Hey Mom, Stop Making Excuses!

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excusesFairly recently, I was intrigued by a comment thread posted on Facebook. A mother had written an article listing why she was happy with her choice to have only one child. Fair enough. It wasn’t the article that got me thinking, but the comments about it. Why was she making excuses?

The comments reflected the author’s need to justify her choice of having one child. As a mom of an only child myself, I reflected on my own article Why I’m One and Done. I felt as though I had done the very same thing. In fact, my entire article was a list of reasons why I chose to have only one child.

I started to think that it wasn’t just about women explaining their one child, but this was about explaining away all of our choices as mothers.

There isn’t a day that goes by when I don’t hear a mother answering a question with an excuse or justification.

Question: How many children do you have?

Answer: We have one…you see, we wanted to have more, but I had so much trouble conceiving…

OR

Did you vaccinate?

No, because I heard that some of the vaccines have some pretty harmful substances, and we are an organic family, so…

OR

So are you home with your son?

No, I work full-time, but it’s okay because he’s only in daycare half the time, and my mother watches him one day, and my nephew gets to pick him up on alternate Wednesdays…

JUST.STOP.IT.

Your choices are good enough answers. Nobody needs an explanation of why or how you came to your decision.

The person asking doesn’t need to know why you’ve chosen to breastfeed or not, why you have four children or only one child. Why you vaccinated or didn’t. Or why you had a planned C-Section or natural birth. None of it matters. What matters is that you made each of these choices with your family’s best interest in mind? But most of all, it’s time that we learn to be comfortable with our own choices and know that it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks of those choices.

So, mama, how will you answer this:

Question: Did you deliver naturally?

Answer: No, I scheduled a c-section.

And let it be enough.

Why are you making excuses? 

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