Parent Struggles

Today’s boys; tomorrow’s men

Posted on by Motherhood IRL

I’ve always assumed that raising girls would be hard. Not for one moment have I ever thought that parents of daughters have it easy. Sure, I know there are tonnes of gender stereotypes out there about girls being quieter and more particular about personal hygiene, etc, but I genuinely don’t believe that that can be true of all – if any – of them. I’m fairly certain there are some girls out there who have never heard of an “inside voice” and who have to regularly be reminded to brush their teeth and wash their hands. Hell, maybe their parents have to yell “WIPE!” on a daily basis too. Because they are CHILDREN; not GENDER.

So, no; I have never thought that girls were in any way easy to raise. But I have always believed that the teenage years with a girl would be tougher than with a boy, and that is not only naive, but it’s also kinda sexist.

See, once a girl gets into her teen years I reckon it’s fairly natural for parents to worry about their daughters being mugged or raped if they’re walking home a bit late in the evening from the bus stop one night. It shouldn’t be natural, of course, because nobody should have to worry about that shit. But, nonetheless, this is the messed up world we live in right now and these things do happen. So I’d imagine that all mothers and fathers worry from time to time about such atrocities befalling their daughters and I can’t begin to imagine how terrifying that must be.

But I have the opposite problem. Because I have boys, and boys grow up to be men and men are more often than not the perpetrators of mugging and rape. So I have to raise them in such a way that they know unequivocally that those behaviours are wrong and unacceptable. And how will I know if I’m doing a good job? Should I be worried if one of them slyly thwacks the other when he thinks I’m not watching? Should I be concerned that sometimes they climb on me when I’ve told them no? Should I stress myself about the fact that [every so] often they lie about who ate the last Smartie?

These things sound trivial, but I often catch myself worrying about the bigger picture they could add up to. So when people say to me, “Ah, boys are challenging when they’re little, but so much easier than girls when they’re older” I have to wonder if maybe those people just aren’t worrying quite as much as I am about who their kids are going to grow up to be.

Let’s get one thing straight:

I don’t care about my boys’ sexuality.

I don’t care about how they look.

I don’t care whether they decide to go to university or not.

I don’t care what jobs they do.

But I do care about who they turn out to be inside. Because I want them to be empathetic and compassionate. I want them to stand up for the less fortunate and be the voices of the voiceless. I want them to be good people who do good things. I want them to be in touch with their emotions and know how to express them appropriately whilst also knowing that those emotions do not make them “weak” or “girly”.

Only…

Well, I’m not sure if I’m doing an adequate job. And, of course, that job is not made any easier by the men we regularly see in the media. Donald Trump. Harvey Weinstein. Powerful men in powerful positions who treat women with an appalling lack of decency and, in the case of the former at least, get away with it. When a man can “joke” about “grabbing [women] by the pussy” and go on to become the president of the most powerful country in the world, what hope is there for our children? What hope is there for instilling in them the moral fibre to treat women – or individuals from different cultures who practice different religions, for that matter – with respect and compassion?

It goes without saying that I will not give up. I will always strive to raise my sons to be good people. I will teach them about boundaries, about respecting the word “no” and their right to use it themselves. I will continue to teach them that we all have the right to decide what happens to our bodies and who gets to touch them. But even I must accept that there will come a day when my influence on them is overtaken by the influence of their peers, and when that time comes I can only hope that I have taught them well and that they choose their friends wisely.

An embarrassing pregnancy story

Posted on by Motherhood IRL

Despite often being associated with such words as “glowing” and “blooming” (and lots of others which also conjure up images of sunshine and flowers), pregnancy is also pretty awful sometimes.

My experiences included:

Constant nausea and unpredictable vomiting.

Being knackered all the time.

Random aches and pains.

Occasionally feeling as though I was being stabbed in the vagina (seriously, what *is* that?!).

Needing to pee every five minutes.

A decreased sense of spatial awareness.

