I’m just gonna say it: Recently, I’ve wondered if having a third child was a mistake.

It has nothing to do with the actual child: our youngest is as sweet and easy as you could hope for, full of toothless grins, adorable squeals, and delighted giggles.

Rather, my doubt has to do with feeling completely overwhelmed and burnt out by the constant stream of needs and emotions that demand my attention. Constant. Even when I’m at work or they’ve all gone to bed, their hypothetical future needs and past emotions are at the forefront of my psyche, buzzing like static, fraying my attention and swamping my heart. . .

Sometimes I don’t feel called to motherhood.

That’s not something we’re really allowed to say, but it’s true—both for me and for many moms with whom I’ve spoken.

A couple of weeks ago, my husband had a zoom meeting right through dinnertime, so it was just me with my three girls, ages 5, 3, and 3 months…

On the surface, my life is pretty good, great even. I’m incredibly privileged, with three beautiful children, a loving husband, a flexible, meaningful job, great friends.

But sometimes I feel like I’m drowning.

Not the thrashing, panicked, violent kind of drowning. Rather, like I am fighting a rip tide day after day, treading water, working so very hard just to stay afloat, weary to the bone—drowning almost imperceptibly. Silently. Drifting further and further from shore as I struggle to summon another surge of energy and intention . . .

We were taking an evening walk around the neighborhood, dodging the thunderstorm that menaced on the radar forecast. My infant was strapped to my chest, and I pushed my worn out three-year-old in the stroller. My five-year-old walked on her own two feet, running and skipping, leaping and twirling, her legs long like a gazelle, her voice a constant stream of questions and commentary.

Suddenly the conversation took a serious turn. "Mom, I wish God didn't exist."

When I was pregnant with my first baby, I read obsessively about pregnancy, labor, and delivery. I read about cribs and car seats, strollers and swaddles. Thanks to some savvy friends, I even read some about breastfeeding, though I didn’t learn many basic facts about babies and their care until after our little girl had arrived and started making it very clear that we were not meeting all of her needs, at which time I read more.

What I never read anything about was what would happen to me after she was born. Not just physically—which offered plenty of its own surprises and challenges—but also mentally and emotionally. . .

Ten days after the birth of my third child, I caught my reflection in the mirror as I walked by with my little nugget on my shoulder and admired my relatively flat belly. “Look at me!” I thought, “I’m bouncing back so fast!” I snapped this photo to post on Instagram later with a witty caption to show everyone how un-pregnant I was looking.

But thankfully, before I had time to post it, I realized that this photo was a lie.

(Myths 5-8)

Gretchen Rubin has shared Niels Bohr’s famous quote, “The opposite of a great truth is also true.” I think we can apply this in a slightly different way to say that the opposite of a great myth is also a myth. You cannot spend every waking moment caring for your children and also take care of yourself. You cannot simultaneously be the mom who gives up her career to stay home with her kids full-time and be the mom who follows her dreams while making a six-figure (or even five-figure) income.

If we allow ourselves to be caught between the opposing expectations of the Good Mom, we’ll always feel like we’re failing, no matter how great we’re actually doing. So it’s essential that we call these ideas what they are and shrug off their impossible burden, for only then can we be free to step into our own version of motherhood, to be the unique, imperfect, but deeply good mother that we were designed to be.

(Myths 1-4)

We all pick up ideas about what it means to be a good mother either implicitly through culture and casual comments or explicitly through taught expectations, both well-meaning and less benevolent. And when our experience doesn’t match these expectations—either our own or those of others—we assume that the problem lies with us. We are not doing it right. We are defective in some way. We are not cut out for the task—the task that, by the way, all real women are naturally born to do effortlessly. Ergo, we must not be a good/real/godly woman.

Even if we don’t articulate these conclusions in words, they can swirl around in our hearts and poison our souls. . .

Life never ends up looking quite the way we imagine, and this is especially true for the postpartum stage. No matter how much we try to prepare, we will be bombarded with challenges—and joys—that we did not expect.

This was especially true for Laurie, but as she shares in this story about an at-birth Down syndrome diagnosis, there is one thing about motherhood that we can count on absolutely: our purpose.