Picture This

I don’t know if any of you are on Instagram, but I happen to find it endlessly entertaining to look at photos of people’s food/pets/babies/vacations.  I realize that, much like Facebook, people only post carefully edited photos that make their lives look amazing.  But now that I’m a Mother, I really wish that the other Mommy Bloggers that I follow would post some pictures of the ugly things that happen every day. How about a few pictures of my kid’s poop that had such explosive force that it actually hit the curtain across the room?  Or a picture of the nightly meltdown that involves an hour of ear piercing crying (I could put this on Vine, but I’m not sure anyone would want to see even 20 seconds of that).  Instead, I’m inundated every day with beautiful photographs of adorable children walking hand in hand on the streets of Manhattan, or eating ice cream cones in Paris, or buying tea in London.  While I appreciate these photos on an artistic level, when I’ve had a really shitty parenting day, sometimes I just want to see that other Moms are in the same boat.

There’s definitely an aspect these days of Mommies wanting to outdo each other.  I was shocked to discover that the competition amongst Mothers begins before you even give birth.  A woman in my prenatal yoga class told me that her Obstetrician was the one all the celebrities went to and was therefore better than mine.  Another Mommy bragged that she was paying a decorator $10,000 to design her daughter’s nursery.  I’m not ashamed to admit that everything in Noah’s nursery is either a hand-me-down or from Craigs List; I don’t think I’d be very happy if my kid peed on a $3000 chair (as is bound to happen within a week of bringing him home from the hospital). 

Once you have your baby the “How I gave Birth” competition begins.  I may have had a natural, unmedicated birth, but if you took drugs and scheduled a C-section because that was what you wanted, I salute you.  I could give a crap if you breast feed or formula feed or if you’re super old school and you found yourself a wet nurse.  But if you think you’re better than me for exclusively breastfeeding your child and, as a result, having NO FREAKING LIFE, I will tell you where to shove it.  At the end of the day, Motherhood is a ridiculously hard and pretty much thankless job, so wouldn’t it be nice if instead of judging other women’s choices we all owned up to the fact that we pretty much suck at being Mothers and we’re just trying to muddle through each day as best we can? 

Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of beautiful images from planet Mommy - a smile in the middle of the night, the joy your son expresses when you come home from being out – but I think it’s time to add a little balance and show the not-so-beautiful parts of Mommyhood as well.  So I’m making a pledge that I will post a real, unfiltered parenting photo at least once a week from this point on.  If I’d taken one today it would’ve been the huge puddle of spit up that Noah vomited onto my yoga mat this afternoon, or maybe it would be the crazy homeless guy in Hollywood having a conversation with my kid while I fed the parking meter.  Neither one of these would have been a pretty picture, but if they made even one other Mommy feel less alone, I would be happy.  Of course, I’ll still post gorgeous pictures of the Muffin Man being adorable, because when it’s all said and done, I ‘m just a proud Mommy of a kid that’s cuter than yours.    

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