So, basically, I spent nine months staggering around feeling tired and sick, resisting the urge to yelp and clutch my nether regions at impromptu moments, needing to be constantly aware of the location of the nearest toilet and walking into things that didn’t appear to be anywhere near me.

But by far the worst side-effect of pregnancy for me was constipation.

About halfway through my second pregnancy, my body basically decided that the end result of the digestive process was unnecessary. Bowel evacuation? Nope. We need to hang onto *everything*. You never know when it might come in useful!

As you might imagine, this made me kinda touchy. And irrational. But I didn’t say anything about it until one day N and I were arguing about something stupid and he simply said, “You’re so full of shit.” It was at that point that I finally decided to acknowledge my predicament by retaliating, somewhat hysterically, with, “AND THAT IS THE PROBLEM!”

By this stage I had lost hours of my life just weeping on the toilet in frustration, so I booked an appointment to see a doctor. It obviously wasn’t going to get better by itself and all the bran flakes in the world weren’t going to help.

On merit of the fact that life is a dickhead sometimes, the doctor I ended up seeing was both young and ridiculously attractive. I might be married, but I am not blind. He was hot. And not only was I the size of small whale, but I also needed to tell him that I hadn’t actually been able to have a poo for over a week.

The conversation went something like this:

Dr: “So, what can I help you with?”

Me: “I… uh… well, I’m pregnant…”

Dr: *patiently* “Yes, I can see that.”

Me: “Right. Er… the thing is… I… *whispers* I haven’t had a poo for a week.”

Dr: “Are you constipated?”

Me: *dying inside* “Um… I mean, I guess…”

Dr: “I can prescribe you something to help with that.”

Me: “Oh thank God.”

Dr: “Is there anything else you need?”

Me: “Aside from a full body cast for my dignity? No, thank you.”

He told me, of course, that he had seen it all before. They always tell you that, don’t they? But the thing is, I’m pretty sure he hadn’t. I’m pretty sure that at no point in his [relatively new] medical career had he had to sit through the painstaking process of watching a very embarrassed pregnant woman mumble in barely coherent tones about needing a poo. Weirdly enough, that one conversation was far more embarrassing than throwing off all of my clothing in front of a bunch of strangers four months later when I went through the process of actually giving birth. What is it about labour and birth that makes you just not give a shit (if you’ll pardon the expression)?

So, y’know, pregnancy might *look* glamorous sometimes with the stylish maternity wear and cute baby bumps, but underneath that lustrous pregnancy hair and beautifully clear pregnancy skin, there may well be a woman who would give anything to finally just have a bloody poo.

A case of Mum Guilt

Posted on by Motherhood IRL

I've come down with a bad case of mum guilt today.

Today is my day off. At the moment, I get two days off a week. This week, today is one of them.

Usually I try to do something fun with the kids when I'm not working. A nature walk. The beach. A playground or two. That kind of thing. Except that this morning I looked around my house and I got this dreadful, twitchy feeling

My house, to put it bluntly, is a fucking shit tip.

There is random crap all over the place. There's probably even actual crap somewhere. Everybody is running out of clean clothes and everything feels just a bit… sticky.

The only trouble is, I can't clean the house AND do something fun with the kids. So today I feel guilty because if I take the kids out I'm neglecting the house, and if I clean the house I'm neglecting the kids.

What I need is the ability to split myself into useful, house-cleaning mum and fun, child-wrangling mum. Or a cleaner.

I probably need a cleaner.

Also on the list of things I feel guilty about today:

Literally shoving N out of the door this morning.

The fact that I've shouted at my kids at least twice to leave each other alone.

Inadvertently thwacking O around the head with the vacuum cleaner nozzle.

Turning on CBeebies.

Feeling secretly glad that it has rained and is therefore too wet to go to a playground right now.

Sitting here writing this and drinking a cup of tea.

Being tired.

I'll probably also feel guilty about whatever I feed the kids for lunch soon because it's unlikely to be either imaginative or particularly nutritionally balanced.

