Get Your Pink Back, Flamingo-Style

Flamingos (or as my toddler calls them, “Flaginmos”) are special birds.

They stand on one foot to conserve energy, they can fly up to 35 miles per hour, and wonderfully, a group of flamingos is called a “Flamboyance”. They eat upside down and are excellent dancers.

But most interesting to me, as a mother, is their bright pink color.

Did you know flamingos are not always pink? Their pink color comes from eating a diet high in beta-carotene (think: shrimp and other crustaceans). When flamingoes are raising their chicks, the adults turn a pale pink or a white color as they redirect the nutrients in their diet to the rich milk for their babies.

The loss of their bright vibrant pink color signifies a period of intense energy depletion as they care for their chicks (relatable!). Once the chicks begin to be more independent, the color slowly returns. In the flamingo world, this usually takes about a year.

Somewhat of a rarity in the animals world, flamingos mate for life.

Researcher and author Dr. Molly Millwood describes motherhood and its recovery as taking a bit longer in her book “To Have and to Hold: Motherhood, Marriage and the Modern Dilemma”. She recommends holding on to your marriage for “dear life” the first six years of a child’s life if you want to make it through the most intense child-rearing years.

She also discusses the ambivalence of motherhood, the burden of emotional labor, the essential yet over-looked need of self-care. The book itself is both illuminating and brutally honest, sharing insightful research-backed findings such as the following:

“Ask a young mother to pause from playing with her fifteen-month-old at eleven a.m. and indicate her current happiness level, and her answer will be about the same as when she’s vacuuming at four p.m. Ask that same woman when she’s eighty-five years old what her top three sources of happiness were, and “being a mother” or “caring for my children” will surely make the list. Vacuuming, not so much.”

Motherhood is not always overflowing with joyful moments. Much of the day is filled with mundane, repetitive tasks, and many of our thoughts are filled with wondering if we’re doing it right or what we should be doing differently.

I've wondered many times if I handled a situation correctly or if I should have disciplined more or less. I questioned myself frequently as I contemplated toilet-training timing, weaning from breastfeeding, and prioritized one conversation or activity over another.

Dr. Millwood describes this "pain of motherhood" eloquently as well:

“When expectations [of motherhood] are not met (as invariably happens), the search for the right solution begins; in turn, this search adds an unnecessary layer of suffering to what would otherwise be just the pain of motherhood.

First we find that motherhood is far more difficult than we thought it would be, then we observe (incorrectly) that every other mother seems to be sailing along just fine, and finally we conclude (at great cost to our self-esteem) that we are doing something wrong.

The sense that what we’re doing isn’t the right thing to do, or that what we’re feeling isn’t the right way to feel, leaves us feeling inadequate, or worse. Meanwhile, we’re expending precious energy attempting to pinpoint what it is we should be doing differently to make our babies fit the mold and adhere to expectations of development or internal visions of how things should be.

Without the extra layers of suffering caused by unmet expectations, our misguided attempts to deny or suppress our feelings, and our self-critical interpretative frames, we would simply feel the pain. Of sleep deprivation. Of missing our old lives. Of not having enough time for ourselves. These things are all painful, but pain is far more tolerable than suffering.”

Every time I reread through Millwood’s book I feel more and more seen; it’s probably one of the reasons I include so many of her words here in my own article. I’ve found myself experiencing the above phenomenon for days and weeks and even years at a time. Although my husband tries to understand my perspective, he admits it’s hard to fully realize the complexities of all the pulls of motherhood.

On the other hand, the community of mothers seems to immediately understand the complexities and multi-truths held at once, the desire to be with your babies each moment as a stay at home parent and the desire to get away to work or achieve or just… get a break.

Last year on Mother’s Day I escaped to a coffee shop to write, just like I did today. In my article then, I wrote about the community of mothers I had found, the friendships that saved me while parenting solo, the meals and bathtimes and playdates that kept me sane. I called them a “sisterhood of understanding”.  

Millwood backs the bond of sisterhood with research; women, whether friends, mother/daughter, or a same-sex couple are more likely to care for each other in a more consistent and deeper way than any couple that includes a male.

While this may seem counterintuitive (since as a society we believe that the greatest source of caring is from our romantic partnership), this phenomenon is consistent with abundant research demonstrating that "men reap more health benefits from marriage than women do, and that husbands report feeling understood and affirmed by their spouses far more than wives do.”

Women make other women’s lives better.

As I think about my own journey in motherhood, I think about how I’ve slowly, slowly been getting “my pink back”.

And, no wonder it feels so slow, and has taken so long… studies show it takes about six years to reach pre-baby sleep levels, and 3-5 years for parents to start feeling more like themselves as their children gain independence.

I find myself a bit jealous of flamingoes, their pink coming back just after a year or so.

However, it makes more sense when you learn the following facts: flamingos equally share parenting responsibilities, both males and females create milk for their chicks, and both adults lose their pink color during this intense period.

I’ve been in the coffee shop/bagel bakery many Sundays this year. Usually there’s a few couples who stroll in for bagels, and a smattering of individuals grabbing coffee to go. Today, there’s a huge influx of men. Men with children, buying bagels to bring home, men alone, on a coffee run. Men holding iPhones up to their babies and wishing “Happy Mother’s Day” to their wives.

It’s such a strange sight, seeing so many men here, after so many mornings in this same coffee shop on the same day of the week. It’s also strange seeing so many men with their children without the mom around.

I hope each mom on the receiving end of each coffee or bagel is currently sleeping. And getting her pink back.

Maybe this time next year, I’ll be celebrating another Mother’s Day, less worried or anxious about how well I’m doing it and more accepting of each moment as it comes.

To quote Dr. Millwood one last time,

“To become mothers is to become more fully aware of who we are.

…In order to find well-being in the terrain of motherhood, we must accept the loss of so many illusions, not least of which are illusions about the bliss children will bring and the extent to which our spouses will share the burden and support us.

The greatest loss of all may be our illusions about who we are and what kind of mothers we will be. When these illusions are acknowledged and grieved, we find some measure of peace in the acceptance of how things actually are and who we actually are.”

May you and all mothers everywhere have peace and acceptance in your motherhood journey… and may we all start getting our pink back!