Motherhood Confessions of Struggle

Mother’s Day can stir up a lot, and not all of it is pretty. I’m opening my journal and letting you hear what early motherhood actually sounded like inside my head: the postpartum body changes I didn’t expect, the embarrassment I carried in silence, and the bone deep sleep deprivation that made every “simple” fix feel like a personal failure. If you’ve ever wondered why you feel overwhelmed even when you’re doing everything you can, you’ll feel seen here. 

I also share how those old entries still connect to my life now, even as a licensed therapist and parenting coach. A tough moment with my 12 year old brings up that familiar fear of failing, and it reminds me why sustainable parenting can’t be built on perfectionism. We talk about the pain of trying strategy after strategy, from feeding and sleep to developmental worries, and how quickly a parent can start measuring their worth by outcomes they can’t fully control. 

The turning point comes from Circle of Security and Raising a Secure Child: we don’t need perfect attunement to raise secure kids. “Good enough parenting” is real, research backed, and surprisingly low pressure, and the 30% idea can change how you speak to yourself on your hardest days. We also dig into what it means to stop hunting for the one right technique and start using parenting tools with confidence and inner wisdom. 

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Transcript

Mother’s Day Journal Confessions

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As it's Mother's Day, I was digging through some old things and found some journal entries of early motherhood and wanted to share some of my deepest moments of struggle and hope that it helps you to feel more seen and validated and less alone. Hey friend, welcome back to the Sustainable Parenting Podcast, where we bridge the gap between overly gentle parenting and overly harsh discipline so that you finally have the joy and ease you've been missing. I'm your host, Flora McCormick, licensed therapist, parenting coach, and I'm so glad you're here. I hope this is a space to let you in a little more to my inner world. As I'm often giving you suggestions of tools that can help life feel easier, I want you to know life does not always feel easier. And this is not just in the past. I still continue to have moments where things are not great. My son, who's 12, just recently got detention, and I was disappointed. And we were talking that through, and I was questioning whether I'm completely failing as a these things still happen. And I wanted to just share a few confessions with you in my inner circle here as a listener of the podcast, and hope that it helps you to feel more seen and validated and less alone. Journal entry, January 29th. My six-week checkup. Looks like my body is in a bit of bad shape. The doctor recommended I start some physical therapy for my ab separation and lower quote relaxation of the muscles. I need this cream two times a day in my perinium, and I weigh about 15 more pounds than I'd like. She has no good explanation for why I fart almost hourly with long farts listed with four O's. It's gotten a bit ridiculous and embarrassing when it happens in public. Friends, pause on the reading and I just have to explain this to you. One of my lovely postpartum symptoms was that I'd get what I called the walking farts. Like I swear I would not feel it in my tummy, but just like moments, apparently, according to this, once an hour or so, I'd be like walking and have this like super long, drawn out, very noisy, freaking fart. Yeah, muscles down there, not doing their job, holding stuff in. That was one of my symptoms. And to make it even worse, I remember this day when I told my provider she had like a student that was observing or something like that, an intern. She asked if it was okay for the intern to be in to be in the room. And as I asked this question about it, I was so embarrassed. I'm like, so like, is this normal? She literally looked at the intern and sort of chuckled, like, I've never heard of that before. I think that's just a personal diet problem. And so I was even more mortified. Like, I don't know why my body's doing this. And now my doctor's even telling me that it's a weird, abnormal thing. And okay, great. Continuing my journal entry. The lack of sleep, only getting two or rarely three hour chunks of sleep at a time, is really getting to me. I would love to get to sleep a bit more. I cried and luckily Gabe listened. We're going to try to have him do an evening feeding bottle of pump breast milk so I can get some sleep. I love Caleb, but this is a hard time. Just in the nick of time, on January 30th, friends brought over lunch and dinner so I didn't have to worry about food. It was so helpful. And P.S. We tried the bottle, didn't work. Gabe was up late, and I didn't get much extra sleep because I listened to Caleb cry for another hour after the feeding from 12 to 1 a.m. and then spent another hour trying to get him to feed and to sleep. Major nursing fail. Oh, friend. It is literally a little bit traumatic to listen to my voice say these words because it's like I can step back in time and remember how exhausted I was, how incredibly overwhelmed I was, how confused I was with my body, how embarrassed I was with my body, and how disappointed I was when I try to come up with solutions that didn't seem to work. Sleep training strategies, nursing or bottle strategies. He wouldn't take the Binky. I remember he wasn't doing tummy time, didn't seem like there were any inclinations towards crawling. He never did crawl. He went straight from sitting to toddling. And as a child therapist who knows a lot about the importance of crawling, that was just mortifying to me. And I just, there were so many moments where I felt like a total failure. And friend, if you can relate to any of these sentiments, I see you and you are not alone. Another confession I want to share came from an entry I titled Stop Trying to Be Perfect. This was written when Caleb was about five. Recently, I attended a circle of security workshop for parents, and I read the book Raising a Secure Child. It rocked my world in the best way possible. Here's one of my takeaways. Let go of trying to be perfect. We read in today's chapter that we only need about 30% success in being attuned to our child in order to be good enough, which research has shown helps our child thrive. How refreshing. You don't have to try to be perfect. I usually expect about 80 to 100% out of myself, leaving myself, of course, often disappointed and frustrated because I am not perfect. Darn. It's hard to be human, but feels good to think that good enough parenting is actually what our children need from us. And secondly, stop searching for the right strategy, Flora, and tune into your inner wisdom. Don't get me wrong, there are many parenting techniques that I love. I utilize tools from positive discipline every day, but I'm learning from Circle of Security that quote, the key to making good use of parenting tips or tools is to be equipped with the confidence to make your own choices about which advice to follow and how to follow it. The Circle of Security is here to keep you in touch with your innate capacity for wisdom and love. Happy Mother's Day. See you next week. Listeners, if you need parenting advice, talk to my mom. Sustainable parenting with Flora McCormick.