It can't be just me, can it? I mean, I open up Instagram and I see tonnes of posts featuring a day out with the kids or a crafty afternoon at the kitchen table and nobody else's house ever looks a mess. Nobody else ever has that haunted look of a person who knows their home resembles the aftermath of nuclear warfare whilst they sit on a picnic rug and enjoy quality time with their offspring.

Some days I feel like I'm just not cut out for the job of being a Person In The World.

I hate soft play 

Posted on by Motherhood IRL

When your kids start school, they suddenly get invited to a lot of parties. O has a much better social life than I do. Next month he’s going to two parties on the same day. I’m totally dreading that day and I genuinely don’t know how I’m going to survive. But yeah, you get the idea; LOTS OF PARTIES. And these parties often take place in one particularly hateful environment: THE SOFT PLAY CENTRE.

Here’s a list of the things I hate about soft play centres. It is not a long list:

EVERYTHING.

Absolutely everything. I hate the noise. I hate the shitty coffee. I hate seeing one of the workers carrying a roll of blue paper towel, a plastic bag and a bottle of disinfectant into the playframe, because it is an obvious sign that someone’s kid has just puked somewhere in there and I pray to god that my own wasn’t anywhere nearby.

Yeah. I fucking hate the places. I’m sorry. I know that probably makes me a total party pooper, but there it is.

However, I quite often have to set aside my hatred of them – and my rampant anxiety surrounding their germ-spreading potential – and take O to a soft play party. And usually I sit there with the other parents and we talk about the kids and drink the horrible coffee and I try not to swear.

Actually, to be honest, sometimes that part of the soft play party is kinda reassuring for me, because I see the eye rolls exchanged between exasperated mums as they comfort their tired, cranky children while they whinge about some other kid being mean. And we all sort of circle around the fact that we are completely knackered until someone says, “God, I’m so tired today. The kids were up at five. FIVE. Why do they do this?!”, which suddenly makes it okay for us all to join in and admit that we are winging it, not winning it.

All of that is fine. Once I’m over my social awkwardness, I’m generally okay in the soft play setting. Until O emerges and drags me in the direction of the playframe while I desperately try to remove my shoes. I hate that part because I always end up smacking my head on something or getting a really bad case of indigestion from trying to squeeze through those fucking awful roller things. Or I end up being the parent who has to convince a bunch of other people’s kids that they will not, in fact, die if they go down the Death Slide. Which usually requires a physical demonstration. And I can’t dick about up there because all of these kids are watching me and counting on me to prove that it is safe and I am not a wuss. But I actually am a bit of a wuss and I don’t really like that slide much at all.

Why am I always that parent?

It’s great for O, of course, because then all of the other kids think his mum is really cool, rather than just a bit of an idiot.

But I learnt something today after my Death Slide stunt, which is that we all wish we were a little bit more of some things and a little bit less of others sometimes.

I wish I was a little – or a lot – more organised. I wish I felt a little better equipped to guide my children into adulthood. I wish that I didn’t always feel a little bit startled every time one of my kids shouts “MUMMY!!!!” And I wish, more than anything, that I could be a little less ridiculous.

But there are other mums who wish they were a little bit more ridiculous and a little bit less afraid of the big slide at the soft play centre.

It’s funny what you can learn on a Sunday morning at a soft play party, isn’t it?

But… I still fucking hate the places.

Standing there alone

Posted on by Motherhood IRL

Dear dads in the playground,

I see you standing there and I know by your body language that you feel a bit awkward and out of place. Like you don’t really belong, because all around you is a sea of mums. We’ve had some kind of progress over the last ten years, but you’re still a minority here.

Don’t stand there on your own, though. Come and talk to me. Because you might feel like an outsider, but I feel like an imposter.

Sure, I’m the same gender as most of the other parents here, but I don’t think of myself as one of them. We have the same credentials on paper, which is to say that we are mothers and we are here to collect our children. But I look at these other women and I don’t feel like I’m part of the clan.

