How a TV Show Changed My Perspective on Motherhood

All my life, I wanted to have three children. I am one of three children – it just made sense to me. And boy, when I hit a certain age, I was ready. This was my destiny, fated; I had it all sorted out. I was going to crush motherhood. I’d make it look easy. 

Despite having the delusion smacked out of me by an emergency C-section, a newborn baby girl who didn’t know how to feed, and a postpartum body that hurt, surged with ever-shifting hormones, and was entirely foreign to me, I thought, yep, let’s do this again. 

And so arrives baby number two, just two-and-a-half years after the first, and I was ready to tend to my brood. A nurturing goddess. Mother incarnate – et cetera. 

But here comes the even ruder awakening – one that I had surely been warned about (“The transition from one to two is the hardest!”). But this is a set of parenting words of wisdom that can only be absorbed through experience.

Boy, was it hard. I mean hard. I had a very active toddler and a stage 5 clinger baby who hated napping. My oldest’s three-hour mother’s morning out was hardly worth the 45 total minutes of sitting in a car line listening to my son screaming in protest of being strapped in a car seat. Their nap schedules never aligned. And when I say “nap,” I mean 37 minutes. On the dot, my son would wake up at 37 minutes. That was his nap. Honestly, I’m still traumatized. 

It was a lot for me. I admire the women who can roll with the chaos of parenting young children without seeming phased,  but that was not me. I was phased. All the time. With each short nap, each crying spell, each toddler meltdown, I uncurled the grasp I had on my dream of three kids. 

I became obstinate in the face of this dream. Jaded and self-blaming. Who did I think I could manage three kids with dignity, poise, and not a drop of sweat on my brow? Most days with two, I could barely remember to shower, take a sip of water, or have something to eat that wasn’t the cold leftovers my toddler rejected. 

I flew too close to the sun, and there wasn’t even a graceful groundfall, but a combustible fireball. Of frenzied baby items purging. Of closing off my heart to possibility and wrapping my arms around the cold embrace of the difficult reality. Of stasis, just an endless trajectory of challenges.

It was not the best of times. But looking back with kinder eyes, it’s what I needed to do at the time. Hindsight, and all of that. I needed to breathe, and this was how I did it. The chapter on three kids was closed.

Then I started watching Parenthood, that TV show about a big family where they overcome all the trials and tribulations, and at the end of the day, they love each other. Honestly, it’s not my usual vibe, and I can’t say I even particularly enjoyed it, but I felt compelled to watch it for whatever reason. I suffered through the entire series when it hit me. 

Not to give any spoilers, but I realized that on my deathbed, I want to be surrounded by a big family. That’s what matters. And the strains of parenting and challenges of just existing ultimately build a lifetime of love, support, and teamness. I was creating a circle of people who got me, understood me, and would show up for me. 

Somewhere along the way, in the late nights, blowout diapers, and tears (kids and mine), I had lost perspective. I was so focused on how I could provide for them that I forgot they were providing for me, too. And it might not always be apparent, it might feel like a drain at times, but these little humans were my family for life. 

Why did it take the hit series Parenthood for me to realize that? Who knows. But sometimes crystallizing moments come from where you least expect them. 

Almost nine months later, the caboose to our family came and changed our lives completely for the better. Parenthood gave me perspective on parenthood, as trite and cringey as that sounds. It changed my life, really. It’s an unexpected miracle, a light shining in a dark place, and a gentle re-opening of a chapter I thought I had soldered shut. So thanks for the caboose, television programming.