So Time Magazine prints an article about attachment parenting…like it is this new-fangled thing…and places on its cover a picture of a mother who, OH MY GOD, is breastfeeding her child. No, not her adorable, dimply, sweet-smelling baby, but her nearly four year old child.

Oh!

My!

GAWD!

And once again, we mommies, being the tools that we are, react, respond, over-react…just like the media knew that we would.

Seriously?!

Perhaps I was “mom enough” to breastfeed 4 of my 5 children. Perhaps I was “mom enough” to carry my children (and grandchildren around in a sling. Perhaps I was “mom enough” to cloth diaper my children. Perhaps I was “mom enough” to have a family bed. Perhaps I was “mom enough”. But the way I see it was our parenting style was what we did because it worked for us…for our family.

Nothing more.

Nothing less.

No judgments.

But regardless of what worked for us, for our family, when our children were small we find that we are not done when they are all grown up, or nearly all grown up.

CRAP!

We’re never going to be done with this!

It is then that I am faced with the reality that while I might have been “mom enough” to breastfeed my children for nearly ten years of my years of being a mother, I am not nearly “mom enough” for the rest of it all…the part that the parents of the younger ones can not see…have no clue about whatsoever…the part that the parents of younger ones imagine to be the part where they are all done. Take note…

YOU ARE NOT DONE THEN!

This part? This part is hard. This part is exhausting.

But it doesn’t get better. Sorry. No.

Are you “mom enough”?

Perhaps we need to stop with the discussion, the judging, the sniping, the shaking of our heads. After all we are all on the same team.