It’s hard to explain why that is, really. I could say it’s because I’m a “young mum”, but I’m not far off turning 30 now and I don’t really think that applies anymore. Maybe it’s because I perceive these other women to be more successful than I am, both as mothers and in their working lives. It could even simply be the fact that they look like they’ve got their shit together and I don’t feel like I ever will.

Or it might just be the difference between their expensive Ugg boots and my battered Converse.

But the thing is, you dads make me feel at ease. I don’t struggle to make conversation with you. When you’re having a shit time and you’re tired and running out of patience, you don’t grit your teeth and pretend everything’s fine. You own it. You’re not in competition with anybody, but I feel like us mums always are. We are always trying to be better than the mum next to us.

I mean, that’s not the case once you’ve scratched the surface and cultivated a proper friendship with a fellow mum. Then the warts-and-all of motherhood comes out and I feel like it’s okay to admit that some days I struggle. But when you’re just chatting in the playground, you laugh off the fact that your toddler has scribbled all over your linoleum floor, even though you feel like you’re dying a little bit inside every time you look at it. You don’t admit that you’ve ever lost your shit and shouted, or wondered for just a fleeting second if it was such a good idea to have children after all.

But you dads do, and I admire you so much for that. Here are three recent conversations I’ve had with dads:

Dad 1: “I’m so tired I feel like my eyelids are turning inside out. When is he ever going to just sleep through the night?!”

Dad 2: “How was your summer? Ours was looooooonnnngggg.”

Dad 3: “I know all of the parenting books tell you that you shouldn’t do it and it doesn’t work and it’s the worst parenting fail ever… but the only time he listens to me is when I shout at him!”

I’ve never heard any of the mums in the playground say any of those things to each other. And it’s not that I don’t think they ever do, it’s just that they do it in the evening over dinner with their partners or during a rare outing for drinks with their trusted mum confidantes. But I’m not like them; I’m more like you. I don’t see the point in pretending, because I don’t understand why we perpetuate this competitive culture.

So come and talk to me. Tell me you’re tired and struggling and your kids drove you to despair last night when they flatly refused to get out of the bath and go to bed. I won’t judge you; I’ll empathise completely. I love my children. I love them so much that when they hug me, I never want to let them go. I look forward to seeing their faces and hearing their little voices every single morning when I wake up.

But I am not sailing through this and I can’t be bothered to try and keep up the facade that I am.

You’re all brilliant dads, and I can see that you love your children just as fiercely as I do my own. I can see it in their faces when they are so delighted that daddy is picking them up today, and in your own when you sweep them up into your arms. But your honesty comforts me, and I hate to see you standing there alone.

And if you’re reading this as a fellow mum and you feel like you don’t belong, it’s not just you; I’m right there with you. I’ll be the awkward to your uncomfortable, if you like.

We’re all in this together, aren’t we?

Yours,

Davina

The Alternative Motherhood Challenge

Posted on by Motherhood IRL

Does everybody remember the Motherhood Challenge? That whole thing where you got tagged by a fellow mother (I never did, by the way) and had to post a certain number of photos to social media showing why you loved being a mother? You were then supposed to nominate a bunch of your “awesome mummy friends” to take part as some kind of dubious accolade. Suffice it to say that I didn’t really get it. For me, the real challenge of Motherhood is not found in posed photographs of my offspring (although it is a challenge to get them to stay still), but in the other myriad shit that comes along with the job title. 

So! Without further ado, this is a collection of photographs from my Alternative Motherhood Challenge.

Dry-wipe pens: These bastard things. I know they’re washable, but they don’t come out of the fucking carpet. Believe me. And I can’t even take them away because they are part of a very useful educational tool. Fuck these things. This is why kids in my day only had pencils.
Potties: You wouldn’t think there’d be anything more gag-worthy than a shitty nappy, would you? Especially one of those really sticky, smeary ones. But then there’s the potty, in the bottom of which sits a freshly dropped turd that you are going to have to now watch slide gracelessly into the toilet, leaving a nice, long skid mark. So now you have to wipe the potty and wash it out. Not a whole lot different from wiping caked-on crap off your kid’s bum, really. Even worse when your curious toddler decides to fill it with toys and present it to you like a particularly horrible and unsanitary gift.


