“Even on days when they won’t listen, have meltdowns, and when it seems like nothing I do is good enough, I have never felt sorry for myself and I don’t expect others to either.”
At the time, Courtney was too shocked to reply. But now thousands have heard what she has to say.
—-
It was a throwaway comment. One plenty of mums will have heard countless times before.
“You’ve got your hands full.”
It’s a sympathetic, well-meaning sentiment, yet when a stranger uttered it to Kentucky woman, Courtney Lester, he added something that left her feeling upset, hurt, judged.
“I feel sorry for you.”
In a now viral Facebook post, Lester wrote to the stranger, expressing the thoughts she wished her shock hadn’t prevented her from saying in that moment.
“What you can’t tell is that I lost two babies before being blessed with my last two, so if you want to feel sorry for me, there’s the only reason why you should,” she wrote. “My children are blessings.”
While Lester conceded that, no, her children aren't always perfectly behaved, when the stranger made the comment her four-year-old was simply singing a song while her two-year-old was sitting quietly in the buggy and her newborn was sleeping in his baby carrier.
"[Yet] even on days when they won't listen, have meltdowns, and when it seems like nothing I do is good enough, I have never felt sorry for myself and I don't expect others to either," she wrote.
"If having three kids automatically makes my hands full, so be it.. But please, never feel sorry for me because my heart is more full than my hands could ever be."
Her post has since been shared more than 12,000 times, liked more than 23,000 and attracted hundreds of comments.
Speaking to The Huffington Post, Lester said she never expected it to inspire such an overwhelming response. But now that it has, she hopes it helps deliver an important message:
"I want people to know that it isn’t OK to make comments like that to parents," she said, "because you don’t know what they have been through.”
Top Comments
When my baby was born I had two and half year old twins as well - one was a runner, so I got heaps of those comments, every day, still do. But when people say "Geez, you've got your hands full", I respond "No? Really? I hadn't noticed." or "Well, perhaps you'd like to give me a hand?" (if one was running off and the other crying and baby breastfeeding), or "Are they twins?" "Ah no, I just found this one in the carpark and thought I'd bring it along"... or "Wow, can't believe you went for another one after twins" "Well, I was so tired I forgot to take my pill, and I don't even remember having sex...but here she is.." Or "I don't know how you do it" "Well, lots of coffee, wine and anti-depressants, but its not like I have a choice to have a day off". Most people usually don't have a come back from any of those.
If someone pitied me (felt sorry for me) for having children I'd pity them right back for not getting how amazing and wonderful it is, even with all the hard work, demands and lack of sleep.