Just Say It

Today I found myself indulging in some motherly bullshitting. I normally don’t partake of this all too common practice as it generally just makes me laugh when someone tries to Uber Mother me - that, or on a bad day run away and cry. Today, though, a very smug mother dangled the bait for too long. I was visiting a nursery undergoing the painful selection procedure which unfortunately seems to involve nursery staff deciding whether YOU deserve a place rather than your deciding whether you’d like to entrust your child’s tender brain to their care. One mother seemed to think that it was necessary to bang on about how brilliant her poor child was (possibly because her child kept shoving her finger up her nose and eating what she'd unearthed). Apparently, her child can already count to five, write her name and dance a bloody Russian jig blindfolded. Usually, I’d announce that my little one can already speak and write Sanskrit at this point, just to take the piss, but I WANTED a place at that nursery and the mum was just too bloody smug (gosh, I’m swearing a lot in this blog ...it’s a good job that my son can’t read, yet as he’d no doubt repeat my expletives at his current nursery, thus adding to his usual repertoire of ‘oh shit’... twas a proud moment in my mothering history when I was pulled aside to discuss this with his key-worker, I can tell you). So, I found myself considering what a feasible blag would be. Actually, that’s not true, I first found myself wondering what swift damage I could do to the annoying mother and make it look like an accident. After that, before I could stop myself, I blurted out over-loudly and too quickly ‘my son can count to 10 really fast’. I then looked a bit shifty and started to slowly sidle off into the ‘sleeping corner’ as everyone but Annoying Mum tried to pretend I hadn’t said anything. Narrowing her eyes, she fired ‘prove it’ at me. She really did. At which point, I pushed her down the stairs. No, I didn’t... At which point, my son started to shout in a way only he knows how - loud, long and abrasively. It’s a bit like someone repeatedly bashing you over the head with a metal kettle - the beautiful soundtrack of my new life. He then tried to sink his teeth into the arm of the tiniest little girl he could find. I’m pretty sure everyone was very impressed and he’s going to be given the first available place. 

Anyway, the moral of this story is that motherly bullshitting gets you nowhere. There is absolutely no point in pretending that your child is something they aren’t, or pretending that you’re having an easy time when you’re not. When it comes to staying sane (or managing your insanity) through motherhood, I’ve found the best tactic is to be truthful about what you’re experiencing. There is no shame in it. There’s nothing to lose. This isn’t a competition.  There are no rosettes out there for Best Mum (although there IS an impressive array of mugs), but there are many sympathetic and supportive women who will breathe a sigh of relief when you open up or fill your glass when you admit to needing a wine-based escape. With honesty you win incredible friendships. 

When they’d read my first blog posting, several friends of mine said ‘I had no idea that you’d suffered from PND’. That’s because we’re all clever masters of disguise, we mums. Whatever we’re going through, we feel compelled to pretend everything is OK. I felt that if I admitted what I was experiencing, everyone would assume that I was a nut-job who wanted to drop-kick my baby out the window and should be banged up before the inevitable occurred. I should have had more faith, especially when it came to talking to other women. Feeling compelled to bullshit to each other really is underestimating most women out there. Not one person I’ve told about my difficult times has reacted in any way other than with solidarity and sympathy. Yes, in the end I got professional help - a wonderful therapist and a very open-minded, non drug-pushing psychiatrist ( yes, two doctors, I’ve always been greedy). These two brilliant people dragged me away from the precipice (gosh, that sounds dramatic - it was actually more like I was slowly seeping between some cracks in a rotten floor somewhere), but the other mothers I spoke to ensured I didn’t ever tread so close to the edge again. So, my point is, TALK to other people about what you’re going through. Even telling just one friend, relative or even friendly stranger you’ve just met at a baby group will help prevent you from trapping yourself in the dark side of motherhood. If it’s how the hell to get your baby to sleep, or how to stop them freaking out when you put them in the buggy, or how to prevent your losing it when they throw on the floor with disgust the well-balanced meal you’ve carefully prepared, or that you feel that you’re an utterly crap mum altogether and all you want is to escape just for a little bit....JUST SAY IT. It’s the bravest and most productive thing to do. I promise.

Pleased to meet you..

Blimey. So, where do I start? Sometimes I feel like I’m trapped in a kind of limbo, waiting for my life to start again. I feel the most happy, sad, angry, frustrated, lucky, confused, satisfied, tired, fulfilled, bored, loved and lonely I have ever felt in my life. Anyone who says they find motherhood easy is lying. It’s that simple.

Everyone always said I would be a 'Natural Mother' - this was mainly due to my being very patient with other people’s little-ones. I remember visiting an old friend 3 weeks after she’d had her first baby. When she answered the door to me, she burst into tears. I cuddled her, cuddled her baby, told her to go upstairs to rest, then rocked her baby to sleep and looked after her for the afternoon. When my friend emerged looking much more ‘human’, she said that I was obviously a ‘natural’ with little-ones. Having now had my own, I’m pretty sure that anyone can be ‘good’ with other people’s children. It’s so easy when the experience is finite, when you hand them over and head home for a good night’s sleep. My God, it’s different when they’re your own. Oh, there we go, the guilt-pangs are setting in again - I’m worried this blog is already sounding like a long ol’ whinge about how crap being a mum can be. That’s really not what it’s meant to be. I’m hoping it’ll be a place where I can say all those things people are too afraid to say about parenting, where I can share my personal experiences - good and bad. And there’s a LOT of good there. The love is HUGE. I’ve never felt anything like it before. It’s almost as if you’re not allowed to feel this good without paying for it...hence the guilt and, in my case, the PND. I’m hoping that my honesty will help other mums, and, I know it’s a cliche, but I’m hoping it’ll let them know they’re not alone. It’ll be a digital hand-hold, an electronic meeting of sometimes muddled minds, a place where those words secretly buzzing around your head are writ large, openly shared. It’s the friend who nods back, saying ‘me too..I know what you mean’, when you finally whisper to them the anxieties, fears, forbidden thoughts you’ve been pushing to the back of your brain for so long.

I have to say that none of the mums I’ve spoken to have failed to take a ride on some form of extremely scary emotional roller coaster during the first year of their kid’s lives. You can’t experience that degree of hormonal mayhem and avoid going just a little insane, can you? I’m not even sure I need to put a question mark there, actually - I think it’s probably physically impossible. What’s weird, though, is how little people talk about this. Is it because they’re afraid that if you told the truth, no-one would have babies, anymore? Probably not. I think it’s actually because people who are having trouble being mums feel too ashamed to admit to their real feelings, after all, they’ve been graced with this amazing little being....it’s so entirely wrong to complain about it, isn’t it? Plus, admitting difficulty is admitting defeat, which to all we strong women out there, so used to being in control, would be a revolting thing to do. We’re all so bad at asking for help, often because we feel we don’t deserve it, don’t want to show weakness or don’t really know what sort of help we need. I know that if I hadn’t asked for help, I would be in a much darker place right now. Admitting that I was not a ‘Natural Mother’, was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do...and then I realised that every mother is a ‘Natural Mother’..it’s just that the fictitious definition of what it is to be a mother is just that, fiction.