Sippy cup valves: You know that moment when your kid tips up the sippy cup, waterboards himself and then sits blinking, spluttering and glaring at you with an impressive degree of loathing? That’s the precise moment when you realise you forgot to put that clever little valve back in the lid of the cup after you spent three hours mucking it out with a pipe cleaner. Just three seconds later than you probably should have remembered.


The Favourite Cuddly: Its bedtime and your kid’s favourite snuggly creature/blanket is nowhere to be found. You’ve looked behind the curtains, under the sofa and in the washing machine. You’ve even gingerly lifted the lid and peered into the toilet, just in case. But the thing has completely fucking vanished. It has left planet Earth. It will never be seen again and your child will never, ever stop crying about it. You’re actually crying yourself as you sink onto the sofa after spending two and a half hours rocking your bereft baby to sleep. Wait, why is this seat so lumpy? Is that…? Ah. There it is. It was behind the bloody cushion all along. Attachment objects are, of course, an absolute essential for any child, but can they just remember where they’ve put them every once in a while? I’m so sick of wandering around the house at 9pm muttering “where the actual fuck is the bloody fucking bunny?!” to myself on repeat every other night. Oh, and don’t even think about washing it. Just accept the fact that your child is dragging a germ-rag around and tell yourself it’s good for their immune system.


Of course, there’re also stickers, tantrums, hidden shoes and when the car seat straps get twisted and you have to take the whole buggering thing apart to fix it, but the four things I’ve chosen here are the ones that get on my tits the most.

It’s a good job they’re cute, isn’t it?


I’d love to hear about your Alternative Motherhood Challenge, so feel free to get in touch on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter, or leave me a comment on this post.

This is real life

Posted on by Motherhood IRL

I can’t quite believe that it is November already. It doesn’t feel like more than five minutes have passed since we were last here, gearing up for Christmas and hiding the Argos catalogue from our children.

Our year has passed in a blur of breakthroughs and setbacks, from the triumph of watching O settle gradually into school after a rocky start, to the misery of seeing F continue with his food struggles. This is the nature of family life, of parenting children with different personalities and issues. O can suffer from social anxiety. F may well feel the reverberations of his battle with reflux for the rest of his life. But we do the best we can. As parents, I believe we all repeat the same mantra to ourselves at irregular intervals: It will get better. We tell ourselves that nothing can be challenging or worrying or downright shit forever.

When O clung to me, sobbing, as we walked through the school gates at the beginning of his third week, his anxiety and sadness unchanged from the previous two, I told myself: It will get better. And it did. Now he runs to join his friends with barely a backward glance. He’s part of a trio of boys who are all mischievous, buoyant and sharp as tacks. He is learning to read and write, he brings home artwork and stories of the games he has played and new skills he has learnt. He is happy and settled in his new school, and I am content to have become a background character in this chapter of his life.

It got better.

When I finally realised that F was vomiting during mealtimes not because he couldn’t stop himself, but because he didn’t want the food I had put in front of him, I told myself – through my horror that a child would do such a thing to himself – It will get better. And it has. Ish. Mealtimes are still a battleground and my victories are few, but that there are any victories at all is progress itself. Once there was nothing I could do to persuade him that food was not his enemy. Now he will try new things. Last week he finally started eating porridge and I felt elated. At last, a good start to the day! It was such a small thing. It was the biggest thing in the world.

It is getting better.

Life with children is a kaleidoscope; colourful and changeable in equal measure. There are blissful moments, snapshots of our expectations as parents. A Sunday morning cuddle in bed with both kids, both cats and nobody fighting. A walk through the woods, kicking up the Autumn leaves and collecting conkers to be preserved in a jar as a physical reminder of a magical afternoon. A peaceful hour as my children play happily together while I claw back some time to put the house in order or catch up on laundry. In these moments, we could be a family from a photograph in a magazine. In these moments, we are the family I always imagined I would have.

