How Did My Ancestors Do It?

In which I play Suffering Olympics with Medieval peasants

Photo by Olivier Guillard on Unsplash

When I was a little girl, shopping with my mom in the supermarket, I remember seeing a modestly pretty woman in her thirties buying milk, with an adorable redheaded toddler in her shopping cart. At that moment, I thought, That woman’s life must be perfect. If I were her, I’d never complain. I’m sure I would have given her grace to complain in certain catastrophic scenarios, like if she lost a loved one, but day to day? No. She was married, fairly attractive, and had an adorable, seemingly healthy child. She was living my dream. I could not imagine why she would ever complain. All I wanted to be was a mother, and bonus points if my child was extra adorable with red hair. I would never let myself complain if I eventually got there.

Despite how simplistic and silly this line of thinking was, it continued. Twenty years later, I was married, and trying to conceive. As seemingly everyone around me got pregnant on the first try, I told myself that parents were living in a perpetual VIP section of happiness and love, and that once I became a mother, I would never complain. I remember seeing a video on Facebook of a newly postpartum mother sobbing while her infant wouldn’t sleep. I’m ashamed to say I thought she was being kind of silly, mostly because I would have traded with her in an instant. Who cares if the baby isn’t sleeping, I thought. Surely if you just put the baby in the crib it’ll fall asleep eventually. Why are YOU crying?

Then I became a mother. I told myself I’d never complain. I was the pick-me of laboring moms, leaving everything up to my OB with zero birth plan. I repeatedly insisted I didn’t care about anything as long as I got to take home a live baby. When I got home with my newborn, I was floating on air. In fact, my mental health had never been better. Something about the postpartum hormones seemed to (at least temporarily) cure my OCD. I FaceTimed my mom and told her I was confident I wanted at least three.

But eventually, the honeymoon phase ended (or at least waned.) I had some sleepless nights where I screamed into my pillow. I had various medical things about which to fret—everything from my baby’s weight to a rash on my breast that my OCD convinced me was the rare but deadly inflammatory breast cancer. It’s not that having a baby made me sadder or more anxious—I just eventually got used to it and returned to my baseline of emotions. Some good days, some bad days.

And speaking of bad days, well, this week was…bad. And despite how objectively bad it was, I can’t help but wonder: am I even justified in complaining? I said when I became a mother I would never complain. And my ancestors starving in Latvia probably survived much worse—without insane people on Twitter to distract them! Who am I to complain?