Being a mom is challenging no matter what is going on in your life, but when extra stress is added being a mom becomes ten times harder. When Caia was born, I felt the pressure to always be “on” no matter what time I woke up to be with her. For some reason being a mom made me feel like it was no longer acceptable for me to have a bad day or feel anything other than grateful for motherhood. The stress I felt for trying to keep in every emotion I had made me not want to be a mom at all. Then I felt extreme guilt for feeling that way.

If I didn’t have a baby at all, I would have never found out that I had OCD. The symptoms of OCD that I thought I had been managing finally came spilling out when I had a baby. I could no longer hide any of these symptoms that I didn’t even know I had, and I basically fell off the deep end. The outside stress from having undiagnosed OCD, of course made being a mom so much harder. I was constantly trying to prove to myself that I was not a murderer, which threatened my ability to be a mom at all. I was very close to the path of avoiding my baby completely, which would have been terrible all because of the stress from undiagnosed OCD.

In the middle of all of the OCD, my family’s yellow lab, Raleigh, was put to sleep. I could not handle the grief from this, which also made being a mom harder. I was devastated to have lost someone as amazing as Raleigh. Waking up every morning knowing that Raleigh was no longer here was gut wrenching to me. Dealing with these emotions and trying to be “on” as a mom to a six month old is next to impossible. I didn’t deal with the stress well at all, and I felt like I was drowning. I tried my absolute best to be “on” as a mom to Caia, but I knew that I was failing miserably.

It took a year of therapy for me to realize that I am still a human being who also a mom. Human beings have emotions and bad days even if I was a mom. The more I told this to myself and practiced self-compassion, the easier being a mom became. I learned how to manage my OCD symptoms, which at the time, was the biggest source of my stress that interfered with my ability to be a mom. For that year, I had to really remember that I was still a person who was also a mom.

More recently, my grandma, who is one of my dearest friends, has been in the hospital. She is okay and coming home today thank goodness, but I have been devastated that this happened. If this happened to me two years ago when Caia was small, I don’t think I would have been able to cope at all. Luckily, I am much stronger now, and I realized that I am human and am allowed to be sad. I can be sad and a mom at the same time. We have to remember that life still happens when you are a mom, and it is okay to not be “on” all the time. Our kids will be just fine.