Our autumn adventures

Then there are the other moments, far less blissful and, currently, much more numerous. My kids rolling around on the floor, beating the shit out of each other as my attempts to referee fall on deaf ears. An epic tantrum in the middle of Sainsbury’s over who gets to carry the receipt back to the car. The flooded bathroom floor. Again. These moments often happen all in the same day and leave me exhausted and wondering if I’m really cut out for this whole motherhood thing. But these moments are also totally eclipsed by the love I feel for and joy I find in my children.

The truth is that I probably recite my mantra at least a few times a day, every single day. Sometimes it is not easy. Sometimes as I close their bedroom doors at the end of a long day, I breathe a sigh of relief. Sometimes I just wish they would stop fucking winding each other up all the time.

But they are still so little. Their emotions and ability to handle life’s complications are still developing. For them right now, being given something different for breakfast than what they were expecting is a big deal. For them, it’s not unreasonable to throw a blistering wobbly because they got Rice Crispies when they blatantly asked for Coco Pops.

This is life with young children.

There will be bad days.

It will get – and is getting – better.

It’s NOT okay. Okay?

Posted on by Motherhood IRL

When I tell nosey people who ask when I’m “having another one” that I can’t have any more babies, they unanimously do this incredibly fucking rude thing where they ask “WHY?” whilst salivating over the possibility of a story about some peculiar uterine wasting disease which has rendered me infertile. So I suppose it’s kind of disappointing when I explain, through gritted teeth, that my husband has had a vasectomy. But then they bypass social etiquette altogether and say – with a cheeky wink that never fails to make me feel sick – “HE can’t have any more children, but YOU can!” Are you fucking kidding me? In what universe is it okay to even vaguely suggest that I might as well just go ahead and get myself knocked up by someone – anyone, apparently – other than my husband? Thanks and everything, but no. JUST NO.

Of course, the next thing they ask me is, “Don’t you want any more babies?” You know what? Yes. YES. I DO want more babies. In fact, whenever I think about the fact that I’m not going to have any more babies, I feel a certain sense of grief. But there’s a difference between what I want and what I know is good for me and my family. So, Random Stranger full of personal questions, thanks a fucking bunch for that. I didn’t get sad and wistful about it quite enough by myself.

And then there’s my favourite question:

“So why did your husband have a vasectomy if you wanted another baby?”

Really? You really want to talk about this? Alright. I’ll bite. Let’s do this.

Because we both have shitty jobs and we can’t afford another baby.

Because our house is too small and we don’t really want to move ’cause we’ve spent a fuckload of money on this one.

Because I like my car and I don’t want a people carrier.

Because SPD and constant nausea aren’t really my idea of a good time.

Because the first six months of F’s life passed in a blur of misery and sleeplessness and, although I’ve tried really hard to block it all out, I know I’ll never quite forget how shit it really was.

Because we might actually get divorced next time.

The truth, Random Stranger, is that my husband and I made the decision for him to have a vasectomy together. But he walked into that procedure room alone, both physically and mentally. I, on the other hand, sat in the waiting room trying to write and occupy my mind while it screamed things like “you’ll never feel a baby move inside you again” and “you’ll never see your newborn for the first time again” and, my personal favourite, “you’ll never have another chance to put right everything you did wrong”.

Do I want to talk about it? Do I want to tell you all of this? Do I think you need to know? No, no and er, NO. And I wonder, if I did have three children, would you still ask? At what point do I have enough offspring for you to just stop fucking asking already?

I don’t know what it is about motherhood that makes it perfectly acceptable for everyone to make such blunt, frankly unacceptable statements with nothing short of aplomb. It’s not like anyone has ever asked me what position I conceived my babies in or whether I did that legs-up-in-the-air thing afterwards. But I’m not really sure why the Personal Inquisition Squad get that those aren’t appropriate questions and yet see nothing wrong with suggesting that I start shagging random men in the name of completing my family. Whatever the fuck that means.

