I got pregnant at 16. I had my child at 17. And since then my life has never been the same. In every way possible, my princess changed my life. She has made me a better person. She made me love harder than I ever thought possible. She has made me see things brighter than I thought possible. She has made me laugh and smile bigger than any other 1 person in my entire, short, young life. She may think I’m the best thing ever, but truthfully she is.
But as every young mom knows, for every perfect day there is a bad day to go with it. Being young and being a mom is hard. It’s a constant battle between what I want to do and what I have to do. I will never forget the night of senior prom hearing someone say, “Ew isn’t she a mom now, shouldn’t she be at home with her kid.??? After 4 years, I thought the battle would get so much easier, but it hasn’t not by much at least. My child is 4, and I’m 21. I still get dirty looks. I still get told I can’t because I’m a mother and I still let myself believe it.
I will still make mistakes every day, but instead of telling me that, “mistakes happen??? I get told, “you’re a mother, you should know better.??? What? So me being young has no effect on my choice making, I should only think like a mother? Well, tell me how does a mother think? And what is a mother? Is a mother just a mother or is she something else, like, I don’t know, her own woman? Can she not slip up sometimes or is that not mother-like? So we have to think twice about what everyone else will say. We have to double and triple guess ourselves. And most young moms will say to others, they don’t think like this, but I know we do. We all do it. If we mess up, its because we “should have been more careful and wouldn’t be in the situation we’re in.???
What most people don’t get is yes, I am a mother before anything else. But I’m also young, I’m 21 years old. I like to hang out with my friends, sometimes without my kid (what a shocker). I feel like young mothers get held on such a higher level standard than middle aged mom’s because in the eyes of everyone else, “We made our bed, now we must lie in it.??? My friends love and accept my kid, most of them love her more than me. We all hang out together. Sunday brunch? Oh yes, my kid loves Sunday brunch with the girls. She drinks her lemonade out of a champagne glass and we toast. She’s as much as apart of my friend group as I am. And she’s the center of everybody’s attention.
Here is some great advice: shut your judgmental a$$ up. We are doing the best job we can. If you think you know better than we do, good. Keep it to yourself. Nobody asked you. I’m going to mess up. Sorry not sorry. I bet on everything, though, that my child is so happy and so loved and she doesn’t care that I messed up as long as I do what’s best for her and keep the Sundaes on Sundays dates.