The dichotomy between mothers of easy kids vs. mothers of challenging kids

My first baby knocked me on my ass. I was wildly sleep-deprived for the first four months of her life. She cried often and got bored easily. She is 2 now and while she is absolutely incredible and the love of my life, her behaviors are still really challenging.

But now I’ve recently had our second baby and while he’s still a newborn, I’m shocked by the difference between having an “easy” baby compared to having a “difficult” one. He only wakes every 2-3 hours at night and settles independently in the bassinet after. He only cries if he’s hungry or has gas. It’s been very opposite of my other experience. If he’d been my first baby, I’d be thinking that this was a piece of cake so far!

It just got me remembering all of the times that I’ve tried to open up about how I was struggling with my first and ended up feeling so much worse and even more isolated because a lot of my peers couldn’t relate. Their kids never did that or it was easily solved by all these things I’ve tried and but they didn’t work.

I’m not totally sure of the point in making. I guess I’m just stating more of an observation. I’m glad I have had to learn to navigate the more difficult side of things, it allows me to have a lot more empathy for other moms. You can do your very best and some kids are just hard. Sometimes it doesn’t work. Sometimes you just have to roll with what you have. Maybe if my firstborn had been simple, cooperative, and easygoing, I’d assume all of those other moms were just doing something wrong. When I peel back a lot of the shaming I’ve received for my parenting over the years, I realize that my journey has just been very different from theirs and they’re judging because they really don’t understand.