So, do you know what? I’m changing my story, Random Stranger. I just need to come up with a realistic-sounding name for a fictional uterine wasting disease first…

On growing up

Posted on by Motherhood IRL

Yesterday marked a pivotal moment in my adult life. Yesterday I had to admit that I am getting older. Not old, because I’m not even 30 yet and it would be ridiculous for me to consider myself “old”, but there’s no denying the fact that I’m not exactly “young” anymore either.

This moment happened in the car on the way to buy wallpaper for O’s room. Bittersweet Symphony by The Verve came on my iPod and the following exchange took place between O and me:

O: I don’t like this song.
Me: What?! This is one of the greatest songs ever made!
O: Is it old?
[Pause]
Me: Yeah, I guess it kinda is.

When I was a teenager listening to Limp Bizkit at an obnoxious volume in my bedroom, I wondered what the songs I loved would sound like to my children someday. Would they find them dated? Would they hear them and wonder what I ever loved so much about them? Would they beg me to put something “cooler” on? And I feel like now I know.

Sometimes I notice the changing times myself when I watch a movie I once loved and realise how jumpy and unrealistic the special effects are. Or I’ll catch myself wondering if the picture was always that fuzzy. But there was a time when it would have seemed perfectly normal to me. When the green screen broomstick flight in the first Harry Potter movie would have been seamless to my eyes.

I don’t like to think about how long it’s been since I left school. Sometimes I’ll be driving somewhere and wonder how I ever got to be old enough to drive a car. There are days when I think about all of my responsibilities – a mortgage, a job, bills, getting new shoes for the kids – and suddenly it’ll feel like there’s a little less air in the room. And it’s only now that I’m beginning to realise that being an adult isn’t something you just know how to do; it’s something you learn and relearn every day.

It’s the same with parenting; what worked yesterday isn’t working today. So you try something else. Your kids suddenly hate their favourite food and you’ve got shitloads of it in the fridge. So you resign yourself to the fact that you’re going to have to eat it, whether you like it or not. That tantrum-taming trick that worked a treat yesterday isn’t even touching the epic meltdown happening in front of you right now. So you sigh, scream silently in your head and wrack your brains for another way – any other way – to diffuse the child bomb before everything within reach becomes collateral damage. It’s 1000 degrees in the house and no one has slept for weeks. So you desperately search the Internet for “ways to cool down hot bedroom” and reserve an industrial-sized fan at Argos.

This is life. This is growing up. This is motherhood.

The truth is that I always saw myself as a young mum. I wanted to have children while I was full of energy and the vitality of youth. I didn’t realise that those things would be quickly quashed by continuous months of sleep deprivation. I just thought for sure I’d have my shit together enough by 25 to make some sort of decent mother. Hell, 25 was OLD to me back when I was 15 and first started wondering if marriage and babies might be in my future one day. Being 25 meant being a real, live ADULT.

Turns out that I’m just getting older, my musical tastes somehow and inexplicably dated, and I still don’t feel any wiser than I did the first time I looked into O’s angry, purple face and thought to myself “what the fuck am I supposed to do now?”

Turns out that sometimes, when I’m feeling really lost and confused, I still find myself looking around for an adultier adult, because I figure there’ll always be somebody who has a better idea of what they’re doing than I do.

Turns out that I’ll probably still be blundering my way through adulthood when I’m old and grey.

image

“I haven’t got a clue what I’m doing…”

 

An open letter

Posted on by Motherhood IRL

An open letter to anyone who has ever thought they could do better,

When O was born, I had very definite ideas about what kind of mother I wanted to be. I went to all the classes and read all the books and I was determined that I was going to be brilliant. I would sail through the experience like a magnificent ship on a calm and beatific sea.

Of course, life – and especially motherhood – doesn’t often go to plan, and I don’t expect you to always agree with the way I parent my children.

