I DON’T KNOW HOW SHE DOES IT

I don’t know how you do it!  A girlfriend of mine recently said that to me during a discussion when I was talking about work.  We both have 2.5 year old toddlers and a newborn…the only difference is I work full time and she is a full time stay at home mom oh and I am a brunette and she is blond.  I replied with “I don’t know how YOU do it!”, seriously I don’t, she takes her dog to the dog park pretty much everyday and her toddler to the park at least once sometimes twice a day.  And her husband is gone for work by 5 am most days and often has to work 6-7 days a week.  So not only are mornings on her, she often takes over most of the duties during the night so her husband can get more sleep and rested for work. 

When I really started to think about it, this is how I feel about all the moms I know and even the ones I don’t personally know, but hear their stories.  I don’t know how both my sisters dealt with H yperemesis gravidarum during pregnancy and worked, I don’t know how the single mom deals with the daily solo parenting without a break, I don’t know how the mama deals with childhood cancer, or how the mama handled the miscarriage(s), I don’t know how the mama who finished law school with a newborn and pumped in a closet during class, I don’t know how the teen mom graduated high school with a newborn, I don’t know how the mama handled infertility, I don’t know how the mama got through the colic and re-flux or raised 3 kids while your husband was deployed overseas and you were in a foreign country, I don’t know how the mama raised a stepchild as her own…these are all examples of women I know personally.  There are so so many more examples of “I don’t know how she does it”.  

Honestly if I really sit down and think about it, I don’t know how I do it either.  But, I just do, I don’t think about it, I just survive day to day, knowing it will get better and cry, scream, vent etc. when I need to.  I know one day my baby will sleep through the night and eventually even on the worse night she will fall asleep.  Eventually she will be potty trained and be able to tie her own shoe laces.  One day I will look back fondly on these days and remember the good moments, the cuddly squishy newborn baby, the toddler who thinks I am her whole world, the joy I get out of watching them do something for the first time…I won’t miss the sleepless nights and feeling like a drunk, hungover exhausted zombie.  But for now I will take the baby cuddles in the middle of the night when I just want my sleep.