Honesty.

I'm loving all the honesty that's been going on around the blogging world recently.  I feel like finally a collective of voices have said 'You know what? Being a mama is freakin' hard!' Mandy, Sash and Jess have all written about this recently, and each post is definitely worth a read.

For some reason in real life catch ups we seem to gloss over the bad bits and explain them away.  We put on a front instead of just being honest.  It's like you join the secrets club in the labour room, because god forbid you tell a woman who hasn't been through it yet what it is really like. Instead of learning from each other and sharing the struggle we pretend everything is awesome and as a result make others feel alone in their journey. 

I honestly think most of it comes down to the fact that the whole experience is so contradictory.  It is the most amazing, humbling and rewarding role; but at the same time is the most challenging, all-consuming experience that makes you give and give and give, even when you ran out of energy three days ago.  It's almost like we feel we can't admit it is hard without negating the good.

I only wish there was more of this honesty.  Where asking for help wasn't an admission of not-coping, where we could voice our complaints and have people understand you wouldn't change your situation for the world, you just need to vent.  Bring back the village mentality I say!

'No! Don't tell them I'm not always well dressed and looking cute!'