“There’s no trophy Ashley”
The best 4 words my husband could have said to me in that delivery room. It put my whole world as a Mom into perspective. I was in agony and trying to decide whether or not to get an epidural. I had no idea I was already at the very end of my labor and would be pushing Leo out within minutes. All I knew was that I was in pain and couldn’t imagine laboring like that for what I thought would be a few more hours.
I was trying to talk to him between contractions on the verge of tears and he lovingly spoke lots of support and some truth into my universe with, “There’s no trophy Ashley.”
Then when I was fretting about supplementing with some formula those first few days and not wanting to feel like I was already failing at breastfeeding I heard those words again, “There’s no trophy Ashley.”
There it hit me. As moms in today’s world, it can feel like we’re all competing for a trophy that doesn’t exist. I literally thought in that delivery room that I would somehow be “less than” of a mother for tapping out and asking for the drugs. Like there would be a gold medal or AT LEAST a gold sticker on my medical chart for having a natural birth. And I felt like I was letting some invisible committee down when we bought formula to help him pass the amniotic fluid he had swallowed.
