Can I get real with you for a second?

This mom business is freakin’ hard.

Everyone tells you it’s tough, but it’s worth it. That your life will change in so many ways, but that ultimately, becoming a parent was the best thing they ever did.

I’ll agree, but I’m also calling bullshit.

I’m calling bullshit because they say it’s hard, but they don’t tell you how. They say it’s tiring, that you won’t sleep, but they don’t tell you what eight months (or a year, or two) of broken sleep really looks like. They sugar coat and gloss over the hard parts, making cliché comments like “the days are long but the years are short” and “don’t blink, you’ll miss it.”

But I wouldn’t do that to you.

Let me preface this by saying I love my kid. He really is the best thing that’s ever happened to me, and I wouldn’t give him up for anything in the world (most of the time). Watching him grow and change over the last few months has me in awe, wishing time would both speed up so he can learn more and slow down so he can be small forever. So in some ways, I agree with all those isn’t-parenting-the-best-thing-evarrr people.

But if I’m being completely honest, I’ve been completely blindsided by how hard it was going to be.

I didn’t expect the stress and anxiety I would have after he was born, leaving me incapable of focusing on anything else, 24/7, for at least, like, eight weeks.

I didn’t expect that the lack of sleep would leave me short-tempered and hotheaded (yes, mom, even more so than normal), picking fights with a husband who is genuinely doing his best to help.

I didn’t expect that eight months later, I’d still be struggling to get dishes done, or clothes put away, or any number of things that responsible adults are supposed to be capable of doing.

Having Franklin has been simultaneously unifying and isolating, giving me something in common with the millions of parents out there, but making me feel like I’m alone in my seeming ineptitude. Surely everyone can’t have a house this messy? Surely other people somehow manage to adult better than this? Am I the only person who doesn’t know what the hell their kid is crying about?

If not, if it’s really this hard for everyone, WHY DOESN’T ANYONE TELL YOU THAT?!

Granted, my kid is alive, healthy and happy. And my dogs are alive and reasonably happy with their new, lower status on the totem pole (and extremely happy with the fact that Franklin has started solid foods). But really — is everyone else just pretending that they’re good at this?

Because I don’t know about you, but I feel pretty damned inadequate sometimes.

Sure, my Instagram is filled with his smiling, adorable face, because he smiles a lot and is generally happy.

But it’s also because pausing to take a picture when he’s screaming his head off mid-diaper change is a bit impractical.

And because damn it, if I’m working this hard, you better believe I’m gonna show him off.

Part of me knows that the good stuff, the really good stuff everyone talks about, is yet to come. That he’s developing into a tiny little person that will eventually do more than need held up, picked up and stopped from eating dog food. And that one day, I’ll look back on this time with my well-earned, rose-colored lenses, and tell some struggling mama I see at the store to cherish it, because the time goes too fast.

But right now? Right now I’m just keeping my head above water, dodging the two-week-high pile of laundry in my bedroom and ignoring the stack of dishes in my sink because the tiny little human who owns my entire heart wants up.

Or down.

Or up again.

Sigh.

My goodness, I love this boy.

I suppose everything else really can wait.