Editor’s note: Don’t worry, we haven’t turned into a mommy-blog. For the next few days we’re going to spotlight essays about motherhood in honor of Mother’s Day. We think you’ll enjoy this funny and thoughtful essay from Juliet Vedral, whether you are a parent, a fan (or hater) of the Rolling Stones, or well, Mick Jagger.
The first time I heard the song, “Mother’s Little Helper,” I was a thick-eyebrowed teenager, sitting in my wood-paneled attic bedroom. I knew nothing of real existential angst or the stresses of marriage or parenthood. It was fun to be a girl of 15 wryly singing, “what a drag it is getting old,” never deeply contemplating why a middle-aged mother would want to numb herself from her life. It was a given that I would never have problems like that.
Fast forward 25 years to a frigid January morning. My older son, healthy and Covid-free as they come, throwing a tantrum because he’s on his second of two back-to-back quarantines. My younger son, flinging finger food around our dining table still cluttered with the remnants of breakfast. My husband, grumpy from staying up too late, toiling away in the closet-turned office connected to our guest bathroom, emerging only to tell us to quiet down. I am 40 now, hobbling around with a torn meniscus caused by aging and overcompensating after my second C-section. I’m trying not to cry and scream at the same time.
What a drag it is getting old.
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To say that “Mother’s Little Helper” is sexist and grossly insensitive is an understatement. It was written 56 years ago by a man who at the time, did not have any children (and if he did, would likely not have been a hands-on dad). It was written by a man who abused drugs, not because he was the stretched-too-thin glue that held together a family, but because of his *challenging* job as a rock star. The song drips with scorn for these sad women, complaining about how hard their lives are. They made a choice to get married and have kids and now they’re taking drugs to numb themselves. Boo-hoo.
What you don’t get until you have kids is that while yes, you made a choice, you had extremely asymmetric information about what you were actually choosing. There is no way to know what kind of kid you will have, what their specific needs will be, how your partner will react to having a child, how you will react to having a child, and definitely not how your body and mind will react to being flooded with hormones during pregnancy and postpartum. Sure, read all the books you want (I did), but until you’re faced with your child in your home, interrupting your sleep/meal/shower/life/job/etc., you can’t really know.
You also can’t know what it will feel like to go into the hospital feeling taut and intact and to come out of it feeling like a partially deflated balloon. What it will be like to not fit into your clothing or your shoes, to walk around in a body that has been changed, maybe multiple times. What it will be like to not even fit into your life anymore. You can’t know that at the end of a day being touched and pulled and hit by small people, that you will shrink away from your partner because it’s just too much. You can’t know, when you choose to start a family, what it will actually be like to become a mother (or a father), how you will be the same person, but also completely different, to feel both transfigured and disfigured at the same time.
You can’t know what it will be like to find your teen sneaking out or doing drugs or being bullied.1 You can’t know what it will be like to get a diagnosis for something life-threatening or at least, life-altering. You can’t know what it will be like to simultaneously want your child to grow up faster, but also to stay a baby forever.
You can’t know that you won’t be able to watch or listen to the news or a whole host of movies and TV shows, because you do not need any more reminders that the world is a scary place. You haven’t yet felt the sinking, sickening feeling (along with rage) that comes when someone hurts your child. You haven’t yet learned how to graciously handle the onslaught of judgment2 and unsolicited advice about your parenting (though you start to when you’re pregnant). You can’t know how hard it will be to not second-guess yourself every time you talk to another parent and realize that “damn, maybe I should be doing x or y?” or “crap, why won’t my kid happily eat blueberries?”
If the above paragraphs haven’t made you reach for a glass of wine or a piece of chocolate or a CBD gummy, please, tell me your secret!
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I started taking antidepressants again in March 2021. I was 30 weeks pregnant and had been dealing with insomnia for 10 weeks. My OBGYN prescribed me some Lexapro and Ambien to help me sleep. “It’s hard to be pregnant in the middle of an apocalypse,” she said compassionately as she called the order into my pharmacy. “You need to take care of yourself.”
For the past 13 months, taking care of myself has involved taking antidepressants. It has also involved making some changes to my life, changes that for sure would earn me Mick Jagger’s scorn3.
Beyond the antidepressants, I’m learning to be okay with things like–gasp–buying frozen meals. “Cooking fresh food for her husband’s just a drag,” Jagger sings, implying the Mother in his song was a bad wife for buying an “instant cake” or burning a “frozen steak.”4 I love to cook fresh food. I subscribe to NYT Cooking and have a binder full of printed out recipes (sheet pan meals for the win!). But I don’t always love forgoing a long walk or taking on a writing project to do meal prep. I often don’t even have time to give up. So yeah, I’m going to make a frozen meal or order takeout and my husband is going to eat it and be grateful. My strong-willed preschooler mostly lives off of cereal and hopes and dreams right now, so I’m not about to make him fresh food he certainly will not eat and will in fact weaponize against me (his loss).
Beyond the antidepressants, I’m learning to be okay with things like screen time. I defy any parent who had to raise toddlers over the past two years to judge me for putting my kid in front of a movie just so I could take a damn shower. Or so I could take a nap while the baby was sleeping. Or so I could take a call with a client.
Beyond the antidepressants, I’m learning to be okay with the fact that I’m eight pounds heavier than I was before I got pregnant (see busted knees and well, antidepressants). I’m learning to love my new body, to not see it as misshapen but reshaped, just as my life has been reshaped by motherhood. Because the old life was actually too small to hold the enormity and power of motherhood.I’m learning to run to grace, my constant Helper, instead of beating myself up for not meeting my self-imposed standards (or Mick Jagger’s). And I’m learning to articulate my feelings in healthier ways. So here goes.
No offense Mick Jagger, but drink my blood.
I’m certainly not excited to find out about this.
Like Mick Jagger over there, judging that poor woman for trying to cope with her stressful life.
Who died and made you Mother of the Year, Mick Jagger?
With all due respect, Mick Jagger, burn in hell.