You would probably feed them different things. Maybe organic recipes, cooked from scratch. But you’re probably a better cook than I am. You can try and make me feel bad about this if you like, but I might as well tell you now that I’ve felt bad enough over the last few years that I’ve finally reached the point of “Don’t Give A Shit”. My children are healthy and happy. Some days they eat well and other days it’s all I can do to persuade them to eat half a decent meal and a biscuit.

tea time snack

I was actually really proud of this meal

That whole “boys should look like boys” rhetoric – what does it even mean? I get this all the time because F’s hair is quite long and he wears leggings a lot. The suggestion has even been made that I “dress him like a girl” because I wish I had a daughter. I can’t even describe to you how angry this makes me. Firstly, no, I do not dress him like a girl – whatever the hell is even meant by that. Secondly, no, I don’t wish he was a girl, nor would I trade him for one if I could. Why is his hair long? Because he’s not keen on having much done with it, and on the few occasions when I have allowed it to be cut, he’s just ended up with a mullet. And why does he wear leggings? Why does anybody wear them? They’re comfortable and unrestrictive. It’s as simple as that. Don’t you have anything better to worry about?

long hair, don't care

Long hair, don’t care

So tired am I of the suggestion that I don’t do enough with my children that I have now started taking them out most days. Of course, this means I don’t get anything done in my house – which I’m sure you’d also love to berate me for -, but fuck it; the kids are getting out and having fun. That being said, because of the judgement cast on all mothers who “don’t do enough” with their children – by the way, who gets to decide what is enough? – I’ve started to embark on outings which can only be described as suicide missions. Solo beach trips. Taking them out for lunch on my own. Attempting to turn a trip to B&Q into an educational experience with the promise of a park or feeding the ducks afterwards. The endings of these outings were, respectively, THAT lost bag disaster incident. Food on the floor, in my hair, all over the children but not, at any point, in anyone’s mouth. Also; TUTTING. And, lastly, F attempting to get me arrested by hastily making for the exit whilst clutching a fistful of pilfered goods. On Sunday when I explained to my mother that I would be taking the boys up into the woods for a ramble while N was at work, I finally accepted the offer of an extra pair of hands. But I didn’t half feel ashamed for not tackling it by myself, which is all your fault for being so bloody judgy in the first place.

woodland walk

If I’d gone on my own, I wouldn’t have this awesome photo!

No, actually, I don’t have enough “mummy friends”. You’re absolutely right. But how does one procure “mummy friends” if one’s existing friends do not have children? You have to go out and try and make them, don’t you? And that is, to be blunt, absolutely fucking terrifying. The whole thing can be so Mean Girls sometimes that I can’t even bear to try. I’m sort of friendly with a mum who is also friends with a lot of other mums who were absolutely petrifying when I was at school with them. And they might be really nice now – who knows? – but I don’t want to find out, to be honest. I have recently made friends with the very lovely mum of one of O’s playgroup buddies and we took our boys out to the park together yesterday, but it’s taken me FOUR YEARS to pluck up the courage to suggest “we should meet up with the boys and go do something” to someone I haven’t previously known. Who knows how long it could take for me to find that courage again? So I probably won’t be making another mummy friend for a while, but I’m actually okay with that and I don’t get why anybody else even cares who my friends are anyway.

If I can be completely serious for a moment, I can’t post this without mentioning that it wasn’t anybody else who saved us when F started to get sick. Nobody came charging in with advice or empathy or love. It was me who fought that battle. Every breakthrough happened and continues to happen because I have pushed so damned hard to get him the help he needed and to bring our family through to the other side of what his illness did to all of us. I know that I could have done better in the beginning, but I was out of my depth, lost, had no idea what was happening and didn’t seem to be able to make anyone understand that we needed HELP. So if I could have done better then maybe you could too.

So if you ever happen to watch me with my kids and think to yourself “she’s making such a shit job of raising those boys”, first of all, realise that somebody else is probably thinking the exact same thing about you and that doesn’t feel very nice, does it? Second of all, understand that there are some days when I really do agree with you.

Finally:

Know with absolute certainty that no one could love them more or better or harder than I do.

And that they like me best of all anyway.

motherhood love

What love looks like

Sincerely,

Motherhood IRL