A Reflection Of Early Motherhood

I had the lovely opportunity to write this piece about “Mommy Wine Culture” for the Sober App Substack. It has me reflecting a lot on my early years of motherhood.

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Motherhood is one of the things that I blame for my heavy alcohol use. You might be thinking, don’t you mean alcoholism? I’ve given this a lot of thought. No, I don’t mean alcoholism. I’m positive that becoming a mother was the straw the broke the camel’s back.

Sure, my relationship with alcohol was always toxic. I drank and partied way too much throughout college and in my twenties. But it was the societal expectations of motherhood that made me think that not only did I want to drink but I had to. How else would I cope?

Even before giving birth and actually becoming a mother the pressure started. I was expected to know what kind of birth I was going to have. When I first got pregnant, I thought I would just have the kind of birth where the baby comes out. But soon I learned that it was way more complicated than that. Certain people thought certain things about certain ways and I would need to decide which side I was on. What kind of mother was I going to be?

I just wanted to focus on buying cute onesies and adorable soft stuffed animals, but there were more important things to be decided, like how to feed my baby. In other words, how did I plan to keep my baby alive? Breastfed babies were more likely to (hears heart pounding in my ears every time someone was talking about this and already feeling judged) while not breastfeeding meant (same heart pounding in ears and only hearing judgment). All I heard was what kind of person are you Samantha? Good or bad?

I so badly wanted to be good. A good mother. Somehow though, due to untreated anxiety and unrealistic societal expectations, I learned that being good meant being perfect. Perfect is hard. It required constant education, information and analysis. It required doing what other people thought was best instead of doing what I thought was best. It involved abandoning my intuition and replacing it with some influencers version of perfect motherhood. (But she was so emphatic that her way was right!)

This resulted in increased anxiety.

For example, with my son, I breastfed until my nipples bled and then I pumped all hours of the day trying desperately to fulfill expectations of motherhood. My chest felt like a tooth with an exposed nerve. If in the presence of air I thought I might die of pain. But I wanted to prevent him from getting ear infections and allergies like the experts said. I wanted to be a good mom.

After nine excruciating months of pumping (and hours of missed bonding time because I was too busy cleaning pump parts, bottles, and constantly obsessing over whether or not he was getting enough milk) I gave into formula feeding, convinced that he would live a life of illness. Convinced that I didn’t have what it takes to be a good mother.

(He’s 13 now and perfectly healthy with zero allergies or chronic ear infections).

With my daughter, I exclusively nursed trying to right the wrongs I made the first time around. She never took a bottle and never had a sip of formula. I was proud and thought I’d finally been able to do something good in motherhood.

(She’s 11 now with terrible allergies and chronic migraines).

Early motherhood set a standard of expectations for me that would have been completely impossible to meet. For every single topic on babies and child raising there’s a podcast and book either confirming that you are doing the exact right thing or telling you the long term damage you are causing by doing that very same thing. It’s exhausting. For an anxious perfectionists it was more than that. It was dark.

Motherhood took every single fear that I’d ever had about the world or about myself and then amplified it by two. Two tiny humans were now completely reliant on me, a mess of a human who didn’t know exactly where Cuba was on a map and who needed a calculator to do basic multiplication. I wasn’t smart enough for this. I didn’t have the tools for this.

But alcohol was there telling me to relax and not to worry because all the moms were drinking and this was the cure to all of my parenting woes. (There’s a meme that I loved that said-It’s not drinking alone if your kids are at home!).

It was all a lie. Alcohol took from me the only real thing I had in motherhood; my inner voice, my intuition and my inner knowing.

That is, until it didn’t any longer and I came back a stronger, more confident mother.

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Today, I still don’t love Mother’s Day. I feel like the pressure to have the right kind of Mother’s Day is too much. I like to pretend that the idea of Mother’s Day happened like this:

Female corporate idea person in need of help as a new mom: You know what would be a nice idea? A day where mother’s are celebrated.

Newbie guy: Which ones?

Corporate Head: Let’s make it competitive. We can make it so that every one who is a mother, has a mother, or who wishes they could be a mother has to compete over who is more worthy of celebrating.

Greedy Boardman: Yea, and let’s make anyone who chooses not to be a mother feel bad about not conforming!

Concerned Employee: But won’t it be sad for everyone who has a lost a mother or who’s mother wasn’t/isn’t there for them?

Corporate Head: That’s none of our concern.

Actually, this isn’t at all how Mother’s Day started. It was a nice gesture, with the idea of friendship at it’s core. Over time though, corporations got a hold of it and I can tell you by the “Mama Needs Wine” t-shirts being sold on the internet that we’ve definitely deviated from the original intention.

I know what you’re thinking, Is this sober fun killer really hating on Mother’s Day?!?!?

Yes and no. I just wish that if we are going to take a beat to celebrate mothers maybe we could also listen to what they need. I’m suspecting it’s more support, equitable and just healthcare, adequate childcare options for both working and non working mothers, logical expectations (similar to those we have for fathers), access to affordable mental health services, less trips to the store, more art, more time and space to also be a woman/human, empathy and compassion, room for mistakes and most of all less criticism.

Wherever you are on your motherhood journey (including mothers of plants, animals, organizations, etc), I want to send love and support. You’re doing it right. You’re the right fit for the person/thing you are mothering. You do have what it takes. And if I have any advice at all it would be to silence the noise of what the world expects of you and to listen deeper to the truth that is already within you. When I started doing that, I found that I didn’t need to reach for something to take the edge off. When I wasn’t in constant conflict with what I knew to be true vs what the world expected of me, there was a lot less edge.

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A few things:

This is a silly post about my own motherhood journey but there are many more serious issues surrounding motherhood that are not mentioned. The struggles for black and brown mothers is not just troubling but life threatening. One way to support mothers is to learn about black maternal health and support those fighting to create equality and justice for all mothers.

If you liked this post and want to know more about my story you can read my book here.

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Finally, I don’t use AI to generate any of the content in this newsletter. I am not saying this against anyone who uses AI. It’s just that my posts are made by me, a human, which means I might have errors, mistakes or even flaws (I for sure have flaws). And also, I just like consent, so if I use AI for anything, you will know it.