I had a doctor’s appointment the other day - my six week post-partum followup visit with Dr. K. The moment Matthew and I walked into the office, of course, Matthew woke up and was hungry. Within five minutes, as I was getting ushered into an examination room so I could sit down and nurse him, he was bawling at the top of his wee lungs. Yes, they work.

Dr. K asked me again what it was like being a mom, and I talked to him about how it was tiring, how it doesn’t feel real yet, that all we seem to do is feed, diaper, and coax to sleep, but that he smiled last weekend, and that was a lot of fun.

I keep turning that question over and over in my head and I think I finally have an answer.

Being a mom is the hardest damn job I can think of. All of the pregnancy websites talk about the fatigue and the cuteness and the postpartum depression signs to watch out for, but they don’t talk about what happens when all of the visitors go home and you are suddenly solely responsible for a being who doesn’t consciously know what he wants, much less asks coherently for it.

They don’t talk about the guesswork that goes into soothing an inconsolable child, about how the baby can have a clean diaper, full belly, not too hot, not too cold, and be crying at the top of his lungs. They don’t talk about the sometimes insatiable hunger - not just for breastmilk but for closeness, for your heartbeat.

Days can go by where you don’t shower, leave the house, or put a shirt on. Your emotions flip on a dime - one minute everything is fine, and the next you find yourself hugging your child close to you and crying, overwhelmed by everything - by the love you feel, by the frustration you feel, by everything. And then you go to Google and type in post-partum depression and look at lists of symptoms and try to determine whether or not you have the baby blues, PPD or psychosis. And all of the above? Considered absolutely normal.

Breastfeeding might come easy for you, and you might enjoy it, but it’s still hard. If you choose to breastfeed, by nature you take on more of the responsibilities. If it’s still a bit awkward to do on the fly, you have to find a place that’s not fucking disgusting to nurse (I am not sitting on a toilet to nurse my child). You have to explain to a clueless teenager at Target why your son who is breastfed is at home, and I am there at Target, and before I go home, I have to pump a little because my breasts might explode. My breasts don’t belong to me anymore. They are not a sign of sexuality for me, and I doubt they ever will be again. Our bathroom trashcan is littered with heavy, wet breastpads from milk leaking. I dread showering because of the work it takes to get back into a nursing bra.

They don’t tell you how hard it might be for you to ask for help. How hard it is for new parents to negotiate the early days of parenthood without throwing their spouse out of a window. How you feel jealous of your husband for being a heavier sleeper than you, and despite the spouse shooing you into the room to take naps, your pride precludes you from resting comfortably.

They don’t tell you that you’ll miss going back to work. They will tell you that you’ll feel goddamned guilty for wanting to go back to work, wanting to regain some facet of your former, pre-parental life, the life you had before you stopped sleeping. They don’t tell you how much you’ll agonize over how you’ll make it up to the coworkers who adopted some of your workload in your absence, while you were up soothing and consoling a baby who has just shit his pants for the fourth diaper in ten minutes (totally true; ask Josh).

None of the websites or books tell you how you’ll ever possibly manage to go back to work after your maternity leave (not all of which will be paid), be a mother, a wife, an employee, a daughter, a friend, and a woman. How you’ll ever possibly manage to get up at 6:30, probably earlier because of the baby, leave by 7:30, probably later because of the baby, work a full day and leave somewhere between 5pm and 6pm, probably later because of the workload, arrive back home between 7 and 7:30, have dinner, clean up, work out, nurse the child, give the child a bath, and be asleep by 10pm so you can catch up on the sleep you know you’ll lose at 2 and 5am.

I find myself in utter awe of the baby suckling my breast. How he’s grown in the last six weeks, how there are new folds in his skin when I’m not paying attention, how his smile lights up his entire face. On the flip side of that, I find myself more afraid than I ever have been before in my life - before the baby was born, I like to think I had a healthy dose of paranoia and skepticism - now, the desire to protect Matthew from all things potentially deadly is stronger than I ever anticipated. I used to cross the street when the sign was flashing Don’t Walk. Now, I stop and wait patiently for the walk signal to light up before I even step off of the curb. My heart aches when I read newspaper articles about people who do really terrible things to their children, and I tear up. When Matthew was in the hospital for phototherapy treatment, a volunteer from Project Linus came and gave us a blanket for Matthew, and as soon as she left, I cried, because did they know something we didn’t know about how sick Matthew was?

What the websites and books will tell you is how to be the perfect parent, and they all contradict each other, and they all judge harshly. You should or shouldn’t co-sleep. You should or shouldn’t cloth diaper. You should or shouldn’t babywear. You should or shouldn’t pick your baby up when you hear him cry because that is or isn’t spoiling him. You should or shouldn’t circumcise your son. You should or shouldn’t vaccinate your child. The moment you become a parent, you might as well tape a sign to your back that says, “KICK ME HARD.” Because people have, can, and will judge you every which way until Sunday.

Hell, it starts with pregnancy. You should or shouldn’t use a midwife or obstetrician. The medical establishment is or isn’t full of shit. You should or shouldn’t have an ultrasound, because it may or may not kill your fetus. You should or shouldn’t undergo XYZ test, because it will or will not fuck with your head. You should or shouldn’t have a natural childbirth - the list goes on.

So what is it like to be a mom? It’s pretty damned hard. It’s pretty damned confusing. It’s pretty damned judgmental and it’s sometimes very damned infuriating.

But it’s also very, very rewarding. I wouldn’t give up this gig for the world.