How to Give Yourself an A+ in Motherhood

If you are anything like me, your education did zero to prepare you for motherhood. From kindergarten through college, I was graded on a strict, practical scale: A+ for exceptional test scores down through F for failing (not me, obviously. Let’s be serious.). I was told what to do to excel and was instilled with a work ethic that would supposedly get me there. I knew when I’d have tests and how they’d be graded, and while I didn’t particularly enjoy school, I seemed to breeze through the system under the radar.

Then college hit, and I was told to get internships to help me get my foot in the door of some fancy corporate job, which would then catapult me to financial security and personal success. We equate our resumes and our bank account with success, and the scale is straightforward: the more money in your paycheck, the better you’re doing at “life.” I know I’m being generic here, but I can’t have lost everyone just yet.

So let’s just roll with this scenario for a minute, and say you’re on this pretty standard American “life” course, and then suddenly (or with ample planning), you find yourself preggo. Amazing! Gold star for climbing two life ladders at once! The professional one AND the personal one. You must be seriously amazing at this life thing, and all your dreams will most definitely come true.

Except, if you’re anything like me, you suddenly find yourself sitting in that (not-so-fancy) office job with your stupid paycheck, and suddenly you’re tired all the time, trying not to vomit in public and have constant anxiety about the seed-sized fetus inside you and what the future holds. You trudge through pregnancy (or perhaps you bounce gaily, if you’re one of the lucky ones), and you get to the day of THE TEST. Again, you (thought you) knew the test date, and you (thought you) knew how to study.

You DO the thing and successfully deliver a much-larger-than-seed-sized baby, and you’re like “Hey! HEEEEYYY! DID YOU SEE WHAT I JUST DID?! I made that baby and delivered her/him! A+ right? I passed!”

And if you’re lucky (like I definitely was), you have an adoring husband on one side of you and a doula on the other and they rub your head and hold your hand and give you some of that praise you’re so desperately seeking and say, “Yes. YES. We saw you. You were amazing. What a warrior. Just beautiful. You did it, and we are so proud of you.”

And upon hearing those desperately important words, you slump back in your sweaty hospital bed and let that wash over you for about four minutes—precisely the time it takes your attending physicians to clean up that human you just delivered. And then they place her in your arms and say “Here you go! She’s ready to nurse!”

A new kind of education

And that moment, my dear, beautiful mommies, is the start of your highest education that starts with “she’s ready to nurse” and never, ever, ever ends. You won’t get that A+ in this particular life course, mostly because now the person doling out the grades will need to be YOU. And if you’re like most women I know, you will humbly deflect any and all praise and recognition of your grace and courage in this life course and fail yourself every time you fall short of your predetermined  and unrealistically high expectations.

I’ve noticed that what happens to women (like me) who have been put through the corporate ringer after they enter motherhood is that they’re continuously disappointed in themselves. When things are hard – they assume that’s an F. When their body doesn’t bounce back – F. When they lose their patience with a totally insane toddler – F. There are literally 100 things that happen every day that we can and do give ourselves failing grades for as mothers, and it hurts us as women. A lot. I know because I was in the bottom of the class myself for a while.

So I am suggesting something totally radical that has worked for me, personally: CELEBRATE YOURSELF. All the time. Errrr day. Celebrate the first time you get the baby to nap in the crib instead of your arms. Celebrate yourself for teaching her to drink from the bottle so you don’t have to hold it. Celebrate yourself for putting pants on on the days you don’t feel like it, and celebrate yourself for keeping him or her alive and loved for a whole seven days straight.

Give yourself A pluses like your life depends on it, because guess what? It kind of does. Mothers need that confidence to be the role models we seek to be.

We need the self-love to teach our children how to treat themselves. And most importantly, we need to feel like we’re doing a “good job” to be HAPPY.

So please don’t wait resentfully for someone ELSE (read: your husband, friend, mom, sister, single friend, pediatrician, boss or hair dresser) to tell you what a freaking awesome job you are doing as a mother. Believe it for yourself and then celebrate yourself every single day. Because you are giving the biggest, best part of you—your LOVE—to another human being, and that is THE most life-changing, soul-transforming, important thing you could do in this higher education course.

So grade yourself on THAT and pour yourself a glass of wine, and for God’s sake stop studying because your kid will only remember LOVE. When we make mothering ourselves just as important as mothering our children, we get that praise we’ve been taught to need, but we keep our sanity (and relationships) intact. Celebrate yourselves, so your children learn what self-love looks like.