organized calendar and bulletin board. The mom who remembers to RSVP for birthday parties, and buys a gift, and wraps it in real wrapping paper, not the Sunday comics.

I said a soft goodbye to that mom the day baby #2 came home from the hospital. By the time #3 was part of the picture, I was also a business owner and found myself with even less time to be that inspired, thoughtful, organized version of myself.  

Part of me feels relieved that I decided to part ways with her. And part of me misses her very much, particularly during holidays and major milestones.

It’s Purim and here in Israel, Purim is not just like Halloween. It’s like Halloween on steroids, with a little bit of Christmas, New Year’s, and Mardi Gras thrown in for good measure. It’s practically a week-long celebration of classroom parties, costume parades, grown up soirees, and the accompanying rituals of the holiday itself, which include preparing “mishloach manot” (purim gift baskets) for friends and baking “hamantaschen” (those triangle fruit-filled cookies).

Mostly, Purim requires a lot more forethought and preparation than I, now a working mother of three trying to blend in as a resident of a new country, am able to muster. And I’m left feeling a little “less than.”

Don’t go throwing compliments my way. I’m not fishing. I know what I’m good at.

“Teaching people about health,” my oldest would tell you.

“Snuggling,” my middle guy would say.

“Abba gabba gabba,” you might hear from the littlest, in a gibberish mix of Hebrew and English. (She’s letting you know I make a killer gluten-free pancake.)

I’m good at what I’m good at. Sometimes I’m good at recognizing what a great mom I am. And sometimes I’m good at feeling sorry for myself.

In another version of my life, I might have stopped having children at just one; and been that amazing super version of me straight until I packed my son off for college with a suitcase full of properly folded underwear. In that alterna-verse, though, I’m sure I would have found some reason to feel “less than.” Guilty that my son was an only child. Worried that I had smothered him. Concerned that I contributed to his emotional instability by hovering over him and scrapbooking his every move.

This is what I remind myself when I get caught up in comparing myself to the mother next to me: My time is better spent working on how to be a more conscious and content “me” than on being a better mother.

Why? Because studies show, the most well-adjusted kids come from happy moms; not the moms who make the best hamantaschen. (Okay. I made that study up—but it makes a whole lot of sense, doesn’t it?)

Today I acknowledge my feelings of less than, while at the same time congratulate myself for being more than.

More patient. More kind. More grounded. More empowered. More affectionate.

More aware than before. More today than yesterday.

And if nothing else, more “me.”