This weekend we had my friends A. and S. and their new son, N., over to dinner.  It was sort of last-minute - we were all just hanging around at home with our kids, so we decided to do it at the same house.  N. is three weeks old. 

After we cooed over his long feet and beautiful eyes, I asked A. how things had been going, if she'd been getting any sleep, etc.  She looked at me with a hangdog expression.  "I'm getting sick of everyone telling me their babies never cried," she said.

Ah, the Lying Parent Coalition strikes again.  They lied to me, too.  I remember people telling me their children didn't cry, slept through the night at three weeks, never spit up, learned to brew their own coffee before they rolled over and other various baby superfeats that I now realize of course their children DID NOT DO.  It made me feel like a bumbling rookie hopelessly outclassed by every other person ever to have given birth, with or without the help of drugs and disposable diapers.  It made me feel useless. 

Ladies, we have to stop doing this to the rookies.

I know it's fun to not be the new mother anymore, but really, this is cruel and unusual punishment.  You don't remember what it's like to not sleep for 24 hours straight?  You really, really don't remember the first time they left you alone and your baby screamed for three hours?  You have truly forgotten the pain of childbirth?

I don't believe you. If we could all repress that easily, there would be world peace.  I used to think I was a loser mother who complained more than all the other mothers, then my friend S. broke it to me:  "You're just a realist," she said.  "You don't blow sunshine up your own ass about how hard it is to be a mother."  Well, there you have it.  This is why you have friends for more than twenty years.

I'd like every mother whose babe is older than one year to place your right hand on your copy of The Girlfriend's Guide to Pregnancy and repeat after me:

I, --------, do solemnly swear to stop lying to the new mothers.   I promise to show entries from my diary documenting the pain of sleep deprivation, the day that I almost left my baby outside for the squirrels because she wouldn't stop screaming and the time my spouse almost got a hotel because he was so mad at me about the temperature of the baby's bath.

I promise not to lie and say the sex was fabulous the first time back.  I will tell her I had to do a shot of tequila in order to forget I'd had stitches in that area just weeks before.

I promise not to tell my pregnant friends I swore off future children five minutes into hard labor.

I promise not say my child beat any milestones if hers is lagging behind. I will not mention autism the day her baby gets his first vaccination.  I will not tell her about the first day of daycare.  I will especially not tell her if she is going back to work next week.

I promise I will tell her the truth about things that will make her feel supported, and let her remain blissfully ignorant about things she does not need to know. I promise to let her learn her own lessons in her own way without telling her "the right way" to do things unless she BEGS REPEATEDLY for advice.

I promise I will not purposefully scare her just because other people scared me. 

So be it.