Cookies, Mom Guilt, and Other Delicate Things…

opening up about those tender places and insecurities

Cookies, warm from the oven. Rolled in sugar, twinkling in the fluorescent overhead lights of the kitchen. Smelling of peanut butter and chocolate, promising coziness with every soft, crumbly bite. I know I should wait for them to cool and set to eat them, but I can’t help myself. I lift one, soft and impossibly tender, hoping it won’t fall apart between the cookie sheet and my mouth. 

***

I don’t believe it snows in Boston. Sure, it did once. When I was in my senior year of college at a small school in southern Vermont, we got hit with the same nor’easter storm that hit Boston every weekend for all of January. But that was almost 10 years ago. In the two winters I’ve spent on the MA North Shore, I can count the number of times it has snowed on one hand – give or take a finger. With an even warmer winter predicted this year, I was at a loss about what winter gear to get my toddler. Do I drop $50+ on legit toddler snow boots in case it happens to storm that one day?¹

Eventually, I landed on texting the mom-friend text thread to see what everyone else was doing. 

Turns out I was the only one who still hadn’t bothered to get her precious child the appropriate winter gear. In fact, everyone had already purchased doubles so they’d be prepared to leave one of everything at daycare. 

Meanwhile, last week I sent my son to daycare without mittens even though it was 27 degrees because I hadn’t had the time to buy him any yet. 

***

Little E’s newest game is shoving everything off the coffee table, leaving it perfectly bare. He then proceeds to pull himself onto it, and, if left to his own devices, he would then stand on the table and stamp his little feet to his heart’s content. We try not to let it get this far. We try not to let him climb up on the coffee table at all. 

“We should be getting him a bigger climbing toy for Christmas,” I say after pulling him off the table for the seemingly 327th time that day. I look over at the little foam stairs and wedge we got him for his first birthday. I’d been so proud of it at the time. He still wasn’t quite walking and was starting to figure this whole climbing thing out, so the 12-inch high step was perfect. Now it looked small and measly, and all I could think of was the ads that filled my Instagram feed of smiling toddlers scrambling on their Pikler Montessori-style climbers and Nugget couches. I could turn to Facebook Marketplace² but the real issue is that, honestly, we still don’t have space for a large climbing toy – even if I know that Little E would love nothing more. 

***

When I was pregnant with Little E, I spent hours upon hours reading reviews for high-profile baby items like strollers and monitors. I was determined to have exactly what our baby needed, but surrounded by the endless Mom-toks, Instagram reels, and Babylist reviews, I found myself with decision paralysis. Night after night, my Chrome browser window was filled with tab upon tab of reviews or shopping carts, and I still couldn’t decide on anything. 

As the weeks dwindled down, my husband reminded me that we had the most important thing this baby needed: some diapers, a bassinet, and us. Baby monitors and strollers were important, but not that important. No matter which brand I decided on, it was going to be exactly what our son needed. His reminder forced me to consider why I was waffling, and just who I was making this decision for. 

***

Halfway between the cookie sheet and my salivating mouth, the piping hot cookie crumbles between my fingers. Thanks to my impatience, the cookie that had looked so very perfect on the tray is now in pieces, proving that it had been too soft to move. Perhaps a different cookie would have been more structurally sound, so I try for another.

As perfect as this second cookie looks, it also doesn’t make it to my lips. I accept that I’ll need to wait a bit for a full cookie, and scarf down the broken bits – which are just as delicious in their broken state as I imagined they would be in full form.

***

After checking in with the moms, I spent the next 3 days scouring the Internet for winter playsuits and boots that – God willing – wouldn’t break our budget. Eventually, I stumbled across a BOGO sale on Famous Footwear and snagged a couple of pairs of Carters boots. But it didn’t bring the peace I hoped it would, because soon my mom friends and I were swapping what we were all planning on getting our tots for Christmas – except I still didn’t know what we were getting Little E. 

Once again, I spent hours scouring the Internet for little toys and bigger presents, putting things in and out of my cart. I wished I’d had the forethought of my friends to do 25 days of books or that I’d had the time to go to local shops and thrift stores to stock up on Advent calendar and stocking stuffers already. Gearing up for another evening ill-spent in indecision, I open my laptop, but before I can lose myself in planning, my husband sits down next to me. 

“Remember, Christmas is not a referendum on you as a mom. This Christmas will be special, and our son will love his gifts, and, honestly, he won’t remember any of it.”

***

Little E has mittens now. And he loves them, but he doesn’t love them nearly as much as the fact that he can see his breath in the cold mornings on the way to daycare. The first morning it was below 30, as the mom-guilt mounted up and I wondered what the daycare teachers would think when Little E arrived without mittens, my husband called me from the parking lot. It wasn’t anything important, he said, he just needed to tell me how enchanted our son was with his visible breath, that he was trying to catch it between his fingers.

***

The longer I am a mom, the more used to the mom guilt I become, but it never goes away. Every time I find myself in a fight against it, I feel like I must be the only one. The only one who didn’t know what stroller to buy. The only one who didn’t know what to do about snow boots. The only one without a plan for the perfectly magical Christmas. Feeling like I’m the only one only adds fuel to the mom guilt crumbling my soul and it makes opening up about my fears all the harder. And yet, opening up tends to be the best way of putting that mom guilt back in its place.

***

My husband is right, I realize. There is no referendum on me as a mom. My mom-friends were right too, when I finally shared my insecurity that we didn’t have a big enough home for a climber toy or kitchen set or some other appropriately flashy big toy. They reminded me that I was far from the only mom to feel insecure about what I could give my child. Instead, I was in excellent company, even if each one looked perfect in my eyes, with Christmas gifts planned and winter boots already bought. Each one of them had their own battles with mom guilt — just different battles than I did. More importantly, getting the perfect, flashy Christmas gift (or baby monitor or stroller) wasn’t what being a mom (or Christmas!) is all about anyway. 

Facing these insecurities, I realize that maybe my evening would be better spent hiding my laptop and painting some seasonal watercolor sketches instead. Or maybe reading my new Libby hold that just came in. Anything but dwelling on my anxieties about looking like the perfect mom.

Maybe I’ll make another batch of chocolate peanut butter cookies.

This post is part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to view the next post in the series "Tender."

1. Sure, I could thrift some – but to be good at thrifting you need time or luck (or preferably both). Time is in short supply and I don’t want to trust in luck.

2. See my thrifting anxieties above.