I had a client yesterday who was halfway through her first pregnancy and when I asked "How are you feeling?" I was so proud of her honest response but it broke my heart. She told me she is so nervous and so stressed. That isn't what broke my heart though. That I understand! Becoming a mom changes EVERYTHING. If you're not stressed and nervous, do you even have a pulse!? (Just kidding, if you're not nervous and stressed you're doing GREAT!! Your journey is valid and amazing and I'm excited that you're having such a great experience!)
I personally became a mom through adoption so I don't know what it's like to have a baby grow inside of me. I don't know firsthand how it physically feels or how much your life and body change but I do know that becoming a mom changed my entire life drastically. It changed everything about me, brought out a side of me I didn't know existed...or maybe I birthed a whole new me? Maybe this "side" or me wasn't a side that was hiding for my entire life and is a new entity entirely...?
Anyway, the part that broke my heart was when my client said, "I'm a millennial and so many of my peers have such a negative outlook on parenting." To be honest, I never thought about that before that moment but she was so right. I started to reflect back on my own journey while I was waiting for my daughter to come home. I met her and had to wait about 8 months for her to come home. Because I was adopting, there were classes and meetings and endless paperwork so while I didn't feel her kicking or get to measure her on an app-"this week she's the size of an avocado!"-I was definitely experiencing growing pains and my life was changing rapidly by the day.
Sometimes it was exhausting, other times it was exhilarating. Painting her furniture and getting her room ready for her homecoming was so exciting! Scheduling meetings felt like things were happening and even though they were long and exhausting it felt like we were making progress so I liked them. But then there were days when I had no meetings, there was nothing to clean or to paint or rearrange and those days felt long and lonely.
I turned to social media where there were groups for hopeful parents like me and sometimes I found support but often there were so many conflicting opinions I felt more overwhelmed, scared, and hopeless than I did before I logged on. I didn't have friends who had gone through what I was going through and my client said it perfectly: As a millennial, there are a lot of strong feelings about parenting and many of us aren't really excited the way different generations were. I didn't have the ability to express what my client did but what she said gave me words for feelings I wasn't brave enough to admit to back then.
So why am I being honest about this now? Well, because she was! I knew if she felt that way and I felt that way, we weren't the only ones. We can't be! I'm sure there are other millennials out there who are struggling with what feels like a lack of support from our peers. As a generation, we've experienced a lot of trauma which I think informs our outlook on everything else.
We've experienced recessions and kids are expensive. It's hard not to be scared about finances; especially with kids.
Most of us are trying to learn new parenting techniques because while our parents tried their best, most needed a little help. Now there are a trillion experts on TikTok telling us what to do and each "expert" disagrees with the next, it's confusing and overwhelming.
Social Media has become like everyone's diaries and the posts that get the most views are generally the negative ones so when a parent posts about their traumatic birth, it's a lot more likely that it'll get way more views than the parents who had an excellent experience. We get flooded with so many negative images and it can feel hard to find someone who isn't going to feed the fear and stress...but your support system is out there.
Parenthood is crazy and terrifying and amazing and beautiful and challenging and absolutely insane and at the end of the day, no two people are going to have the same experience, even if they parent the same child!
We are all figuring this out, one day at a time and will it be perfect? No! But it can still be fun and amazing. I think we as a society have a responsibility to let moms be honest more. I am so proud of my client for being honest and clearly, she's inspired me. I think her ability to be honest now is going to be her biggest strength in parenthood and I hope that other parents can take note of her.
Dear Millennial Mom,
You're doing great!
I know you feel like you don't know what you're doing but you're going to figure out what works for you and your new family. It may not be what other people suggest and that's OK! Take what you like, leave what you don't.
You're not alone. Keep speaking up and you will find your tribe.
It will be perfectly imperfect and you will have ups and downs but when you look back on it the downs will be far less significant than the ups.
You've got this! I promise.
Be Well,
Tiffany
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