This is a personal essay written by the author, sharing their individual journey and experiences. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in this piece belong solely to the author and do not necessarily reflect those of MyndStories. This essay has not been professionally vetted or reviewed for clinical accuracy.
I am a mother of two fireballs, and I love every moment of it.
No, wait! That’s what I say to the people around me.
The truth is way more complicated than that. Yes, I love being a mother, but not every moment of motherhood is full of rainbow sprinkles and unicorn wings. In the past three and a half years (give or take) of motherhood, I have had intense moments of regret, quickly followed by guilt and breakdowns.
But I would just dust it all off and disassociate from the feelings that were genuine, human.
As someone who struggled with infertility, bore the brunt of countless hormonal injections, and kept a happy face for the outsiders, motherhood was a dream. A dream that eluded me for more than 8 years.
The desire to be a mom was strong, and at one point, it was the only thing on my mind.
And now that I am a mom to two Ps (as I call them) I should be over the moon, overjoyed, giddy, and smiling ear to ear all the time!
What’s wrong with me?
I could never bear loud noises. But how do I explain that to two chatterboxes who call out “Mumma” every three and a half minutes!
I am not a very touchy-feely person, but how do I tell the little Ps that I am all touched out? Please climb off your personal Everest?
There are moments when I am screaming internally, but I dare not speak the truth or confess to the frustrations of motherhood because motherhood is supposed to be bliss, a gift, if you will.
The myth of the perfect mother
Motherhood is packaged and marketed into an Instagram reel. The soft-focus posts even. The giggles in sunlit parks. The sleepy cuddles and handmade crafts to melt our collective hearts.
It’s not that these moments don’t exist.
They do — and they are to be treasured forever.
But what no one told me is that motherhood also involves endless cleanups, relentless questions, spilled milk, overstimulation, emotional exhaustion, numerous meltdowns, and days when you wonder if you were even built for this.
I was supposed to feel whole. Complete. Like motherhood had sewn shut every tear inside me.
Instead, some days I feel like a real-life Raggedy Ann doll, fraying at the edges, barely holding it together – but ready to greet the world with a smile.
To top it all, the guilt you feel for feeling this way!
Noise, need, and never enough
There are days when the noise feels physical, much like tiny hands banging pots and pans inside my skull.
“Mumma, Mumma, Mumma!” – a chorus that never tires.
There are days when the demands come faster than I can meet them:
Water.
Snack.
Hug.
Poopoo.
Booboo.
Story.
Fight.
Apology.
Snack again.
It’s a wave that overwhelms you, washes you over. No pause button. No timeouts.
And there are days when no matter how much I give, it feels like I am still falling behind. Always just a little inadequate.
But then, when they finally fall asleep, all I want to do is watch them breathe. As if to remind myself: you made it through another day. And somehow, they still think you are God’s gift, not them.
Touched out and talked out
Motherhood is a physical experience, and I was truly unprepared for that.
It’s bodies clambering onto you even when your own body feels raw.
It’s kisses and hugs and sticky fingers and cries for “one more cuddle,” even when your skin is begging for space.
I love their affection. I do, and on most occasions I crave it.
But there are days when I would like to shut myself in the closet and leave the husbandman to hold the fort. And I would never say it out loud because I would be judged to the moon and back for even thinking like this.
There are days when even a gentle hand on my shoulder feels like a scream.
And still, I open my arms. I make room. I swallow my exhaustion. Because that’s what mothers are supposed to do, right?
But lately, I am realizing something:
Love can stretch, yes, but only so far before it snaps.
Boundaries are not betrayals; they are foundational.
Sometimes, “Not right now” is an act of self-preservation, not rejection.
The grateful mother often feels ungrateful
No one talks about the tiny flashes of rage. Not even me.
The rage when you’ve cleaned the same mess for the seventeenth time.
The rage when someone needs you at the exact moment you need to sit down for the first time all day.
The rage at losing your own existence to being “Mumma” — a role you love, but that sometimes feels like a tether.
And because I struggled so much to become a mother, because I know how precious this is and how much I have borne to be here, the rage makes me feel like a terrible person.
“Other women would kill to be where you are,” I reprimand myself often.
How dare I feel anything but gratitude? How, indeed.
But I am learning (slowly, painfully) that this is not a black-and-white world, and two things can be true together.
You can be overwhelmingly grateful for your children and still be overwhelmed by them.
You can love them with every fiber of your being and still long for silence, solitude, space.
Becoming a gentle parent to myself
I spent so long preparing to be a gentle parent to them that I forgot I would need to be a little gentle to myself, too.
Some days, that means asking for help, even if it is with a shaky voice.
Some days, it means saying no to another playdate, without a paragraph-long excuse.
Some days, it means stepping outside for five minutes just to breathe, so that you don’t lose yourself to the moment.
I am learning that my worth as a mother is not measured by how much I endure silently.
It is measured by how honestly I show up.
By how willing I am to be human – messy, flawed, and trying.
My children don’t need a perfect mother.
They need a mother who is present as a whole, because there is nothing called a fractional mother.
Presence may sometimes look like laughter, sometimes like tears, and at other times like a whispered “I’m doing my best” when your best feels barely enough.
The messy, beautiful, unfiltered truth
If you met me today, you might still hear me say, “I love every moment of being a mother.”
And it wouldn’t be a lie, well, not exactly.
Because love is complicated.
Because even in the moments when I feel like I am drowning, I know I would choose this life a hundred times over.
It’s certainly not because it’s easy, or because it’s always joyful.
It’s simply because in the noise, in the chaos, in the exhaustion, there is also a kind of divine, chaotic, ordinary magic.
It doesn’t come wrapped in perfect mornings or smiling selfies. It comes in small, imperfect moments:
A sticky hand holding yours.
A whispered “I love you” at the end of a long, brutal day.
A fleeting glance where you catch a glimpse of the person they are becoming, and the person you are becoming, too.
Motherhood didn’t fix me, because it was never meant to do that. It simply asked me to be.
Be honest, messy, and most importantly, be human.
And that, I think, is the real magic.
