I am the unluckiest mom in the world, and so are you.
I know, I know…that’s not what you wanted to read today, but hear me out. I have twins, and from the moment I started showing (at about five weeks), I heard how “lucky” I was to be pregnant. Then when it was confirmed as twins, and every stranger in the grocery store had to touch my bump and debate my due date (“Are you SURE you’re not due in January?” No…no, I’m quite sure my due date is April…), I continued to be bombarded with comments about how “lucky” I was to be having twins. My twins are boy/girl twins, which brought on the next round of comments about my incredible “luck”, quickly followed by the assertions that I was now done having children. Not questions, not suggestions, but assertions that because I had a boy and a girl, my family was complete. I was “lucky” to have gotten it all done in one pregnancy.
I was so irritated by the idea that everything that was happening was luck, but I was also swept up in the expectations society has for pregnant women. You know these expectations: the ones that tell you that you are a glowing package of joy who wants everyone to touch her bump and pry into her sex life and future family plans; the ones that tell you that you will answer all of these questions with grace and a smile because any fears you have are surely your own problem and not at all normal or acceptable to voice aloud. Those expectations kept me from saying what I wanted to say, which was, “It’s not luck! And please stop touching me!”
Once the twins came home from the NICU, we entered a period we now call the Dark Days. Sleep was in such short supply, and our anxieties about the health and survival of our babies were sky high. As soon as we settled into something resembling a routine, we immediately turned our focus to sleep. Of all the things that new moms can focus on, and there are a zillion, we made sleep our priority. We used a sleep training method, and I completely understand that it’s not for everyone, but it worked for us. By the time the twins were six months old (and home for barely three months), they were sleeping for a solid 6 – 8 hour chunk each night, and we were getting our sanity back. Cue all of our friends telling us how “lucky” we were that our babies were such good sleepers. There was that word again–luck–and it made me so mad!
Maybe it was because we were getting some sleep and so we were able to articulate mildly intelligent thoughts again, but at this point my husband and I both expressed our frustration at constantly being labeled as “lucky.” He is the one who pointed out that the blocks of sleep we were getting were not happenstance. We worked for those sleep blocks the same way people complete couch to 5K programs. We read what the experts had to say, we put the plan in place, and when we missed a day or fell of the program, we psyched ourselves up to get back to it. It was not easy, it was not flawless, and it did require numerous pep talks from each other. It was a team effort, and the important word there is “effort.” We missed numerous bbqs and birthday parties because we were beholden to the sleep schedule. We adjusted our own wants and desires to go to bed earlier because we knew we’d be up earlier. We rarely hired babysitters, and when we did, we probably annoyed them to death with meticulous instructions on the timing and manner of putting our children to bed. But you know what? It worked.
To this day our children, who are now 8, sleep 11-12 hours a night. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve had to go into their bedroom to tell them to quiet down and go to sleep. I can also count on one hand the number of times we’ve been awoken in the night for nightmares or a drink of water or any other issue that tends to get kids out of bed. We have great sleepers, and I am proud of that. Just writing this paragraph is uncomfortable for me. I feel like an egotistical braggart. That’s almost a whole other topic, but as a mom, for some reason I’m not supposed to be proud of something that I worked for and successfully achieved with my children. No, I’m supposed to chalk it up to “luck.”
And I think that’s why those initial comments about my pregnancy bothered me, too. I couldn’t pin down why I was so upset then, but now I know it’s because I worked for that, too. My pregnancy story is one of infertility and IVF. I wasn’t “lucky” to be pregnant. Much like the couch to 5K, with infertility, I listened to the experts and I followed the plan. I wasn’t “lucky” to have twins, or at least it didn’t feel that way. I lost twins and single embryos and went through failed IUI procedures before finally having a pregnancy take hold. If anything I felt cursed, not lucky. I don’t mean to say I wasn’t overjoyed and grateful and excited, because I was all of those things, but the one thing I didn’t feel was lucky. Similarly, all of those strangers were right: my family is complete, but it’s not my choice. I can’t have any more children, and that doesn’t feel lucky, either.
So maybe you’re reading this and your children don’t sleep through the night, and maybe you worked really hard at it, too, but it didn’t happen. Guess what? That’s ok! I bet you and your children are really excellent at something else. My daughter in particular is an absolutely horrible eater. She has some sensory issues, and at 8 years old, she doesn’t eat a single solid fruit or vegetable. We still have Happy Baby mango pouches on autodelivery from Amazon. We can’t all be great at everything, and our family chose to focus on sleep. This is not to say that we didn’t work on eating at all, but as they say, a jack of all trades is a master of none. So whatever it is that you have mastered–and I assure you, there’s at least one thing!–you deserve to crow about it. You worked hard to parent your children to be the capable, wonderful people they are today, and you are allowed to be proud of your accomplishments. Don’t chalk it up to luck, and don’t let others do that for you, either.
Luck is something that is largely out of our control, and quite frankly it scares me to think that some of the most important aspects of our lives could be determined by the whim of the universe. No, it’s much more comforting to me to believe that I am in control, and that I have the power to create change. You do too, you unlucky mom.
