SALT LAKE CITY — As I sat down to write this article, I started thinking about what would happen if a guy wrote an article for women on how to be a good mom.

Poor guy.

Can you imagine the response?

Someone would share the article on her Facebook page with a caption that goes something like this:

“Can you believe this article? No man will ever understand everything that moms go through — 9 months of being deathly ill, countless hours of excruciating labor, sleepless nights, and not to mention the part about how breastfeeding is the most painful thing in the world.”

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It would all be downhill from there because a debate would break out about whether or not it’s acceptable to breastfeed in public, which would turn into an argument over natural birth vs. epidurals, and would eventually end with a full-fledged cat fight about why you should or shouldn’t vaccinate your kids.

You poor men.

I’ll just say it. Us women can be all sorts of cray-cray. We expect you to know how to be the perfect husband on Monday, and then figure out how to be the perfect husband on Tuesday (which consists of something completely opposite of what you did on Monday because our needs have totally changed since then.)

And then comes the part where not only do you have to be a great husband, you have to be a great daddy, too. You have to cater to our needs as a wife and a mother.

I don’t know how you do it. (But on the other hand, we did have to carry that baby for nine months, birth it and nurse it, all while going off of no sleep. I’m kidding … kind of.)

All jokes aside, you are doing a great job! Really, you are. And here are a few simple things you can do to be even more amazing than you already are …

1. Let us cry those crazy, post-partum hormones right out of our system. Guess what? We don’t know why we are crying after having that baby. We feel crazy and out of control and are over-the-moon-happy and so-down-in-the-dumps all at the same time. So when you ask us “why we are crying” and we say, “we don’t know” … we really don’t. So just leave it at that. Rub our back and tell us it’s okay and don’t keep asking us to tell you what’s wrong. Because we really don’t know.

1. Don’t wait for us to ask. By the time we actually ask you to change that diaper, we are already really annoyed that we even have to ask in the first place and you didn’t just already know to jump in and change it. This applies to lots of other things too … nightly baths, bottle feedings, etc. Being proactive about even the tiniest of things means the world to us.
2. Trust yourself. We do. We feel a lot of pressure to have those “motherly instincts” that are supposed to just magically appear. We feel more confident about our instincts when we see you trusting yours.
3. Assume that we need a break. You don’t need to plan an elaborate day where we can go shopping without kids, to lunch with our girlfriends, and end the day with a pedicure. (OK, I am lying … you do need to do that every now and again.) But even the smallest break is much needed. Run us a bubble bath, hand us a Diet Coke, and give us 15 minutes to just be alone.
4. Tell us that we are good at what we do. “You are a good mom.” Those five words are music to our ears. We rarely hear it, and that is hands down the best compliment you can give us.

5. Let down. Nothing will make us love you more than watching you love that child. It doesn’t make you less of a man to turn into absolute mush over that little person. (Even if you are sporting a feather boa and clip on earrings at the tea party.) I thought about ordering these from most important to least and realized I couldn’t because what may mean the most on one day may not be the same for the next. (You’re shocked, I know.) And don’t go thinking that just because you’ve done the suggestions listed above, you are home free.

After all, there’s always tomorrow. Lyndsi Frandsen is the creator of the Facebook page For All Momkind and co-author of the For All Momkind blog. She has many titles, including wife, kindergarten teacher, sister and her favorite title, mom.

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