The Things We Swore We Would Never Do


Do you remember a time before you had children? I know, it’s hard. I vividly remember finding out I was pregnant with my now 6-year-old and chatting with my husband about the type of parents we would be. I don’t remember the details but I can guarantee that we’re not even close to being the parents that we had assumed we’d be. How does that happen? How could we have been that far off in assuming what parenthood would be like? It’s the ‘know it all’ nature of pre-parenthood life.

All of us are guilty of being that judgey pre-motherhood woman who rolled her eyes or gapped her mouth at a struggling mother. We’ve all mumbled statements like ‘If my kids EVER acted like that…’ or ‘I cannot believe she just said that to her children…’ And then. Then we had a few of our own and bit our tongues. There so many things that the pre-motherhood versions of ourselves swore that we would never do. Were we just a little ignorant, overly confident or just plain hopeful? Whatever the reason, we were WRONG.

Check out THE THINGS WE SWORE WE WOULD NEVER DO…

We swore we would never yell. Ehh…

We swore we wouldn’t be the new mom who called the doctor once (or twice) a day.

We swore we would always protect our kids from germs. Use a public bathroom? Touch those toys at the park without them being wiped down? Use a shopping cart without a cover? I think not. Three years in and all we can do at this point is dump hand sanitizer all over them and hope for the best.

We swore we would drop that baby weight safely, but also in record time.

We swore our kids would NEVER be the ones to say something inappropriate in public.

We swore we would NEVER have to resort to those lame, empty parenting methods. You know, the white lies, the empty threats, the picking battles, the ‘we’ll see.’ We are so beyond that. Uh Huh.

We swore we would NEVER be that mom with the out of the control children in Target. You know the one, the one who is struggling to not let out a scream in public. Holding on to her patience for dear life. We swore we would never be that mom.

We swore we would exclusively breast-feed or at the very least, we would try our damnedest.

We swore we would limit screen-time. I mean, really limit screen-time. Uh huh.

Fast-food or donuts? NEVER for our kids.

We swore we would limit sugar. I mean, really limit sugar. Uh huh.

We swore up and down that we would NEVER make more than one dinner. Our kids would eat whatever it is that we cooked. We would all eat the same meal every night. One dinner.

We swore we would NEVER judge. Almost laughable in retrospect.

We swore we would never spoil our kids. We all know the myth about spoiling a baby – you can’t spoil a baby. But we would NEVER have a spoiled toddler.

We swore up and down that we would NEVER be the mom who wore pajamas or bed-head to school drop-off or to the bus stop.

We swore we would only use Ibuprofen when absolutely necessary. Three years in and now it’s more of a ‘oh he’s super cranky and might be getting sick, or maybe cutting a tooth. Maybe he needs some medicine’ type of thing.

We swore we would only feed our children healthy snacks. Four years in and their snacks slowly morphed from cut-up grapes and apples to whatever we can pull out of our purse.

We swore our kids would be the ones to sleep through the night. We would NEVER have issues getting our kids to sleep because we would teach them how! Uh huh, us and the rest of the world, right?

We just swore we wouldn’t be THAT mom.

Ugh. Just makes you want to roll your eyes, right? Can you even believe we thought, or even hoped for some of these things? Now, there are some of us who stick to some of the promises above and that’s amazing. Some of us are strict about screen-time or sleeping habits (me, me!) or the food we put into our kid’s bodies. But there are a few on this list that no one could ever deny. The pre-motherhood judging, the germs and public temper-tantrums. Yup, there are just some things that we all have in common and those are an unfortunate three.

Now, rather than being the pre-motherhood judgey 20-something version of ourselves that rolled their eyes at a strange mother’s parenting fails, now, we are that strange mother with the parenting fails. Now, we’re looking at those 20-something girls and thinking ‘You have no clue what you are in for!’

Mommy Diatribes