Having children isn’t always as easy as it looks on Instagram. There’s so much more to motherhood than serene baby snuggles and matching outfits. But there’s a reason we’ve fallen so deeply in love with motherhood: It’s the most beautiful, chaotic ride.
Every single day, moms sit back and wonder how something so hard can feel so rewarding. And Eva Mendes just managed to nail the reality of that with one quote.
Eva, who is a mama to daughters Esmerelda and Amada with Ryan Gosling, got real about the messy magic of motherhood in a recent interview.
“It’s so fun and beautiful and maddening,” the actress tells Access Daily. “It’s so hard, of course. But it’s like that feeling of…you end your day, you put them to bed and Ryan and I kind of look at each other like, ‘We did it, we did it. We came out relatively unscathed.'”
And just like that, moms all over the world feel seen. Moms have all been there: Struggling to get through the day (which, for the record is often every bit as fun as it is challenging), only to put those babies to sleep and collapse on the couch in sheer exhaustion. But, after you’ve caught your breath, you realize just how strong and capable you really are.
One thing Eva learned the hard way? That sleep regressions are very, very real…and they don’t just come to an end after your baby’s first few months. “I guess they go through a sleep regression, which nobody told me about until I looked it up,” she says “I was like, ‘Why isn’t my 3-year-old sleeping?'”
But, at the end of the day, Eva loves her life as a mom—and the fact that she took a break from her Hollywood career to devote her days to raising her girls. “I’m so thankful I have the opportunity to be home with them,” she says.
Thank you for keeping it real, Eva! Momming isn’t easy, but it sure is worth it.
